Election 2002: New York: Bleeding-Heart Republican

George Pataki has been the kind of Governor even the unions can love. So what's a Democrat to do?

It's a moment to savor, when a Republican Governor rises to accept the endorsement of a huge city teachers' union over his Democratic opponent, a former Board of Education president. "With this endorsement," declared George Pataki to the United Federation of Teachers, trying hard not to gloat, "we gain the support of more than a million members of organized labor across this state." He had already scooped up the health-care-workers' union and some of the state's biggest Democratic mayors and moneymen, leaving his opponent, Comptroller Carl McCall, with less than one-tenth as much money to spend and trailing anywhere from 9...

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