ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) – Democratic candidate for governor Tom Suozzi will not seek his party’s nomination in the convention, but rather pursue petitions from Democrats statewide to get on the primary ballot, a spokeswoman said Friday.

Suozzi spokeswoman Kimberly Devlin said Friday that Suozzi, the Nassau County executive, will not try to get the 25 percent of delegates needed to automatically gain a spot on the ballot and force a primary in September. Candidates must also get 25 percent of the delegates’ vote to speak at the convention, under the party’s rules.

“He will not be participating in the convention at all,” Devlin said. She said he will be in Buffalo, the site of the May 30 to May 31 convention, and participating in other events.

The front-runner in the race is Eliot Spitzer, the state attorney general, who has a wide lead in the polls over Suozzi and Republicans John Faso and Bill Weld.

“Party rules state that a candidate must get 51 percent of the weighted vote to be the designee of our party and 25 percent to get on the ballot and speak at the convention,” said state Democratic Chairman Herman “Denny” Farrell. “If they don’t get 25 percent they can pursue the petition route to get on the ballot, just as Eliot Spitzer did in 1994 after he did not get the sufficient number of votes at the convention.

“As for who speaks at the convention, we don’t know who will get to speak until we see who will have the votes,” Farrell said.

At a speech on the need to overhaul New York’s redrawing of state legislative districts to create fair, competitive races, Suozzi said: “The leadership of my own party tried to convince me not to run. When that didn’t work, they began plotting to keep me off the ballot,” according to the text of his comments on his campaign Web site.

“Now they’re telling me I will not even be permitted to speak at the state Democratic Convention if I don’t receive 25 percent of votes from an establishment that has sworn to try and stop me from even running,” Suozzi stated. “We complain about voter apathy, but we are making the voters apathetic by taking away their choices _ by taking away the excitement and interest generated by competitive debate and elections. Instead of trying to involve more people in the political process, we run campaigns with the expectation that nobody is paying attention until the weeks immediately before the election, when a barrage of television ads can buy if not the clearest of messages, then certainly the loudest.

“And when one candidate takes a big lead, they can ignore their opponents and hope they just go away,” he said. “And everyone has become so cynical that that’s perceived as acceptable behavior. Well, I’m not going away.”

There was no immediate comment from Spitzer’s campaign.