Soon after word came down that Eliot Spitzer would resign as governor, Democratic strategists made a mad scramble to track down as many of their State Senate candidates as possible.
The party stood just one seat from controlling the Senate. But Mr. Spitzer, the Democrats’ strongest fund-raiser, was gone in disgrace amid revelations that he patronized a prostitution ring. One by one the strategists got in touch with candidates who had agreed to run in November and asked: Are you still with us?
The overwhelming answer, the strategists said, was yes. Indeed, many of those candidates said they felt they were better off without Mr. Spitzer, the self-proclaimed “steamroller” whose bullying political style might have alienated and angered voters.
His replacement, David A. Paterson, has been praised by members of both parties as a conciliator with a self-deprecating sense of humor. He and Mr. Spitzer are as different in tactics as in tone.
“You step back and you evaluate the situation, and in my conversations with constituents, it seems to be a benefit to me,” said Joseph P. Addabbo Jr., a New York City councilman who plans to challenge Serphin R. Maltese, the Republican incumbent, in the 15th Senate District in Queens. “Many people were at odds with Spitzer and his policies. They now want to give Paterson a fair chance.”
Republicans said Democrats would be unwise to believe that Mr. Spitzer’s departure would help them in the election, suggesting that they intended to tie Mr. Spitzer — both his scandals and his combative persona — to Democratic candidates this fall.
“We’ll leave it to them to see how they are going to separate themselves from the previous governor,” said John McArdle, a spokesman for Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader. “We think the people will feel as they did with the governor, that they were let down and deceived. And we’ll let those Democrats that owe their seats to him, who got their financial backing from him, explain to their constituents why it is the way it is.”
What remains unclear is whether Governor Paterson, who spent many years in the virtually powerless Senate Democratic minority and who recently revealed that he had been unfaithful to his wife and might have used campaign funds for hotel stays with his paramours, can raise money as effectively as Mr. Spitzer. One of Mr. Spitzer’s biggest strengths and most noteworthy accomplishments as governor was his success in resurrecting the state party by imploring his wealthy friends and generous donors to pour millions into the party’s campaign accounts, leveling the playing field with the Senate Republicans and their wily leader, Mr. Bruno.
Mr. Spitzer made this fund-raising a priority, a former adviser said, equal to raising money for his own campaign account, and was committed to upending the Republicans, who have controlled the Senate for more than 40 years. Moreover, Mr. Spitzer had honed his fund-raising skills during eight years as the state attorney general, including three years as a prospective candidate for governor.
Mr. Paterson, by contrast, has never had to undertake a statewide fund-raising effort.
Gerald Benjamin, a professor of political science and a dean at the State University of New York at New Paltz, said it was foolish to assert that the Democrats were in a better position without Mr. Spitzer.
“That really is an absurd point,” Mr. Benjamin said. “We’ve had Democratic governors for several decades that haven’t supported the Senate minority in becoming the majority. Now, they had a governor who had been committed to that and put his best people on the line to raise money, not just money, but the right kind of people to raise the money.”
Weeks before Mr. Spitzer resigned, the Senate Democrats won a hard-fought victory in a special election in the north country that cost them nearly $2 million. Strategists and party leaders singled out a handful of other Republican-held seats that they saw as vulnerable and were harnessing momentum, using the victory as a rallying cry.
A vast majority of those funds were raised by Mr. Spitzer with his downstate allies through the State Democratic Party, which he controlled as governor.
“Clearly, Spitzer was very aggressive about raising money, and so in terms of the fund-raising for the state party, those are big shoes to fill,” said Russ Haven, a lawyer with the New York Public Interest Research Group, which monitors government.
But Governor Paterson’s awkward start is not likely to affect his ability to raise money, Mr. Haven said. “The special interests that underwrite the lion’s share of campaigns really only care about who has the power and that they can continue to have access,” he said. Mr. Haven noted Mr. Bruno’s ability to raise a tremendous amount of money for the Senate Republicans while he has been under federal investigation.
“Even with his lowest approval ratings Spitzer was raising tons of money,” Mr. Haven said. “It just shows that when you are governor you have tremendous levers to push. And you’re still the dominant player in the budget.”
Doug Forand, the Senate Democrats’ top strategist, called the Spitzer sex scandal “a huge diversion,” but one that “has had no impact” in terms of derailing other campaigns.
“In some ways it definitely does help,” Mr. Forand said of Mr. Spitzer’s departure. The battles under Mr. Spitzer, he said, “had become so personal.” And the public began associating the administration with the unpopular proposal to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, and with the scandal in which Mr. Spitzer used state troopers to trail Mr. Bruno.
“I think Governor Paterson’s style is going to be very different,” Mr. Forand said. “He’s not going to be in your face. He’s not going to be out there more or less taunting the other side. While he has always maintained a collegial relationship with Bruno and members of the Republican Party, he stole four seats away from them.”
As the Senate minority leader before becoming lieutenant governor, Mr. Paterson laid out a blueprint for a plan for Democrats to take over the Senate by 2010, and the party gained four seats during his tenure.
In the past, Republicans could bankroll a couple of really important races to make it too costly for Democrats to compete, political strategists said. But as in the case of the upset victory in the north country where registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats by the thousands, Mr. Spitzer showed that with the right amount of money the state Democratic Party could make a formidable play for even the toughest seats, let alone those that were loosely held.
“I happen to be one of the people that are happier with David Paterson,” said Richard Dollinger, a former state senator who has been tapped to challenge Joseph E. Robach, a Republican incumbent in the 56th Senate District, which includes Rochester.
“He is a substantial asset to my campaign; both from the standpoint of fund-raising and helping to get my message out to the voters.”
