After law school, Mr. Faso took county and state political jobs in Washington, but all the while he was thinking about a run for elective office in New York. In 1983, the Fasos bought a fixer-upper in Kinderhook, in Columbia County outside Albany, purposely choosing a district of a longtime assemblyman, Larry Lane, whom Mr. Faso wanted to replace. He did estate and real estate work at Rapport, Meyers, and soon enough, in 1986 the Assembly seat came open.

It was a crowded primary, and Mr. Faso was largely an unknown. In some ways, that campaign was a prologue to the current one. Mr. Faso tried to build a grass-roots operation, knocking on more doors than his rivals, and he savaged Governor Cuomo as a tax-and-spend liberal (much as he does now to Mr. Spitzer).

Mr. Faso won, and almost overnight became a student of the state budget. He would pick apart bills, and he became regarded as a legislator who mounted piercing arguments during Assembly floor debates that could actually change some minds, even though he was powerless to change the outcome of legislation as a member of the Republican minority.

“He has a very even temperament, and he always makes eye contact with you, with colleagues, with strangers, with our children,” Mrs. Faso said. “His style is: ‘I’m making my point, I’m not yelling, I’m not flailing with anger. But I have expectations that I expect you to meet.’ ”

Driving back from a family vacation at Monticello in 1993, his wife and two children asleep in the car, Mr. Faso mulled over the job of state comptroller, which was opening, and thought he had the fiduciary skills for it.

His political skills were weaker, though. While steadily winning re-election to the Assembly, he had a brief, disastrous turn as campaign manager for the Republican candidate for governor in 1990, Pierre A. Rinfret. Party leaders had asked Mr. Faso to take over the campaign, but Mr. Faso was unable to keep Mr. Rinfret from lashing out at party bosses during the fall election.

A fiscal conservative but not a fiery one, Mr. Faso also failed to make inroads early on with the Conservative Party, sometimes a power broker in state politics. By 1994, when Republicans and Conservatives were negotiating over the comptroller ballot, the Conservatives tapped one of their own, Herbert London, even though Mr. Faso was arguably more conservative than Mr. Pataki. That chilliness helped lead Republicans to push him out of the race in the hopes of defeating Mr. Cuomo. (The Democratic candidate for comptroller in 1994, H. Carl McCall, was ultimately elected.)