ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) – Long Island political maverick Tom Suozzi said Wednesday he might mount an independent campaign for governor even as a new poll showed Eliot Spitzer maintaining huge leads over his fellow Democrat and over Republican John Faso.

The poll had Spitzer, New York’s attorney general, leading Faso 66 percent to 20 percent. That is slightly better for Faso than a mid-May Quinnipiac poll that had Democrat Spitzer leading 67 percent to 16 percent.

In between the two polls, Faso had a surprisingly strong showing at the state GOP convention that drove his rival for the Republican nomination, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, out of the race.

But the post-convention “bounce” for Faso was slight, according to the poll.

“The GOP ball barely moved as Attorney General Spitzer keeps rolling along,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Hamden, Conn.-based polling institute.

In fact, the poll showed 35 percent of Republican voters backing Spitzer over Faso. Faso, the former state Assembly minority leader who narrowly lost a race for state comptroller in 2002, was backed by just 46 percent of GOP voters while 18 percent were undecided.

The poll found Spitzer leading Suozzi 76 percent to 13 percent. But it also found Suozzi, the Nassau County executive, beating Faso 41 percent to 23 percent if he was the Democratic nominee.

At a news conference Wednesday, Suozzi said he would continue his petition drive to win a spot on the Sept. 12 Democratic primary ballot, but that he also has been encouraged by supporters to consider running as an independent under the banner of the “Fix Albany” political action committee he created two years ago.

“My petitions are due in the first week of July or so,” Suozzi said. “And when that time comes and I’m on the Democratic line, it’s something that I’ll think about.”

Suozzi called the news conference to criticize Spitzer for doing too little to push his ally, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, on a host of reform measures as the Legislative session counts down to its final days.

Suozzi refused to comment on a report by Citizen Action, a nonprofit organization that is backing Spitzer, claiming that under Suozzi, Nassau County has granted contracts worth more than $100 million to businesses that made contributions to his campaign. Suozzi called Citizen Action a “bogus group” that had won state contracts from Spitzer.

For his part, Carroll discounted the gains by Suozzi and Faso as too little and coming too late in the campaign.

“This was, to me, the significant poll,” said Carroll. “This was the one to show (if Faso) caught fire or had a bounce. And he didn’t. It’s flat, flat, flat.”

Democrats have claimed the conservative Faso, who opposes abortion rights, is out of the mainstream. Twenty-eight percent of voters surveyed, including 24 percent of Republicans, agreed with that while 23 percent disagreed. Forty-nine percent were undecided.

Meanwhile, Republicans have claimed Spitzer will raise state taxes. Thirty-eight percent of voters, including 31 percent of Democrats, agreed with that while 41 percent of voters said Spitzer would not raise taxes. Twenty-one percent were undecided.

Quinnipiac’s telephone poll of 1,204 registered voters was conducted June 12-19 and has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.