Weld weighs run for N.Y. governor

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in yesterday's City & Region section about former Governor William F. Weld's interest in running for governor of New York misstated the margin of Weld's loss to US Senator John F. Kerry in 1996. Kerry beat Weld by 7.3 percentage points.)

William F. Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, is telling political leaders in New York state that he is seriously considering a run for governor there and will announce his decision next month.

Weld, who moved to Manhattan several years after he resigned as governor in 1997, has told leaders in both the state Republican Party and the Conservative Party that he is seriously considering seeking the GOP nomination in 2006 to succeed retiring Governor George Pataki.

''He told me he was thinking about it," said Michael Long, the Conservative Party chairman, relating a call he said he received last week from Weld. Long said that the two agreed to meet in person next week to talk further.

Separately, an official at the GOP headquarters in Albany confirmed that the state Republican chairman, Steve Minarik, and Weld had talked recently. ''Weld has reached out to our chairman, but those conversations are private," said Jaime King, an aide to the New York Republican State Committee.

Minarik did not return a call seeking his comment yesterday. Weld did not respond to a call made to his office in Manhattan.

Weld, who used some of his inherited wealth to win the 1990 governor's race in Massachusetts, is now a partner in the New York private equity firm Leeds Weld & Co. According to a former aide who worked with him in Massachusetts, Weld is expected to use some money he is making there to help finance the next stage of his political career. The aide said yesterday that Weld plans to sell the company's interest in for-profit educational institutions, a venture to which he has devoted much of his energy and time recently.

Yesterday, some Republican activists said they were not convinced New Yorkers knew Weld well enough for him to mount a strong challenge to Eliot Spitzer, the leading Democrat in the race.

''He strikes me as someone who would be a very good candidate. I do not know if he would get the nomination. I don't know the man on a personal basis," said Bob Bishop, former vice president for the state Republican committee. ''I think the single largest downside he's got right now is that the average Republican in New York doesn't know a lot about him. They do not identify him with New York. They know him as a governor in Massachusetts."

Stuart Mirsky, vice president of Rockaway Republicans in Queens and state coordinator for the Republican Liberty Caucus, raised the same concern. ''Right now, Weld doesn't have a strong following in New York City. He is well known on the national stage, certainly, when he ran against [Senator] John Kerry [in 1996] and got beat there," Mirsky said. ''I think he might have a hard time putting roots in New York."

Weld's interest in reentering the public arena has been evident in recent years. He has privately talked about duplicating the record set in the 19th century by Sam Houston, who served as governor of two states, Tennessee and Texas. Weld's name surfaced last spring as Pataki contemplated his future, but interest dropped off when it appeared Pataki would stay in office.

As governor in Massachusetts, Weld crafted an image as a fiscal conservative who is liberal on social issues. He boasts of having led the state out of its fiscal crisis in the early 1990s and lays claim to having cajoled the Democratic Legislature, after revenues bounced back, into a series of tax cuts, including reductions in corporate taxes and the elimination of the state's long-term capital gains tax.

Weld also supports abortion rights and gay rights, including same-sex marriage. He took his social liberalism to the national stage with a strong abortion-rights speech before the delegates to the 1992 national Republican convention, where he was roundly booed.

But his social liberalism could be a problem for him in New York, according to Long, who said the Conservative Party plays a key role in the election of Republicans.

''I made it very clear that the deal-breakers with me are gay marriage and partial-birth abortions," Long said. Still, he said Weld emphasized to him that he was a strong supporter of gun owners' rights and has a record of cutting taxes.

Weld, a 60-year-old New York native who attended boarding school, Harvard College, and Harvard Law School in Massachusetts, lived most of his adult life in Cambridge. He and his first wife, Susan, divorced and he recently remarried.

Weld's first attempt at politics was a disaster; he was trounced by Massachusetts' Democratic attorney general, Francis X. Bellotti, in 1978. But after raising his public profile during his stint as US attorney in Boston, Weld was elected governor in 1990. He was reelected by a record margin in 1994.

His decision to challenge Kerry developed into a huge political battle and the most watched Senate race in that year. Kerry at first appeared to be on the political ropes but pulled out victory, winning by four percentage points.

Weld's friends and associates say he was deeply upset by the defeat. He resigned as governor in July 1997 after President Bill Clinton announced he would appoint him US ambassador to Mexico. The appointment was blocked by conservatives, led by Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Frank Phillips can be reached at phillips@globe.com