Intraparty feuds, divided agendas help derail Levy

Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy figures he spent about $500,000 trying to talk New York's 440 Republican state committee members into letting him onto the GOP primary ballot at their state convention this week.

Back on the job in Hauppauge on Friday, still weighing a third-party bid for governor, Levy said he still believes he might have closed the deal with delegates if he'd just had a few more months to persuade them. But others inside and outside the campaign fight are not so sure.

Differences in culture and ideology, lingering intraparty feuds and divided agendas conspired to thwart state chairman Ed Cox's drive to make Levy his party's standard-bearer for reform of a scandal-scarred state government, party members and political experts said.

Cox and Suffolk County Republican chairman John J. LaValle told their party that the erstwhile Democrat's energy, bank account and fiscally conservative track record made him a better candidate than former Rep. Rick Lazio.

But the catcalls that erupted during the roll-call over putting Levy on the ballot made clear many in the party found the very proposition degrading, even as others embraced the possibilities Levy presented.

Monroe County chairman William Reilich said what offended him most was Levy's reluctance to switch parties last winter, even as he was seeking GOP support for the governorship.

For many upstate delegates, LaValle found, having a "good Republican" at the top of their ticket mattered more than having one who could beat Andrew Cuomo.

"They're more old-school and more conservative in how they're going to move," LaValle said.

Cox may have nudged Nassau Republican leader Joseph Mondello out of the state leadership last September, but he never won his loyalty. And with 9.78 percent of the vote, Nassau could have put Levy over the top in his bid for a place on a primary ballot - if, that is, Mondello had chosen to follow the example of other Lazio-backing counties, like Albany and Westchester. Instead, Mondello lobbied against him, saying he wanted a "real Republican."

"Nassau was influenced by one thing: Joe Mondello hated Ed Cox," Levy reflected. "If Ed Cox had endorsed Abraham Lincoln, Joe Mondello would have endorsed Jimmy Carter."

The breach within the party was evident in the list of notables absent from the convention this year: former Gov. George Pataki; former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Rep. Tom Reynolds, an upstate powerhouse.

A spokesman for Pataki said Friday that he'd had a scheduling conflict but was "100 percent" behind Lazio's candidacy and plans to advise and help him raise money for the race.

But another absence has highlighted the true extent of this year's disarray: Former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, the New York Republican Party's greatest kingmaker in a generation who is now a lobbyist, hosted a fundraiser for Cuomo last year.

And it's Cuomo, not Lazio, who will benefit from the powerful Rolodex of Cathy Blaney, a former D'Amato aide and the state's top Republican fundraiser, who signed on with the attorney general last winter.

Cuomo even has enlisted the support of Michael McKeon, Pataki's former director of communications and a senior adviser to Giuliani's presidential campaign.

McKeon called Cuomo "the only candidate running with the experience and capacity" to straighten out Albany's dire problems this year.

"People with business on their mind like to go with a perceived winner," is how Levy explains the pattern, noting that Cuomo leads his Republican rivals by 40 points in state polls.

But Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino, who plans to petition his way onto the GOP primary ballot, went further, contending that D'Amato "sponsored" Lazio's candidacy because "he knows . . . Lazio will be a weak candidate against Andrew Cuomo. . . . All Al's interested in is watching him [Lazio] lose so that he has access to the Cuomo administration, if there is to be one."

D'Amato on Friday dismissed Paladino's accusation.

"This is the silliest thing I've ever heard and it's not even worth commenting on," D'Amato said through a spokeswoman.

But Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf contends that the split over Levy reflects a deep-seated conflict of interests within the party.

"Cox wants to win elections, and traditionally suburban New York Republican parties want to do business," Sheinkopf said. "They are job holders, patronage operations, and their guys make sure that the loyal get contracts and the others don't. . .

"Cox would have upset the apple cart," Sheinkopf said. "And the very nature of Levy is to be opposed to these kinds of friendly relationships."

With James T. Madore