John Faso will try to chip away at Democratic gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer’s image of invincibility by portraying the attorney general as a tax-and-spend liberal who would steer the state’s economy toward further decline.

Assisting Mr. Faso in this effort will be William Weld, who signed on with the Faso campaign yesterday after abandoning his bid for the Republican nomination. Mr. Weld, a former governor of Massachusetts whose campaign suffered a fatal blow when Republicans rejected him during their convention in Long Island last week, will be helping his former rival raise money, Mr. Faso told The New York Sun.

The Republican contest’s unexpected turnaround – only a couple of months ago Mr. Weld was thought to have the party’s endorsement locked up – has quickly shifted attention to Mr. Faso’s prospects against Mr. Spitzer. Among party members, relief over having achieved a measure of party unity was overshadowed by the daunting task ahead.

The Spitzer campaign and state Democrats are also quickly shifting gears and refashioning an attack strategy that was once aimed at Mr. Weld. Democrats are expected to paint Mr. Faso as an extreme right-winger and exploit the criticisms of Mr. Faso that Republicans leveled before Mr.Weld dropped out.

The chairman of the Republican Party, Stephen Minarik, who endorsed Mr. Faso on Monday, once scoffed at Mr. Faso’s chances in the race by saying he was living in “la-la land.” A spokeswoman for Mr. Weld’s campaign last month called Mr. Faso’s voting record “bizarre.” And aides close to Mr. Pataki in recent weeks had expressed concern that Mr. Faso’s record while serving in the Assembly between 1986 and 2002 was offensive to ethnic and minority groups and women.

“John Faso is far too much a right-wing extremist to be governor of New York, and that’s the case we will make in the weeks and months to come on a very regular basis,” a spokesman for the state Democratic Party, Blake Zeff, said. The chairman of the party, Herman “Denny” Farrell Jr., will stage a press conference in Albany today to “preview” the case against Mr. Faso, Mr. Zeff said.

Mr. Faso’s strategy will be to restrict the campaign’s focus to economic issues. A former assemblyman from upstate who was a state comptroller candidate in 2002, Mr. Faso, 53, is betting that such a narrow focus on taxes and spending will resonate with voters anxious about the economy and will outweigh their concerns about his positions on hot-button social issues like abortion and gay marriage.

“The fact of the matter is this election is not about right or left. This election is about right policies and wrong policies,” Mr. Faso told the Sun in a telephone interview. “The issues that matter to voters are the tax and economic issues.”

To further make the point, he then said he is challenging Mr. Spitzer to “pledge” that he won’t raise taxes as governor.

Mr. Faso said he favors restraining state spending by pegging it to the growth in personal income of New Yorkers. He also said he wants to lower personal and business taxes, but won’t say by how much. Mr. Spitzer says he is against raising taxes and wants to control spending, but has not proposed a specific budget cap.

At the moment, the Spitzer camp is giving little indication that it intends to engage Mr. Faso. In campaign stops and speeches, Mr. Spitzer has barely acknowledged the existence of rivals.

Political observers say his campaign will turn up the heat after the Democrats hold their primary in September. Mr. Spitzer is facing a quixotic challenge from Nassau County executive Thomas Suozzi, who has taunted Mr. Spitzer for his reluctance to outline his priorities.

When the Spitzer campaign does become aggressive, the attacks are like to echo those heard during the 2002 comptroller’s race between Mr. Faso and Alan Hevesi, the winner of that race. That race was a bitterly fought and expensive contest marked by an unusual amount of negative advertising.

Mr. Hevesi continuously pointed to Mr. Faso’s positions on social issues as evidence that his opponent was ideologically out of step with the majority of New Yorkers. In their only debate, Mr. Hevesi reportedly called him the “most right-wing member of the New York Legislature.”

During the campaign, Mr. Faso responded to Mr. Hevesi’s attacks by arguing that his stances were not relevant to a race for comptroller. And he charged that Mr. Hevesi, a former city comptroller and assemblyman, was deflecting attention away from a record of squandering city pension investments and supporting tax increases.

One of Mr. Faso’s most prominent supporters, Edward Cox, a son-in-law of President Nixon, told the Sun yesterday that Mr. Faso would be able to overcome the attacks on his conservative views. “When you stand for something and people understand what you stand for and they know you have a record … and you know how to put your principles into effect and that’s what the state needs, then they will vote for you,” said Mr. Cox, who acted as an intermediary between Messrs. Faso and Weld, both of whom he has known for many years.

For Mr. Faso, the first step is to raise enough money to be able to advertise and place himself on the radar of New York voters. About three-quarters of voters don’t know enough about him to have an opinion, according to one recent poll.

He’s expected to ratchet up his fundraising now that the Republican nomination has been decided. With Mr. Spitzer carrying a 50-point lead in the polls, Mr. Faso will have to convince doubtful Republican donors that he’s got a shot. To support that effort, Mr. Weld, who raised $2 million by mid-January, is expected to tap into the national party fund-raising network that he built up while serving as Massachusetts governor between 1991 and 1997. Mr. Faso raised $1 million by the same point.

At a press conference yesterday, Mr. Weld praised Mr. Faso for delivering “a stunning political performance” and said it wasn’t “the time for a contested primary.”

Related Editorials:
Clean Break, June 7, 2006
Headed South, June 6, 2006
Let Faso Run, May 23, 2006
Pataki’s Last Stand, April 24, 2006
Passing the Buck, April 10, 2006
To the Primary, December 14, 2005