the state Comptroller slot being vacated by McCall. Cornstein, a successful businessman and Giuliani's appointed chief of Off-Track Betting, brought personal resources and a strong finance team to the table. He was a longtime ally of both the Mayor and Governor, with a City/Long Island base and unusual appeal as a Jewish Republican running as a moderate-conservative. But party regulars instead fell in decisively behind former Upstate Assemblyman John Faso, a onetime legislative leader for the GOP minority, and Cornstein abandoned his run in 2001. (Faso further failed to expand his appeal beyond the limited Republican base, losing with 47% in November 2002; in his subsequent 2006 bid for Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer crushed him, Faso polling just 29%.) In 2017, Cornstein was named U.S. Ambassador to Hungary. Back in New York in April 2005, Finkelstein announced the organization of Stop Her Now, a 527 committee dedicated to defeating then-Senator Hillary Clinton in the 2006 New York U.S. Senate race. Clinton sailed to an easy re-election, and the PAC was not a factor in the contest. In the titanic struggle over new stadium construction on Manhattan's West Side, Finkelstein was hired to defeat the proposal by Cablevision, MSG and its allies; they ultimately prevailed, and the new Yankee Stadium was instead built in the Bronx, next to the old ballfield site, opening in 2009. It was the only time that the Finkelstein firm filed disclosure forms as a lobbyist (the filer was Ronald Finkelstein, not Arthur). Finkelstein advised former Congressman Rick Lazio during his campaign for the 2010 Republican nomination for New York Governor.: Lazio lost the GOP nomination contest to businessman Carl Paladino. North Carolina Finkelstein continued to partner with Carter Wrenn on Tar Heel State races after the demise of the National Congressional Club. In 2000, former Charlotte mayor (and UNC basketball star) Richard Vinroot sought the Governorship, to succeed the term-limited Democrat Jim Hunt. Vinroot won a contested fight for the GOP nomination, but the drop in Republican-voter enthusiasm in the closing days (noted above in Florida) hurt here as well, and Vinroot was defeated by Mike Easley, 44% to 52%. In one of Finkelstein's last major races before his death, he worked with Wrenn in 2016 to win a spirited primary fight between two sitting Congressmen – George Holding and Renee Ellmers. Wrenn had helped Ellmers pull one of the shocking House upsets of