ALBANY – It was almost a year ago that the Nassau County executive, Thomas Suozzi, first declared war on Albany.

Calling state government “a horrible, rotten, terrible, broken system,” Mr. Suozzi announced at a conference of the Citizens Budget Commission that he would work to defeat two state legislators from his home county – a Republican from the Senate and a Democrat from the Assembly – in this year’s elections.

For a 42-year-old Democrat with ambitions for higher office, leveling such a threat carried enormous political risks.

Within days, a top lobbyist at the Capitol, Patricia Lynch, took the unusual step of canceling her $50,000-a-year contract with Nassau County, apparently to avoid jeopardizing her close relationship with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Mr. Silver called Mr. Suozzi “a young man in a hurry” and arranged to block him from being a delegate to the Democratic National Convention at Boston.

On September 14, however, the gamble seemed to pay off in a big way. That was the day that Mr. Suozzi’s candidate for a seat in the Assembly, Charles Lavine, defeated the 12-year incumbent, David Sidikman, in a Democratic primary. The victory not only made good on the first half of Mr. Suozzi’s threat from last November, it confirmed his status as the field general of a political rebellion rattling the gates of the Capitol.

Mr. Suozzi, a brash, brainy politician, enjoys comparing the movement for reform to the American Revolution. He calls the upset of Mr. Sidikman “the shot heard ’round the state.”

“We had a cause that people were energized by,” Mr. Suozzi said in a recent interview. To dislodge incumbents in the Legislature, he said, “you need to have a great rationale, a great message, and we certainly have that in the Fix Albany campaign.”

In the Senate, Fix Albany is supporting a Democratic challenger, Chad Brisbane, against a Republican first elected in 1995, Carl Marcellino of Syosset. Although Mr. Brisbane would appear to be the underdog, the Senate Republican Campaign Committee has taken the precaution of funneling $435,000 into the race, more than any other in the state.

Bashing the Legislature, which hasn’t produced an on-time state budget since 1984, is nothing new or unusual. Mr. Suozzi’s basic message – that New York’s local taxes are 72% above the national average largely because of decisions made by state lawmakers – comes straight from a report presented by the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan watchdog group, at its conference last year.

His main focus is on the Medicaid health plan for the poor. Albany officials set the rules for the program, within guidelines set by the federal government, but then require local taxpayers to shoulder roughly a quarter of the cost, or $260 million a year in Nassau County. Mr. Suozzi is calling for the local contribution to be capped, so that Albany and Washington would be responsible for future growth in the program.

Despite Albany’s huge impact on property taxes, voters rarely hold their local lawmakers responsible for the collective decisions of the Legislature. The unique contribution of Mr. Suozzi and his Fix Albany political action committee is to harness anti-Albany sentiment as a political message with impact at the ballot box.

“The reason our taxes are high, the reason our government is dysfunctional, is related to the fact that incumbents win whether they do a good job or not,” Mr. Suozzi says. “The purpose of Fix Albany is to educate voters, to connect the dots.”

Before Mr. Lavine’s upset victory, the recommendations of the Citizens Budget Commission and others seemed to be going nowhere at the Capitol. Days after the primary, Mr. Silver and the Republican majority leader of the Senate, Joseph Bruno, both appointed task forces to study reform.

“He’s managed to do something very few people have ever succeeded in doing, which is to connect up the procedural problems in Albany … with a concrete lunchbox issue – in his case property taxes – and mobilize people,” Senator Eric Schneiderman, a Manhattan Democrat, said of Mr. Suozzi. “People are finally starting to catch on to this gigantic, long-running scam that is state government, and he’s struck a chord that’s resonating with a lot of people.”

Not everyone is impressed by his campaign.

“From a Republican point of view he is perceived as a big blowhard,” said the minority leader of the Nassau County Legislature, Peter Schmitt.

Mr. Schmitt argues that without Albany’s help – in the form of cash, low interest loans, debt refinancing, and retirement incentives – the county could not have survived its financial crisis. He noted that Mr. Suozzi’s tenure has been marked by a 20% hike in property taxes and a scandal in which the former deputy executive, Peter Sylver, pleaded guilty to misusing county funds and sexually abusing a county employee.

“Fix Albany? We should fix Nassau,” Mr. Schmitt said.

Mr. Suozzi has expressed regret that Mr. Sylver’s misdeeds weren’t caught earlier, and takes credit for changing procedures in an effort to prevent similar problems in the future. As for his financial management, Mr. Suozzi argues that he had no choice but to raise taxes and trim spending when he first took office, as the county was on the verge of bankruptcy. He points to the generally high marks he has received from the Nassau Interim Finance Authority – an oversight body controlled by Republican appointees of Governor Pataki – and credit upgrades awarded by various Wall Street rating firms.

In addition to the tax hike, enacted in his first year as executive, Mr. Suozzi has also reduced the county workforce by about 1,000 employees, or 10%, won cost-saving concessions from labor unions, refinanced debt at lower interest rates, and generally improved the efficiency of state government, according to reports by the state authority, known as NIFA. In addition, the county has benefited from about $150 million in aid and financial relief through the authority since Mr. Suozzi took office.

“We are pleased to report that the combination of conservative budgeting, positive actions by the county executive and Legislature, and NIFA’s assistance has resulted in significant progress toward restoring fiscal health to Nassau County,” the authority said in an update this month.

Mr. Suozzi acknowledges that the help Albany ultimately provided was important to Nassau’s financial recovery. But he said the resistance he met in trying to create a new water and sewer authority to refinance debt gave him a taste of Albany gridlock.

“The strength of your argument didn’t matter,” he said. “It was whether they wanted to grace you with their assistance or not.”

The youngest of five children of an Italian-born lawyer and an American born nurse, Mr. Suozzi was born and raised at Glen Cove, a small city on the north shore of Long Island. A graduate of Boston College and Fordham Law School, he gave up a lucrative job at a Manhattan law firm when he was 31 to become mayor of his hometown, following in the footsteps of his father and his uncle.

Having inherited a budget deficit from his Republican predecessor, he pushed through a major property tax increase in his first year. He got credit for restoring the city’s financial stability, cleaning up its downtown, and revitalizing its waterfront.

In 2001, when years of financial mismanagement had caught up to the Republican machine that ran Nassau County, Mr. Suozzi jumped into the race for county executive. He ran on his record as mayor; “I can do it because I’ve done it” was his campaign slogan. His opponent in the Democratic primary, Assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli, was endorsed by all the major party officials – including Mr. Silver – but Mr. Suozzi won the nomination with 54% of the vote.

Mr. Suozzi, who takes pride in his grasp of nuts-and-bolts politics, credits the win to his effort to bring out Democrats who don’t usually participate in primaries. “I was talking to people he wasn’t even talking to,” Mr. Suozzi said of Mr. DiNapoli. Although balloting was delayed by the events of September 11, turnout for the primary was twice as high as usual. He easily won the general election.

Although Mr. Suozzi’s reputation as a maverick and a reformer has made him a darling of editorial pages and a hero to many of his colleagues in local government, it remains to be seen whether he can ride the wave to Albany or Washington after antagonizing so much of the political establishment.

Mr. Suozzi makes no bones about his political ambition, saying he “definitely” hopes to seek higher office someday. “The only way I can run for higher office is by doing a good job in my current job as county executive,” he said.