Tom Golisano

Here’s a shot of a few people waiting outside Hillary Clinton’s fund-raiser at Capitale last night. Hillary was voting on an immigration bill in D.C. and didn’t attend, but a few other big names did:

Rapper Darryl McDaniels, also known as DMC. Dressed in a Harley Davidson t-shirt and black jeans, he told me, “I came to experience something I can talk to my grandkids about.”

Paychex billionaire Tom Golisano, the erstwhile Independence Party gubernatorial candidate who recently became a Republican, was also there.

And, unmissably, Harvey Weinstein.

A Democratic tsunami may be headed for Albany, but so is a bunch of money to make sure at least one house stays Republican.

In the last days of the campaign season, contributions over $1,000 have to be filed with the state Board of Election within a 24 hours period. Yesterday alone, the New York Republican State Senate Campaign Committee filed around $349,950 in large contributions. (Compare that to the $67,000 Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee raised over the same 24-hour period.)

The biggest help for Senate Republicans came from I. A. Morris ($20,000); Tom Golisano($50,000), and the New York Association of Homes and Services for the Aging - NYAHSA - ($32,000) .

The 24-hour filing contributions database is over here.

Feel free to point out anything interesting. (Like the $25,000 contribution Newmark executive Jeffrey Gural gave yesterday to Andrew Cuomo).

-- Azi Paybarah

Tom Golisano returns.

So do some Swift Boat tactics.

But the Republican convention doesn't.  read more »

And picturedto the right is Jeanine Pirro, whose press conference about her husband's infidelity, her venting to Bernie Kerik, and the fed's probe into the whole thing...is here.

-- Azi Paybarah

The big news from the Clinton Global Initiative conference today was that Richard Branson, the eccentric founder of Virgin group, joined the billionaire philanthropist club with a pledge to donate $3 billion over the next 10 years to anti-global warming initiatives. The money accounts for all of the profits from his transportation and airline businesses, he said.

But the political story of the day was Al Gore's performance during a Global Warming panel. (The sartorial story was his weird, dominatrix-y black leather boots.)

On a stage at the Sheraton in midtown, in front of Mr. Clinton, Tom Golisano, Colin Powell and hundreds of representatives from the business, donor and non-profit community, Mr. Gore delivered an impassioned speech that brought the audience to its feet and had people chattering about what a great President he would have made -- and maybe could still make.

"This crisis is the by far the most dangerous we have ever faced in the entire history of human civilization but it also provides the greatest opportunity," he said with increasing volume. "We are coming together as a Global civilization in our lifetime we have to get our act together and this climate crisis, may, I believe, does, gives us the opportunity to rise, to gain the moral authority and gain the vision not to become the self-destructive, selfish generation, but to become the next greatest generation."

Clinton then made sure that Gore stood next to Branson when the billionaire announced his donation to the whole crowd. Gore, conspicuously elated as he signed his name with Clinton onto the pledge, said that it was "like the old days."

--Jason Horowitz

Capitol Confidential has it that Tom Golisano is working hard on the local level.

DMI blog discusses the so-called exodus of Black New Yorkers reported in the Times on Monday. They say, "the article never mentioned the fact that the Census Bureau does not count as city residents African Americans from New York City incarcerated upstate --- rather, it considers them residents of the upstate counties in which they are imprisoned. "

And Yoda revisits 'Cuomo not the Homo' on Room Eight.

—Nicole Brydson

A tidbit from the meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative at the Time Warner Center today: Laura Bush will participate in September's second Davos-on-Hudson.

Murdoch will be there too, of course. And the main underwriter, again, is Tom Golisano, incongruously seated front and center between his wife and Democratic partisan warrior John Podesta.

The anti-Spitzer PAC effort seems to be gathering momentum, with this report that Ken Langone and Tom Golisano met in Florida.

A Golisano advisor notes that Eliot’s decision to play hardball in a face-to-face meeting with the Rochester billionaire is not looking like such a good idea.

"I assumed at the time that he acted the way he did because he assumed Golisano wanted to run and the thought there was no downside," he said. "Golisano went to the meeting wantting to like Eliot, and prepared to support him."

