ANALYSIS
ALBANY – It doesn’t do much for Gov. Pataki’s image that New York was still up for grabs in the final days of the GOP primary campaign.
In many ways, the governor – who had delivered the state’s entire Republican organization to George W. Bush last year – had his national political future on the line, experts said.
The stakes were high – even a major Bush win wouldn’t have boosted Pataki’s well known interest in leaving the Empire State, political consultants and GOP insiders agreed.
“Pataki had a lot riding on the outcome, there’s no question about that,” said pollster John Zogby, whose Zogby International polls for The Post during the past two days showed Bush slightly ahead of John McCain.
“But it’s an open question as to what he could bring to a Bush ticket.”
Political analysts cited three major hurdles to Pataki being part of a Bush ticket, or even landing a major role in a Bush administration:
Pataki has no history of being able to deliver New York to other Republican candidates.
Pataki had no coattails at all, in fact, in 1998 when former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato and former Attorney General Dennis Vacco went down to defeat running on the GOP ticket with Pataki.
Pataki’s efforts to keep McCain off the state GOP ballot embarrassed Bush – and the Republican Party in general – and left the New York governor with a soiled image.
Pataki is pro-choice on abortion and favors gay rights, two liberal social positions that are anathema to the GOP’s right-wing, which Bush has been aggressively courting.
Still, some New York Republicans remain hopeful that Pataki will achieve higher office.
“The decision, of course, will be with Gov. Bush. But Gov. Pataki worked very hard in this primary and I think he will be taken very seriously, as he should be,” said state Republican Chairman William Powers.