Embattled attorney general candidate Jeanine Pirro went into damage control mode yesterday, vowing to stay in the race even as some said her chances of raising money were in jeopardy.

Ms. Pirro fired off a letter to the U.S.attorney general, Alberto Gonzalez, demanding he remove the prosecutor investigating her, saying the prosecutor has ties to her opponent, Andrew Cuomo, and a history of investigating her husband, who was convicted of tax fraud.

The letter comes a day after Ms. Pirro disclosed that federal prosecutors were investigating her to determine whether she conspired with a disgraced former city police commissioner, Bernard Kerik, to wiretap her husband, Albert Pirro, whom she suspected of having an affair. Mr. Kerik was private investigator at the time, but his phones were tapped because he was under investigation.

Ms. Pirro’s letter draws Mr. Cuomo into the fray. It notes that he worked with the assistant district attorney on the case, Elliot Jacobson, in the mid-1980s.

“A federal investigation whose purpose can only be to undermine the democratic process in New York State is repugnant to everything the Department of Justice stands for,” she wrote.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Cuomo, Wendy Katz, said via e-mail: “Ms. Pirro should direct any questions to the Republican Westchester District Attorney, the Republican US Attorney and the Republican head of the FBI investigating this matter.”

With six weeks to go until the general election, Ms. Pirro, sought out the spotlight yesterday.

At a morning event she said the leak of sealed court documents was the only crime in this case. During an appearance on “The O’Reilly Factor” last night, she reiterated that she did nothing wrong and that the case was “a personal martial situation that has no business in the United States Attorney’s office.”

In her letter to Mr. Gonzalez, she asked that a special prosecutor be assigned her case and that the findings be reported in 20 days, nearly three weeks before the November 7 election.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice, Bryan Sierra, declined to comment, saying Mr. Gonzalez had not yet received the letter. Law enforcement officials said they did not believe the leak came from federal prosecutors, as Ms. Pirro suggested.

Meanwhile, political consultants dissected Ms. Pirro’s campaign and speculated on whether anyone else would be implicated in the taped conversations.

Mayor Giuliani, who is considering a run for the White House in 2008, was planning to host a fund-raiser for Ms. Pirro, but he backed out once the federal probe was made public. Many said he was trying to quash association with Mr. Kerik.

Republicans who had banked on Ms. Pirro drawing out GOP voters for November’s races said raising money could be hard for her in the coming weeks. Although high-profile backers like Governor Pataki and the Republican majority leader of the state Senate, Joseph Bruno, vowed to support her yesterday, they are focused on other things.

Mr. Bruno’s top priority is ensuring that Republicans maintain their slim majority in the Senate, while Mr. Pataki is trying to fund-raise for his presidential bid.

Republicans said they expected her supporters to take a wait-and-see approach about donating more money to her political war chest, even though she raised about $750,000 at a fund-raiser in Manhattan earlier this week.

“I don’t think they are going to go to bat for her until they see what happens over the next few days,” one consultant said.

The chairman of the Republican Country Committee in Manhattan, James Ortenzio, however, reiterated support for Ms. Pirro, saying: “My principal question is why do we know this, how do we know this, and why did it come out now?”

Marist College is scheduled to release a poll this morning gauging whether the federal probe has affected voters.