1989, he dove into the contentious world of New York City politics. Rudolph Giuliani's initial candidacy for Mayor was met with a primary challenge by cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder, backed by Sen. D'Amato and guided by Finkelstein. The Giuliani-D'Amato feud had begun in 1988 over the selection of Rudy's successor as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York; it colored Republican politics in the Empire State for the next several years. In this first skirmish, Lauder's millions of dollars' worth of hard-hitting advertising failed to prevent Giuliani's winning the GOP nomination. (Giuliani later blamed Lauder's primary ads for his narrow loss to David Dinkins that November.) A year later, in the disastrous 1990 gubernatorial election, GOP nominee Pierre Rinfret nearly finished in third place (behind Conservative Party of New York State upstart Herbert London). D'Amato, and by extension Finkelstein, assumed dominance over the moribund state party apparatus. Long-time Rensselaer County activist William Powers, a staunch D'Amato ally, was named chairman, and began the rebuilding process. (D'Amato allies had started their own state PAC in 1989, the Committee for New York, in order to aid Republicans independent of the decaying party team.) At this time, the Reaganite Finkelstein was not a fan of the current Administration of George H. W. Bush. In a rare public appearance in February 1991, after the GOP's poor national showing in the November 1990 elections, he reminded a conservative audience that Reagan prospered through unabashed ideological appeals that drew crossover votes from sympathetic Democrats. But Bush and other GOP candidates "kicked that away" in 1990 by raising taxes, sidestepping abortion and other social issues, and soft-pedaling their anti-communism while rooting for Mikhail Gorbachev to succeed. "We are going to have to go back to the things that got us here," Finkelstein said. Meanwhile, D'Amato faced mounting ethical problems, and these occupied much of Finkelstein's time in 1990 and 1991. Though the New York senator was ultimately cleared by the Senate Ethics Committee in 1991, he was the subject of ceaseless negative news stories and editorials. When CBS's 60 Minutes ran a highly damaging story on D'Amato, Finkelstein produced a response program that refuted many of its charges and misstatements. All the while, D'Amato's aggressive casework program and advocacy for New York interests was emphasized in paid and earned media. Nevertheless, going into his 1992 re-election campaign, D'Amato was shown in surveys to be a