They seem like four unrelated news items — three from today’s front page, and one from yesterday’s. The Yankees sweep a five-game series at Boston, K.T. McFarland suspends Senate campaign activities after the latest in a series of personal embarrassments, the county that includes Phoenix, Arizona, created more new housing units last year than did all of New York State, and the Republican candidate for governor, John Faso, complains of a leadership vacuum in the state Republican Party.

The debacle in the Senate race is a demonstration of that leadership vacuum. To stop Senator Clinton, of all the talented people in the state of New York, Republicans are considering Ms. McFarland, about whom all most people know that she was estranged from her brother and her father and, now, that she has a daughter who is an accused shoplifter. Her main campaign achievement has been to make sure that voters know that the other Republican running for Senate, John Spencer, had an extramarital affair with a city employee when he was mayor of Yonkers. It’s a shame that the Senate race has descended to this level, because it would have been a fine opportunity for a candidate to draw distinctions with Mrs. Clinton on the issues.

Say what you will about the Yankees. Unlike the New York Republican Party, at least they have a bench. Governor Pataki’s failures aren’t limited to politics. They extend to policy, which is why population in low-tax states is rising, while here in high-tax New York, new housing creation can’t even keep up with a county in Arizona. The picture isn’t all gloom and doom — there is a housing construction boom of sorts under way in New York City — but New York’s successes fall short of what could be achieved were growth unleashed by a climate genuinely hospitable to entrepreneurship.

As for Mr. Faso’s complaint — “Leadership implies that someone is there leading the troops, organizing the ground forces, raising the money to conduct a campaign. There’s no one doing it,” he told our Jacob Gershman — we realize he has his hands full with his own race, but from the distance where we sit it looks like an opportunity. Mr. Faso has maintained a cheerful focus on taxes and spending and the implications for the state if the Democratic candidate for governor, Eliot Spitzer, raises taxes to pay for his extravagant spending plans. If Mr. Faso can pull off a victory against Mr. Spitzer — admittedly a big if — he will be in a position to address both the leadership vacuum at the political level and the policy problems that have put the Empire State in the position of lagging behind an Arizona County in housing creation.