I can’t help but feel sorry for the Westchester County district attorney, Jeanine Pirro. How can you not?

The good ole boys in Albany recently got together behind closed doors yet again to decide Mrs. Pirro’s fate. By the luck of the draw, these Republican Party leaders came to the conclusion that Mrs. Pirro wasn’t the right candidate to square off against Senator Clinton.

When private discussions urging Mrs. Pirro not to run didn’t work, these hawkish male politicos took their case to the press, publicly dissing the successful prosecutor for having the courage to offer up her candidacy. And then they had the nerve to criticize her further for having the temerity to suggest that they were all wrong.

For weeks, they’ve been encouraging Mrs. Pirro to abandon the idea of becoming a senator altogether, and have urged her instead to run for New York attorney general, a job that they say she is more likely to win.

So far Mrs. Pirro has done the right thing by opting to stay in the race, defying what can only be seen as rampant sexism at the highest levels of her party.

The last time I checked, candidates remained free to run for whatever post they chose. Ironically, none of the party’s leadership seems to be as aggressive in calling for the former governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, to abandon his plans to run for governor against Democrat Eliot Spitzer. Polls suggest Mr. Weld – who abandoned his post as governor of Massachusetts in 1997 when President Clinton nominated him to become U.S. ambassador to Mexico – would lose to Mr. Spitzer.

I’ve long dismissed the state Republican Party’s claims that Mrs. Pirro is not a formidable candidate. As a prosecutor, she has cracked down on gang violence in Westchester and has been at the forefront of lobbying for legislation that would keep sexually violent predators off the streets. And though Mrs. Clinton remains a tough incumbent to beat, she has lost some support throughout the state, particularly among African-American voters for her ambiguous stance on the war in Iraq. She has routinely criticized President Bush but has been careful to distance herself from other Democratic politicians like Rep. John Murtha of Maine, who has laid out a clear timetable for the withdraw of troops from Iraq.

Still, the state Republican Committee chairman, Stephen Minarik – who previously endorsed Mrs. Pirro’s Senate campaign – has reversed his own position and has been pushing Mrs. Pirro to run for Mr. Spitzer’s job. Even if Mrs.Pirro decided to withdraw from the Senate race and run for attorney general, she will likely face strong opposition.

Among the Democrats, a former New York City Public Advocate, Mark Green, and the former HUD secretary, Andrew Cuomo, are considered favorites in the race. Attorney Charlie King, the only African American in the race, has also been making steady gains, garnering the endorsement recently of Bill Lynch, one of the city’s most prominent political strategists.

“If Pirro gets out of the race, who do they run?” a public affairs professor at Baruch College, Doug Muzzio, asked. “Who is the Senate candidate that they can pick up to wage a campaign against Mrs. Clinton?” No person exists, which is why I’ve come to the conclusion that the treatment of Mrs. Pirro, the best candidate they had, is yet another disturbing example of the obstacles women politicians and political appointees must face.

Let us not forget Harriet Miers.

Despite the opposition Ms. Miers faced among Democrats and Republicans for lacking a “record,” I actually thought that her presence on the U.S. Supreme Court might have surprised us all. Unlike Judge Samuel Alito, who was nominated after Ms. Miers withdrew her name, Ms. Miers may have followed in the same tradition of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as the moderate voice on the high court.

Had she been confirmed, there is evidence to suggest she may have been sympathetic to civil rights and women’s concerns and would have protected affirmative action and a woman’s right to choose.

But we will never know how she would have ruled from the bench. She was forced to withdraw her nomination, largely because of the resistance that she faced from the most conservative members of Mr. Bush’s own party.

I’m urging Mrs. Pirro to stay in the Senate race. Her presence would send a strong and positive message that she is actively rejecting the forms of male chauvinism so easily detected in both the Republican and Democratic parties.