The New York Press's Azi got Tom on the phone a little while after the news that he had pulled out broke (unbeknownst to Azi). Here's the exchange:

Tom Golisano: "Surprised to hear back from me? What can I do for ya?"

Azi: "I was kind of wondering what your announcement was going to be."

TG: "In your phone message to me, you said you wanted to talk about Paychex."

Me: "I was doing a broader story about—"

TG: "I'm not doing any political interviews."

[Azi, flailing, asks how Paychex has been doing in the last few years.]

TG: "Are you a financial reporter?"

Azi: "No I'm not. I'm a political reporter."

TG: "Well then, forget about it. Okay?"

The AP reports:

"Billionaire B. Thomas Golisano will not seekthe Republican nomination to run for governor of New York, an adviser to the businessman told The Associated Press on Tuesday."

The unnamed adviser cites "personal reasons."

Mid-January is rolling in, and soon the world will know whether Rochester billionaire (and gubernatorial tease?) Tom Golisano will take on Eliot Spitzer. In recent reports, Golisano got a spousal nod and planned to toss money into the wind. But on the whole, the rumblings from Rochester have been pretty faint lately. Perhaps this explains it. According to one associate, he's down -- but definitely not out -- with the flu: "I'm told that he ordered up a bunch of briefing books on issues from various think tanks, and he's propped up in bed with the sniffles, reading through them."  read more »

Fast away the old year passed, and none too soon for political junkies who found last year’s Mayor  read more »

Fast away the old year passed, and none too soon for political junkies who found last year’s M  read more »

These early polls are kind of maddening in the temptation -- to be resisted -- to read much meaning into them. This latest one seems to reveal that some people have heard of Tom Golisano, but that nobody's heard of Tom Suozzi. Also, that something like two-thirds of New Yorkers are willing to say they'll vote for Hillary, and that Pirro's hardly a sure thing for AG.  read more »

The lonely GOPers over at Urban Elephants have been keeping half an eye on today's GOP parley, which looks likely to produce...nothing. (Though it's probably worth reporting that those Republican "insiders" who keep getting quoted saying Jeanine's about to drop out...still say that. Their credibility, however, is kind of in question at this point.)

Meanwhile, over at Alarming News, there's some unhappiness that the elephant not in the room, Tom Golisano, is palling around with Bill Clinton. Nobody seems yet to have picked up on the fact that Golisano was actually the prime sponsor of Clinton's "Global Initiative" this fall.  read more »

Up in Albany this morning, The Politicker is told, Bill Weld met the press, and faced the complicated situation that any Republican promising change is messing with Pataki's legacy.

Can this marriage be saved?  read more »

Can this marriage be saved?As all 62 Republican county chairmen get set to meet on Dec.  read more »

OK, The Politicker is still recovering from the election, and managed to write up last month's Siena poll, rather than this month's, in an earlier version of this post. (Thanks, Scott, for pointing this out.)

One observation from that earlier version is true: Most New Yorkers couldn't tell Jeanine Pirro, John Faso, Tom Golisano (for all he's spent!) and Bill Weld (especially Weld) apart if you put them in a police line-up.  read more »

As for the rest of the analysis, we'll leave it to people smart enough to operate their computers correctly.

So Tom Golisano has officially gone Republican, as per a statement posted today on his website.

The Rochester billionaire name-drops John McCain, Joe Bruno, and Tom Reynolds as pols who lobbied him to cross over, and insists that a new ballot line won't mean new principles. In short, he says he's still committed to lowering taxes and spending, squeezing out the influence of special interests, rooting out Medicaid fraud, and strengthening public schools.

By way of self-definition, he also adds: "I don't believe you have to be born into the Republican Party to be a good Republican, after all, Ronald Reagan, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg all switched Parties to become Republicans."

And: "I am most comfortable in the McCain/Reform wing of the Republican Party."

Our former intern, Azi Paybarah, just spoke with Golisano adviser Roger Stone, who said that the newly-minted Republican doesn't plan on attending the October 12 G.O.P screening in Plattsburgh.

"When you have the kind of resources he has, you can afford to wait a little bit," he told Azi. "So, no he does not intend to go to any of these dog and pony shows."  read more »

Hat tip to Ira Stoll at the Sun, who rightfully kicks us under the table for not posting Golisano's move earlier.

