2006: The year in review

In 2006, a long-serving Republican governor wrapped up his third and final term and a promising young Democrat ascended to the state’s highest elected office.

Gov. George Pataki, battered by skirmishes with state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, a fellow Republican, and Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, had announced in 2005 that he would not run for re-election. While the moderate governor was rumored to be considering a presidential bid, he was bogged down by low approval ratings and critics continued to complain about his burgeoning budgets, rising debt and a lack of transparency during his final legislative session in 2006. To make matters worse, he was sidelined for several days in February by an appendectomy and a follow-up surgery to deal with complications of the initial operation.

State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the hard-charging “Sheriff of Wall Street” who had won enthusiastic support for his investigations into white-collar and corporate crime, had announced in late 2004 his bid for governor. Polls showed Spitzer with commanding leads, first against Pataki and later against Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, his Democratic primary rival, and John Faso, the former Republican Assembly minority leader, his general election foe.

Spitzer, with state Senate Minority Leader David Paterson as his running mate, went on to beat Suozzi with a whopping 81 percent of the Democratic vote. On the Republican side, businessman Tom Golisano and former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld had both dropped out of contention, leaving Faso as the GOP’s standard-bearer. Spitzer, who ran as a reformer pledging to clean up Albany, trounced Faso by 40 points.  

A similar shift from red to blue occurred in Congress in the November midterm elections as voters punished President George W. Bush by electing Democratic majorities in both houses. U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, who ran the Democrats' Senate campaign committee, propelled the party to a narrow majority in the upper house, with Hillary Clinton, the state’s junior senator, coasting to re-election.

State Comptroller Alan Hevesi also won re-election, despite a local investigation into his use of a state employee to chauffeur his wife. By December, however, he had submitted his resignation as part of a plea deal in an Albany County court.

Voters that autumn also elected Andrew Cuomo, the son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo, to replace Spitzer as New York attorney general. Cuomo, who dropped out of the race for governor four years earlier, beat out several fellow Democrats: former New York City Public Advocate Mark Green, former Manhattan Democratic Party Chairman Charlie King and Sean Patrick Maloney, a former aide in the Clinton administration. Cuomo then completed his comeback by easily defeating Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro in the general election, winning an office that would eventually serve as a springboard to the second floor in Albany, as it had for Spitzer.

In New York City, meanwhile, the popular Mayor Michael Bloomberg began his second term fresh off a landslide victory in 2005 against Fernando Ferrer, the former Bronx borough president. A moderate Republican, Bloomberg continued to build a record as a pragmatic centrist, creating the Commission on Economic Opportunity to fight poverty, launching a national Mayors Against Illegal Guns group and breaking with the Bush administration over immigration policy.

OUR COVERAGE: City Hall, the predecessor of City & State, launched in June 2006. The first edition included a cover story on New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and how he instituted a new governing model driven by his background in business.