Unlike the debate on the national level -- or in so many other states -- New York's Senate race is no mere contest between a decidedly pro-life Republican and a proudly pro-choice Democrat. Rather, in this heavily pro-choice state, the contest is between two pro-choice candidates. And like so many New York races in recent years, it is already featuring efforts by a Democrat to prove that the allegedly pro-choice Republican is, in reality, a threat to abortion rights.

In this race, Clinton has already leveled criticism at Lazio based on his abortion stance. Lazio claims he is "pro-choice," but his voting record on the issue is decidedly mixed. He is opposed to Medicaid funding for abortions, opposes the so-called "partial birth" procedure, and voted to prohibit women in the military from receiving abortions in military hospitals -- even if they offer to pay for it privately.

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They spoke too soon.

As Lazio spent Wednesday and Thursday touring upstate New York on his fittingly named "Mainstream Express," it became less clear whether things had really changed in a substantive way. As his bus snaked through upstate New York, one couldn't help but wonder whether he, like Rudy Giuliani, has the political positions to stand out from Clinton or anyone else.

Despite Lazio's laudable efforts to make himself more accessible to the media than the annoyingly press-shy and poll-tested Hillary Rodham Clinton, efforts to pin him down generally failed. Indeed, at times he sounded eerily like his Democratic rival.

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Eleven days after Rudy Giuliani dropped out of the most overheated local political race in the country, and 10 days after Rep. Rick Lazio, R-N.Y., announced he would take his place, the New York State Republican Party officially nominated Lazio as its candidate for U.S. Senate Tuesday afternoon.

The 42-year-old, four-term congressman took the stage at the Hyatt Regency Buffalo accompanied by the theme from "Rocky" and holding his wife's hand, waving and giving a thumbs-up to the crowd. (The "Rocky" theme may have had a double meaning: Lazio was sporting a severely swollen and stitched-up lip Tuesday, the result of a slip and fall during a Memorial Day march.)

Standing before a huge, Patton-like American flag, Lazio didn't quite match the level of vitriol that the day's other Republican elected officials directed at his opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton. But, using the carpetbagger issue which has been the early focus of his campaign, he quickly staked out his turf as the true New Yorker in the race and painted himself as the underdog.

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New York Mayor href="/politics2000/directory/senate_candidates/rudy_giuliani/">Rudy
Giuliani spoke before a crowd of upper East Siders in a nationally
televised town hall forum/interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Thursday
night. But the foremost question on virtually everyone's mind -- Is he in
or out of the U.S. Senate race against href="/politics2000/directory/senate_candidates/hillary_clinton/">Hillary
Rodham Clinton -- still isn't
answered.

Instead, Giuliani again said he was still weighing the various treatment
options and contemplating the personal tumult spurred by the revelation of
his ongoing extramarital relationship and decision to separate from his
wife. The state's Republican convention, at which the party must nominate
a Senate candidate, is a mere 11 days away.

"I kind of approached it as if this was a big case, or
a budget decision, or, you know, one of the millions of other decisions
that I have made," he said of the process of deciding what course of
treatment to pursue and whether to continue with his Senate candidacy.
"This is a different kind of decision. It involves thinking about your
life, mortality, the quality of your life, and the choices are more
difficult than I thought they would be."

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It was a peculiar day and evening, since much of the buzz on the floor of the Pepsi Arena in Albany remained centered on whether Rudy Giuliani would stay in the race. However, despite roughly five hours of Democratic speeches and several attacks on Republicans -- Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, Dan Quayle, Alfonse D'Amato -- Giuliani's name was not mentioned a single time by the state's leading Democrats.

The evening's biggest surprise came when Hillary Clinton, wearing a bright yellow outfit and a pearl necklace, finally took the stage after 9 p.m. -- accompanied by her husband.

Indeed, midway through her speech, the first lady seemed to delight in the presence of the president, perhaps providing a subtle reminder of the personal difficulties currently plaguing the mayor. After crediting New York's Democrats with giving rise to the labor, civil rights and gay rights movements, she eagerly pointed to the improved economy and declining crime rates of the past eight years.

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As if that question hadn't been asked enough during the two weeks since New
York Mayor/U.S. Senate contender Rudy Giuliani announced he had prostate
cancer, the viability of his candidacy now seems more tenuous then ever.

With Giuliani's pronouncement on Wednesday that he is seeking a separation
from his wife, Donna Hanover -- and Hanover's subsequent announcement that
their marriage had failed in part because of his relationship with his
former press secretary -- rumors of Giuliani's political death have reached a fever
pitch.

Despite his seemingly imminent demise, however, two Republican elected
officials said they received calls from Giuliani's campaign Thursday insisting that the mayor will remain in the race. One of the officials is Rep. John Sweeney, former executive director of the state's Republican Party and a close confidant of state Republican Party Chairman William Powers.

