McCain Surging In New York

With impressive wins in New Hampshire, Michigan and Arizona behind him, John McCain has surged to a statistical dead heat with George W. Bush among Republicans for New York's GOP-only primary, a poll released Wednesday showed.

"New York is definitely in play for the Republicans," pollster Lee Miringoff, head of Marist College's Institute for Public Opinion, said.

The poll showed Bush favored by 43 percent of New York's Republican voters to 41 percent for McCain, who earlier this month successfully beat back an attempt to keep him off the state's primary ballot. In December, the Texas governor led McCain, 59 percent to 15 percent.

While Bush retains the support of most of New York's top Republicans, including New York Gov. George Pataki and state GOP Chairman William Powers, there are those who say GOP leaders are getting nervous.

"I'm not the only one with food-poisoning symptoms in New York state this morning," said an under-the-weather Jay Severin, a New York-based GOP consultant. "There's a train coming to New York and the Republican establishment has only two choices, you can get on it or you get struck by it."

Even before Tuesday's Michigan and Arizona primaries, there had been signs of trouble for Bush in New York. On Saturday, U.S. Rep. Peter King of Long Island switched his allegiance from Bush to McCain. State Assemblymen Joel Miller of Poughkeepsie and Philip Boyle of Long Island have also joined the McCain camp in recent days.

Publicly, state GOP leaders professed little concern Wednesday.

"I'm not nervous," said state Assembly Minority Leader John Faso, a Bush backer and Pataki political ally.

In fact, McCain has very real problems in New York as he prepares for the state's Super Tuesday March 7 primary, where 93 delegates will be at stake. There are primaries or caucuses that same day in more than a dozen other states, including California. That can stretch resources thin.

Also, only previously registered Republicans can vote in New York's GOP presidential primary, unlike the open primaries of New Hampshire and Michigan where McCain was boosted by votes from Democrats and independents.

McCain has only eight paid employees in New York and most of those aren't political professionals.

"The other people here, while they may be involved in local politics, when the campaign is over, one of them goes back to work at his engineering firm, another guy goes back to work in a local government office, another guy goes back to work doing this, that and the other thing," said Gerry O'Brien, McCain's New York political director. "We don't have a tremendous number of people to draw on from the professional side of things."

That's because Bush has almost the entire New York Republican Party hierarchy, led by Pataki and Powers, working for him. The state party's get-out-the-vote machinery is at the ready and most local Rpublican leaders are in the Texas governor's corner.

"I'd say he's well supported by the people who are well supported by Republicans in this state," said Ellen DiFrancisco, the Bush campaign's executive director in New York.