The Wall Street Journal will report that former Long Island GOP Congressman Rick Lazio will announce on Tuesday that he will seek the GOP nomination for Governor in New York.

Mr. Lazio, who served four terms in Congress, has been out of electoral politics for almost a decade working on Wall Street for Morgan Stanley.

The other GOP name being bantered about is that of former New York City Mayor, Rudy Giuliani.

Meanwhile embattled Governor David Paterson is defiantly vowing to run for election next year despite the White House's urging that he withdraw from the race in the interest of the party. Should be an interesting year in New York state electoral politics.

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One blog had an interesting look at where Obama's calls for Clinton to release her tax returns may have come from?

Hillary's 2000 senate race with none other than powerful GOPer Rick Lazio.

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Via http://malcontends.blogspot.com/2008/01/ no-rick-lazio-moment-for-hillary.html

Update: Well, shi*, the broadcast media's over-the-top jumping on Hillary for being a human being today is making a liar out of me (see post below). See Pundit Nation's "I think this is ridiculous" So much for my thesis, the media IS the foil, but will it be enough of one?

The problem Hillary Clinton faces in this campaign is that she has no clear political foil in the Democratic primary. No crazed, impeach-Clinton haters, no misogynists, no Rick Lazio.

In Sidney Blumenthal's "The Clinton Wars" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), Blumenthal chronicles the rightwing Clinton haters' defeat after defeat.

Among the most satisfying passages from the book is that of Hillary Clinton's famous knock-out punch of Long Island Congressman Rick Lazio, a Mitt Romney-esque, say-anything-to-win opponent for the 2000 New York U.S. Senate election.

See: Lazio Invades Hillary's Space Hit OK and let it load.)

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