Over at our sibling blog, Albany Watch, colleague Cara Matthews has the news of a Westchester woman’s confirmation by the state Senate to a trustee’s position with the State University of New York trustee.

“Linda Sanford of Chappaqua is the third of three nominations Gov. Eliot Spitzer made to the 16-member board last June… She is senior vice president for on demand transformation and information technology at IBM. Before that, she was senior vice president and group executive in charge of IBM Storage Systems Group and held other jobs with IBM. She is co-chair of the state Business Council and serves on various boards, including St. John’s University, which she attended as an undergraduate, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she earned a master’s degree.”

Gov. Eliot Spitzer will be in Westchester County this afternoon for a stop on his “Bringing the Budget Home tour,” essentially a PR push for his newly-proposed spending package.

The governor’s schedule calls for him to host a 1 p.m. “neighborhood gathering” to “discuss chronically high property taxes” at a home on Bryant Avenue.

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is also set to exit the race today, multiple media outlets are reporting. Edwards had previously announced a speech set for this afternoon  in New Orleans.  Advisers are saying that unlike Giuliani, he will not endorse a rival at this point.

  The odds of Nicholas Spano trying to regain his state Senate seat this year – and of the Republicans holding onto their narrow majority in that house – got a little longer Tuesday with Rudy Giuliani’s defeat in the Florida presidential primary.

   Spano, the Yonkes Republican who lost to Democrat Andrew Stewart-Cousins last year after barely beating her two years earlier, was counting on Giuliani being at the top of the Republican ticket this year to lure Republicans out to vote.

  The likelihood now is Democrat Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic presidential candidate, encouraging throngs of Democrats to vote. Barack Obama would also be a big draw for the Dems. John McCain, while popular among New York Republicans, would hardly be the draw that Giuliani would have been.

  The Republicans have controlled the state Senate for every year but one since 1938. But their edge now is only 32-29, with a vacancy to be filled in a competitive race in a district near the Canadian border next month.  

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani gave a last hurrah speech tonight following his third place showing in today’s Florida primary without officially announcing his withdrawal from the presidential race.

Giuliani is expected to officially announce his withdrawal tomorrow at a press conference in California announcing his endorsement Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Giuliani relied on a high risk campaign strategy that a victory in Florida’s winner-take-all primary would propel his candidacy with momentum going into the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday primaries.

Instead, his poor showing in the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina bounced him out of the top place in the polls and generated doubts about his candidacy.

“I believe our party will be stronger as a result of the competition we are going through,’’ Giuliani told supporters during his concession speech in Orlando.

“I am proud we chose to stay positive and run a campaign of ideas,’’ he said. “You don’t always win.’’

What a difference from the last primary. It was wheels up on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s jet Saturday evening moments after the polls closed in South Carolina, where Sen. Barack Obama soundly trounced her.

Although the Democratic National Committee has stripped Florida of its delegates, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton flew into the state tonight for a rally to celebrate her big victory over Obama in the state’s presidential primary.

Clinton was ahead of Obama by 19 percentage points, 52 percent to 33 percent, with 68 percent of the votes counted. Former Sen. John Edwards received 15 percent.

The New York senator thanked supporters at a rally in Davie, Fla.

Clinton said she would work to seat Florida’s delegates at the national party convention, which will be held in late August. It would be in her own interest do so, since Florida’s delegation might provide her with the margin of victory at a closely fought convention.

“The pundits who say Florida does not count cannot ignore 2.5 million Democrats,’’ said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. moments before Clinton spoke.

So far they have been ignored.

It didn’t take long for Barack Obama’s campaign to make use of its newfound support among the Kennedys. The campaign’s new television ad features Caroline Kennedy comparing the excitement of Obama’s candidacy to that of her father’s.

“Once we had a President who made people feel hopeful about America and brought us together to do great things,” Kennedy says in the ad, which is running in New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles and on national cable.

“Today Barack Obama gives us that same chance.”

See the ad here.

Polls indicate Sen. Hillary Clinton is favored to win the Florida presidential primary today among Democrats while former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani will likely come up short of the winner-take-all Republican victory he desperately needs.

Reporters Martha T. Moore of USA Today and Dan Nowicki of The Arizona Republic interviewed voters in St. Petersburg:

City planner John Hisenbaugh, 44, said he voted for Clinton because of her plan for universal health care. “I think it’s time to give the country over to a woman,’’ he added. “I think we need a different perspective. Men have messed it up. We couldn’t be in any more trouble right now. Whoever it is just has to respect the Constitution. This sort of dictatorship that we’re in, stomping all over the Constitution—I think we’re done with that.”

George Chandler, 78, a retired telephone worker, explained his vote succinctly. “I just like the Clintons,” he said.

Michael Pinson, the CEO of a wholesale book distribution company, said he wrote out a $1,000 check for Giuliani’s campaign 10 days ago, but changed his mind after the former New York mayor fell in the polls. Read more of this entry »

Hillary Clinton’s supporters just held a mini-pep rally of sorts at her Westchester campaign headquarters, hoping to reinforce the message that support for the senator runs deep in her home county.

“Nothing in life is 100 percent but we are confident she is going to win Westchester,” said Westchester Democratic Chairman Reginald LaFayette, who was on hand for the event.

Clinton’s local HQ is being housed in the offices of the Westchester Democratic Committee on East Post Road in White Plains. About 20 volunteers were in the office during the event, making telephone calls and sorting out piles of Clinton palm cards.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama’s campaign is planning to launch television ads in the New York market starting tomorrow. Read more about that here.

UPDATE: Clinton’s campaign just announced the launch of a Spanish language TV ad that will run in the delegate-rich Super Tuesday states of New York, California, Arizona and Connecticut.

See the ad here.

Long before Sen. Ted Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois had the senior senator from his home state as a political ally in his bid to be the Democrats’ presidential candidate.

At a breakfast with reporters today, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin observed that the party’s nominee might not be decided before the national convention in Denver.

When did that last happen? It was 1952 the last time the Democrats took more than one vote at there national convention to determine their presidential nominee. Back then it took three.

Which brings up the importance of today’s primary in Florida.

Democrats have stripped Florida of its delegates to the national convention because the state moved up the date of its primary in violation of party rules – the same penalty imposed on Michigan, which held its primary earlier in the month.

“Nothing has changed, there are still no delegates at stake in Florida,” Democratic National Committee spokesman Damien LaVera reaffirmed today.

Last week Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign suggested that Obama and former Sen. John Edwards might agree to seat the delegates from those states after all. Read more of this entry »