ALBANY – The state Republican chairman, Stephen Minarik, said only two candidates for governor impress him: William Weld and Thomas Suozzi.

While asserting his faith in the candidacy of Mr. Weld, Mr. Minarik had kind words to say about Mr. Suozzi, the rebellious Democratic county executive of Nassau who is considering a long-shot bid against state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

“I think Suozzi has a decent message,” Mr. Minarik told The New York Sun.”I do think he would be more difficult to defeat than Spitzer. I mean that. He speaks like a Republican many times, certainly in reforming Albany.”

He may be puffing up Mr. Suozzi to deflate Mr. Spitzer, who enjoys a lead in the polls. But Mr. Minarik, a large man who loves baseball and politics, prides himself as being blunt-spoken.

In a wide-ranging interview, Mr. Minarik described Albany as a “disaster” and a “big bubble,” said Mr. Spitzer’s weakness is his “glass jaw,” and characterized Mr. Weld’s Republican opponents as inexperienced “insiders” who don’t have the resources to run against Mr. Spitzer.

It’s a trying time for the chairman – who was elected party leader in December 2004 at the twilight of George Pataki’s governorship – a time when Republican prospects in the Empire State appear to be at an ebb. Party enrollment is down, while GOP leaders disagree on strategy and ideas. A power void is emerging that is leading to public clashes between Mr. Minarik and the old elite.

He recently has had to shoot down widely circulated reports that he and the governor are no longer on speaking terms and that he received a tongue-lashing from Alfonse D’Amato, a former New York senator and now a lobbyist. Mr. D’Amato opposes both Mr. Weld and Mr. Minarik’s candidate for attorney general, Jeanine Pirro. Mr. Minarik is trying to promote Mr. Weld while the Senate’s Republican majority leader, Joseph Bruno, has given some indication that the door is open for a wealthy New Yorker to join the already crowded race.

Mr. Minarik hears the word “disarray” to describe the condition of the state party so often that it’s become a cliche.

“The perception out there that Eliot Spitzer is going to be the next governor hits us every day,” Mr. Minarik, 46, said, speaking from his spacious but austere office at party headquarters, tucked into an old brick townhouse on State Street.

Part of the problem is that the party hasn’t glommed onto one candidate like he said it would. Party county chairmen, some of whom pined for a Thomas Golisano candidacy, have generally split their support between Mr. Weld and John Faso, a former minority leader of the Assembly. Complicating matters, there were reports last night that several upstate county leaders would endorse Randy Daniels, who served as secretary of state under Mr. Pataki.

“When you have a bottom-up decision-making program … you’re going to have a diversity of opinion,” Mr. Minarik said, “just like you have a diversity of opinion all over the state.” In recent months, he has been criticized by party members both for acting both too dictatorial and for failing to anoint Mr. Weld.

One of Mr. Minarik’s biggest fears is a Republican primary, which he said would be a “traumatic error” for the party. “From my experience – 14 years as chairman of Monroe County – I don’t like primaries. I have never been in the middle of a primary that has not caused hard feelings,” he said. He predicted that by the time the party convention rolls around in the spring, “everybody that is part of the team will be on board” with Mr. Weld.

If Mr. Weld does well at the convention, then Mr. Faso, Mr. Daniels, and Assemblyman Patrick Manning, another candidate for governor, will have to ask, Mr. Minarik said: “Would I have the resources necessary to even compete in a primary? They are not individually or collectively Tom Golisano.”

When talking about Mr. Weld, Mr. Minarik seemed sanguine. Mr. Weld, he said, is the one true outsider in the race, having governed Massachusetts for six years and then moved to Manhattan. “There is an anti-insider sentiment out there and … the other three are part of the establishment,” he said. “They are the insiders and Weld is on the outside and wanting to come in and make a change.”

And he’s hoping that the Conservative Party, whose endorsement he covets, will overlook Mr. Weld’s more liberal stances on social issues and appreciate his record as a fiscal conservative. “I hope that when it’s all said and done, they are able to look at the whole record of Bill Weld,” he said.

Mr. Minarik said Mr. Weld will untangle himself from his connections to the trade school in Kentucky that he briefly ran last year, Decker College, which is under federal investigation for student load fraud and has collapsed into bankruptcy. Mr. Weld, whose investment firm had a stake in the for-profit school, is not accused of any wrongdoing.

“I mean that was a bad investment,” Mr. Minarik said. “He lost money there.”

The Achilles’s heel in this race, he insists, is Mr. Spitzer’s temper, which in January was a hot issue in the governor’s race – after a former Goldman Sachs chairman, John Whitehead, accused the attorney general of threatening him – but has seemed to simmer down. “Do people want a bully as their governor or do they want a leader?” Mr. Minarik asked.

And if the polls don’t change between now and October? “I’ll say we lost and throw the towel in. No campaign has ever been won or lost in February,” he said.