How serious are the considerations in Pataki Land?

They aren’t saying, but Pataki has a ready-made “aw shucks” response when pressed about running for president. “I ran two and half miles yesterday,” he told Mika Brzezinski last week. Those on the outside looking in say that Pataki’s ambitions are very real. Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, Pataki’s occasional lunch buddy at the Yale Club, says, “He really wants to be a candidate, and he intends to run.”

Powers, the former party chair, is slightly less emphatic.

“He has not shied away from it when we’ve talked,” he says.