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"I don't think I'm saying anything that you haven't, um, that you haven't all written," Giuliani told a group of captivated reporters. "Over the course of some period of time, in many ways, we've grown to live independent and separate lives," he said of his marriage to Hanover. "And we should probably strive toward formalizing it."

While few can recall the last time a candidate for a major office disclosed a serious illness in the middle of a campaign, fewer still could also recall a candidate announcing the end of his marriage in the middle of a campaign. The impact of this pronouncement on his bid for the U.S. Senate is unclear.

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What appeared to be a political bomb has been treated as little more than a hiccup in many circles. And neither Giuliani nor Hillary Clinton has applied the brakes to America's most-watched congressional race.

Consider this: During the 48 hours after his announcement, Giuliani traveled to a Republican club in upstate Saratoga Springs; he then trekked to an Independence Party forum in Buffalo, where he struck an uncharacteristically pacific stance toward the extremist members of a party whose endorsement he desires.

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The latest round began Tuesday, when New York Daily News gossip columnist Mitchell Fink ran an item titled "Rudy & Friend Dine & Dine." Giuliani, Fink wrote, "hasn't let the diagnosis of prostate cancer slow him down." The mayor was spotted twice over the weekend dining out with an unnamed "friend," wrote Fink, who did not explicitly reveal the gender of Giuliani's dining companion until the end of the item: "One restaurant staffer opined that the mayor was with his wife," Fink wrote, "but shown a picture of Donna Hanover, he said it wasn't her."

Playing a frantic game of catch-up, the next day's New York Post published a pair of undated surveillance-style photographs of Giuliani's female dining companion coming out of yet another restaurant. One of the photographs -- which were accompanied by the headline "Rudy's mystery brunch pal is Upper East Side divorcie" -- featured Giuliani a few feet away from the woman, whom the Post identified as Judith Nathan.

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Giuliani's run has been thrown into doubt since his announcement Thursday that he has prostate cancer, but the machinations are falling into place should he move forward. And Trump is emerging as a key player in Giuliani's pursuit of a potentially significant third-party endorsement.

Let's explain: For years, the cross-endorsements of New York's major third parties have been considered key for successful statewide races. Republicans traditionally run with the backing of the Conservative Party. Democrats usually receive the endorsement of the Liberal Party. In recent years, the Independence Party -- New York's wing of the national Reform Party -- has taken on increasing importance. It is now the largest third party in the state.

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Republican political consultant Nelson Warfield, who was the spokesman for Ronald Lauder in a bitter contest with Giuliani for the 1989 Republican mayoral nomination, wasted no time declaring the mayor politically wounded.

"There'll be fewer checks written until he makes his intentions clear," he told the Associated Press. "He's very ambivalent about this contest,'' Warfield added. "Even before this, it was clear -- given his reluctance to go upstate and his diffident campaigning -- that there was a less than total commitment to the contest."

The Giuliani campaign disputes that, and points to a surge in donations to its Web site Thursday as proof that the mayor won't be hurt by his diagnosis. The campaign normally raises approximately $2,000 per day via the site. But on Thursday it raised approximately $10,000, according to campaign spokeswoman Kim Serafin.

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Monday night, roughly 1,000 assorted businesspeople and political operatives packed into the Sheraton New York to hear Tipper Gore, Hillary Rodham Clinton, President Clinton and Gore speechify before a $1,000-a-head fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee -- an event expected to net $2.2 million for the party.

Sitting below enormous chandeliers in a second-floor ballroom, the guests munched on grilled vegetables and filet mignon and were entertained by singer Tony Bennett and comedian Jon Stewart. ("After we eat we're going to have a separate performance: Donna Hanover [Rudy Giuliani's wife] will be performing 'The Vagina Monologues,'" cracked Stewart. "Enjoy it while you can before the mayor cuts off the funding.")

DNC general chairmain Ed Rendell kicked off the evening's speeches, paying tribute to the various Democratic fat cats in attendance, such as venture capitalist Alan Patricof, hotelier Jonathan Tisch and investment banker Steven Rattner. He boasted that the DNC "ended up the first quarter of this year with more money than the Republican National Committee" -- to loud applause.

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The two candidates' most-recent filings, made available this week, revealed the latest round of fat cats who want to influence the outcome of the election and presumably, the government.

After the reports were released, the campaigns quickly traded charges and countercharges attacking the ethical hygiene of the opposition's contributors. The Clinton campaign said it would return $22,000 from a Miami businesswoman who once helped solicit a contribution to the Democratic National Committee from an admitted cocaine trafficker now in prison. The Giuliani campaign, meanwhile, came under attack for accepting $100,000 from the Renco Group, a company whose holdings include Magnesium Corp. of America, which was cited in a 1998 federal Environmental Protection Agency report as the nation's top dumper of toxic chemicals.

