Which stories will define state candidates?

For the moment, it is all about definition. This season, rival candidates speak of themselves in positive terms and of each other in ominous tones.

Suffolk Executive Steve Levy, running for governor, for the first time courts a public outside his county's borders. A whole new audience asks who he is.

Citing his current job, he tells people he has the skills to fix the state's fiscal damage.

His rivals, of course, tell these new listeners different stories.

One negative counter-narrative floated this season is about Levy's voluntary dealings with a few people who turned out crooked.

During Levy's clash with Rick Lazio for the GOP nomination, we've heard anew about the county executive's past alliance - and salty taped conversations - with advisers Steve Baranello and Wayne Prospect, later accused and convicted on criminal charges.

Now, another name enters the campaign data stream: that of Ethan Ellner. Ellner, acquainted with Levy in law school, was a tenant in a Holbrook house owned by Levy in the late 1990s after Ellner was convicted on federal tax evasion.

As reported in the Daily News, that was also years before Ellner was charged and pleaded guilty in a Suffolk mortgage fraud case. Two of Ellner's co-defendants turned out to be owners of a Manhattan S&M club, and another, George Guldi, the former county legislator, also was charged.

As Newsday reports Tuesday, Ellner got more than $85,000 in title work from the county.

Alex Carey, spokesman for state GOP chairman and Levy backer Ed Cox, said Monday, "I don't see how this is at all relevant."

But the way these things go, a negative narrative - credible or otherwise - will be cast on all contenders.

Lazio, a former congressman, touts his financial experience over the past decade as a helpful public credential.

His detractors counter that by noting Lazio's $1.3-million bonus from JPMorgan Chase and his vote to lift the Glass-Stegall financial restrictions of the New Deal era.

Andrew Cuomo, the state attorney general, will point to his role in combating pension corruption, duplicative government and student loan abuse, for example.

His foes have just begun to develop their argument of a link between Cuomo's actions as federal housing secretary in the 1990s and the mortgage collapse of later years.

Late last week, District Attorney Kathleen Rice, a Democratic attorney general hopeful, didn't waste a moment bashing state Sen. Eric Schneiderman for jumping into the fray. Her campaign issued a statement tying him to Albany gridlock.

In this context, Carl Paladino, the rich but "mad-as-hell" Republican candidate from western New York, creates a show of his own.

Whether he means mad as in angry or mad as in nuts became the question Monday as he was besieged by revelations that he e-mailed racist and raunchy joke e-mails to others.

The storm around the e-mails - which he blamed on Democrats - didn't stop Paladino from issuing a complaint about a Cuomo aide and demanding an investigation.

On this will go.

The question is not whether candidates' records and character will undergo harsh scrutiny, but which narratives, good or bad, will stick.