win the primary and become the Republican candidate for governor. Popular historian Samuel G. Freedman wrote that "Lehrman's goals, the party went far beyond solvency or an orderly transfer of power. What was needed was a populist uprising with a manifesto to match. Lehrman planned to create both the same way he had created the Rite-Aid network, by driving to cities and towns and paying attention to Main Street." The Republican gubernatorial candidate came into conflict with some top Republican members of the legislature over his tax reduction program. Asked about their differences in the final Inside Albany debate, Lehrman said, "I've put this issue to the voters. I'm not putting it to the legislators. Who rules New York State, 211 legislators or 18 million free people? That's the question. Who rules the government of the State of New York? Is it owned and operated by the politicians and the bureaucrats, or is it owned for the purpose of benefiting the 18 million people who live here? That's the issue." Running on the lines of the Republican and Conservative Parties, Lehrman was defeated by then-Lieutenant Governor Mario Cuomo, 51–48%, far less than expected. Cuomo ran on the lines of the Democratic and Liberal Parties, after defeating New York City Mayor Edward I. Koch in the Democratic Party primary election. Lehrman won the Republican nomination in a primary against attorney Paul J. Curran after several other Republican candidates dropped out of the race. Political scientists Peter W. Colby and John K. White noted a sharp upstate-downstate split in the race, with Cuomo carrying a 575,000-vote advantage in New York City. "Lehrman carried the rest of the state by 400,000 votes" and won "fifty-two of the fifty-seven upstate counties." The debates between the two gubernatorial candidates were sharp exchanges on issues involving the state's economic and crime problems. The public encounters of Mario M. Cuomo and Lewis E. Lehrman in the closing weeks of the 1982 gubernatorial campaign produced a substantive, often lively, at times intense, but consistently civil exchange of ideas," recalled E. J. Mahon, who covered the race as a journalist. The New York Times reported after the New York Post debate at the beginning of October, "Lieut. Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and Lewis E. Lehrman argued virtually uninterrupted for 50 minutes yesterday in their first debate of the New York gubernatorial campaign. What were to have been two-minute opening