Another day, another poll about the 2006 races, this one from Quinnipiac University.

It must be getting hard to write the headlines on these things. Democrats hold big leads over GOP candidates nobody's ever heard of in races to which nobody is paying attention.  read more »

Scraps of news include Tom Golisano looking marginally stronger against Eliot than any of the other candidates, a reminder that outside media circles New Yorkers have no idea who Bill Weld is. Also, 13% of voters say they hold Al Pirro against his wife, and 59% of voters say Hillary should pledge to serve the full six-year term, a number that's been holding pretty steady.

The Clinton Global Initiative, Bill's big conference, was held in midtown last week with an unlikely prime sponsor: Tom Golisano.

The Rochester mogul, and likely contestant for the Republican nomination for Governor, writes in the event's program: "Although my philanthropic efforts to date have been concentrated primarily in my community in Upstate New York, I have long desired to enter the global arena of giving but was waiting for the right opportunity."  read more »

He continues: "I believe wholeheartedly in President Clinton's vision of bringing together this group..."

Actually, Golisano is one of a number of Republicans seeking statewide office who have reasons to be, at least, cordial to the Senator: there's her old Watergate friend Bill Weld, for one; and Ed Cox, a famously loyal Nixon son-in-law who has talked about how valuable Bill Clinton was to his father-in-law's political rehabilitation.

The stirrings around the Republican nomination to face, probably, Eliot Spitzer, are growing, and it looks like a three-way contest: Tom Golisano, Bill Weld, and some wild-card tycoon -- in the wildest fantasies of GOP insiders, make it Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons.

First, here's some unexpected news from the AP:

Tom Golisano says he just spoke to John McCain: "He was very personable and said the Republican Party could use people like me, and that he'd love to have me as a candidate [for governor]."

An odd, deliberately-placed story that makes it sound like Golisano is feeling a little heat from Weld's increasingly serious mutterings.  read more »

And the Parsons notion is not as farfetched as it sounds. Running Time Warner isn't as fun as it once was. And Parsons came up in New York State politics, as an aide to the original Rockefeller Republican, Nelson Rockefeller.

In declining order of importance:

-The web is abuzz with rumors that Rehnquist will retire momentarily.

-Harry Reid is unenthusiastic about Clinton '08:

"It is a wide-open field," Reid said. "The person who is leading at this stage is Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton, of course, has lots of money. She comes from a state with lots of people in it, but she still has a few ties to Arkansas. I think she is the person to beat, but that doesn't necessarily mean she is the best candidate." (via Slant Point)  read more »

-Tom Golisano"thinks every day of the week" about running for governor, maybe as a Republican; but he's not sure if the Republicans would have him.

-And Andrew Cuomo's fund-raiser at the Regency last night was packed, according to one person who was there. The candidate for state Attorney General picked up more preposterously early endorsements, these from Jose Rivera of the Bronx and Margarita Lopez of Manhattan.

With Democrats gleefully making noise about taking on Michael Bloomberg in the 2005 Mayoral election  read more »

To the outside observer, it looked as if Roger Stone was merely running Independence Party candidate  read more »

After a colorless, by-the-book campaign that offered little hint of the fiscal perils awaiting the s  read more »

On the first day of the last full week of the 2002 gubernatorial campaign, former Mayor Rudolph Giul  read more »

A happy paradox of politics is that cynical motives can advance idealistic purposes.  read more »

With time running out in the race for Governor, Carl McCall and Tom Golisano are unveiling the endga  read more »

Just days after making news by calling for the repeal of the Rockefeller drug laws, billionaire Inde  read more »

While most New Yorkers were preparing to observe the first anniversary of the Sept.  read more »

After a disappointing gubernatorial campaign that left his defeat in the Democratic primary election  read more »

There are many things that downtown Manhattan needs in the ongoing aftermath of 9/11.  read more »

In a sign of heightening tension in the race for Governor, top supporters of George Pataki are accus  read more »

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the leaders of the State Legislature in Albany are engaged in a struggle  read more »

If this year's Governor's race has failed to capture the public's imagination thus far, it's probabl  read more »