ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) – Looking to energize his struggling party, state Republican Chairman Stephen Minarik Thursday blasted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as a “bleeding heart liberal” and Eliot Spitzer as a “bully” who really isn’t such a tough guy.

In a letter to potential donors, Minarik said contributions will help Republicans “run an aggressive, no-holds-barred offensive against Hillary and Spitzer this year.”

“We’re going to elect a new governor _ and we can’t let it be Eliot Spitzer,” the GOP leader said of New York’s attorney general, the only announced Democratic candidate for governor.

“We’re going to elect a new senator _ and end Hillary’s dreams of becoming president in the process,” Minarik added.

The Minarik letter comes in the same week billionaire businessman B. Thomas Golisano, who polls had as the leading contender for the GOP nomination for governor, said he wouldn’t run. Polls have shown Spitzer far ahead of the other potential GOP gubernatorial contenders, a field that includes former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld and former state Assembly Minority Leader John Faso.

Republican Gov. George Pataki announced in July he would not seek a fourth term this year.

“It’s just plain sad the state GOP has found itself in such a desperate situation that it can only resort to name calling when it should be talking about the important issues that matter to New Yorkers,” said Ryan Toohey, a spokesman for the Spitzer campaign. “That’s what were doing.”

On the Senate side, the Republican leadership’s first choice to take on Clinton, Jeanine Pirro, ended her campaign in December in the face of fundraising problems and vanishing support from the GOP leaders who had first courted her. The former Westchester County district attorney is now running for state attorney general leaving the little-known former mayor of Yonkers, John Spencer, as the likely Clinton challenger. On Tuesday, Clinton reported $17 million in her campaign while Spencer reported $243,000 in the bank.

Despite that, Minarik maintained in his fundraising appeal that the two Democratic powerhouses were beatable.

“Spitzer is an attention-seeking job killer who won’t deliver on the reforms he is promising,” Minarik wrote. “And, Hillary is a bleeding heart liberal whose only priority is running for president.”

Minarik was particularly tough on Spitzer, who has won fame for his investigations of Wall Street investment houses, mutual funds and other financial institutions.

The GOP chairman noted Spitzer last summer lost one of his highest profile cases when former Bank of America broker Theodore Sihpol III was acquitted of 29 counts, including a top count of grand larceny, at a trial related to after-hours mutual funds trading.

“Since his gigantic defeat in the Sihpol case last summer, we’ve all seen that Eliot Spitzer isn’t so tough when you get him in the courtroom,” Minarik said. “Without his subpoena powers to bully people, he wouldn’t make a very tough governor either.

“And speaking of bullying, listen to the latest example of Spitzer flexing his prosecutorial muscles: He reportedly threatened an 83-year-old man!” Minarik added.

That is a reference to the claim by former top Wall Street executive John Whitehead, the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, that Spitzer threatened him in a phone call last spring. Spitzer has denied he made any threat.