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A source active in Brooklyn politics says Clinton called Democratic state Assemblyman Dov Hikind on Tuesday in an apparent effort to discuss possible support. For years, Hikind, who represents Brooklyn, has been a latter-day power broker of sorts for numerous New York politicians from both parties -- including Republican Gov. George Pataki and Democratic Comptroller H. Carl McCall -- who seek to court Brooklyn's highly organized Orthodox Jewish voting bloc.

Hikind was once a close ally of Giuliani's. But he turned on the mayor after being indicted in 1997 on federal charges of misappropriating public money. Hikind blamed the indictment on Giuliani's former liaison to the Jewish community, Bruce Teitelbaum, whom Hikind accused of having a vendetta against him. Teitelbaum now runs the mayor's Senate campaign.

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You're a Republican, so you vote for Gov. George W. Bush, and then, below his name, you flip the switch for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rudy Giuliani. But your eyes start to wander to other parts of the ballot and matters start to get a little confusing. A couple of rows to the right lies the name of some Independence Party presidential candidate you've never heard of. And below his name? Independence Party U.S. Senate candidate Rudy Giuliani! And a few more columns over to the right is the name of the Liberal Party's presidential candidate, Al Gore, and below his name it's ... Liberal Party U.S. Senate candidate Rudy Giuliani?!?

What, you may ask, is going on here?

This scenario is not as unlikely as it sounds, thanks to a complex, and peculiarly New York, series of steps that could determine the outcome of the closely watched New York Senate race.

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Sen. John McCain, the self-styled anti-inside-the-Beltway maverick, and New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the not-quite-declared contender for U.S. Senate, got back on the bus Tuesday, as McCain made his first appearance stumping for another candidate since he dropped out of the presidential race last month.

The duo spent the morning on Long Island, where Giuliani is counting on major support to defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton, and where McCain actually beat Gov. George W. Bush by 10 points in the March 7 primary. They started out at the Landmark Diner in Roslyn, Long Island, a sprawling establishment with a mirrored ceiling and place mats with cocktail recipes on them. McCain and Giuliani entered, and were promptly mobbed by the assorted photographers, cameras and scribes.

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Clinton would be traveling to a Harlem church that night, Matalin explained, and her true purpose was "to suck up to Al Sharpton," who, she said, had been called "a professional monger of racial hatred, a career inciter of race violence."

"Isn't there a way to show your support of the minority community," Matalin asked, "without kissing the ring and other parts of Al Sharpton's anatomy?"

Problem was, Sharpton had nothing to do with the Harlem church event where Clinton was speaking. In fact, he wasn't even there.

Welcome to the GOP racial political strategy circa 2000, where the Rev. Al Sharpton -- a longtime controversial fixture on New York's political scene -- has become a national black boogeyman: a la Jesse Jackson in 1984, or Willie Horton in 1988, or Louis Farrakhan, or ... you get the idea.

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Protesters stood outside the event -- held at Cello, a three-star, French seafood restaurant inside a townhouse -- toting signs calling Mayor Giuliani the "soft money king" and "soft money hypocrite." But shortly before the mayor arrived, a troop of 10 uniformed police officers arrived to escort the nine protesters across the street, surrounding them with police barricades.

Reporters were not permitted inside the restaurant, but attendees spotted entering or leaving included Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, uber-publicist Howard Rubenstein, lobbyist Ethan Geto, landlord and former deputy mayor John Zuccotti, real estate developer Jerome Belson, auto dealer Howard Koeppel, hotel owner Sam Domb, former New York Senate Majority Leader Ralph Marino, New York Republican Party Chairman William Powers and former Deputy Mayor Peter Powers.

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That all ended at roughly 6:40 p.m. Monday night. It took her a few days, but she finally attacked New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani for responding to the city's most recent police killing of an unarmed man by releasing the victim's arrest history, including a juvenile arrest. That's when she took on the mayor loved by many for his successful war on crime for displaying virtually no compassion for the war's casualties.

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This St. Patrick's Day parade began innocuously enough. Clinton attended Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, sitting a few rows behind her prospective opponent for U.S. Senate, Mayor Rudy Giuliani. She appeared at the holiday's annual breakfast organized by long-time City Council Speaker Peter Vallone.

"It is just a great pleasure to be here as a New Yorker for St. Patrick's Day," she told the crowd at the Princeton Club (where she also relayed a hello from her husband, busy huddling with negotiators involved in the Northern Ireland peace process).

"I hope she knows her way," Giuliani jabbed a little later on.

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