Giuliani did not attend Tuesday's Republican convention, but Lazio, who had publicly toyed with entering the Senate race several times over the last year before Giuliani announced he had cancer last month, opened his acceptance speech by paying tribute to the New York mayor. "Our thoughts and prayers are with you," he said.

Accepting the nomination capped a busy Tuesday of campaigning for Lazio, which began with an early morning appearance before a throng of reporters in front of the Kastas Restaurant on Hertel Avenue in Buffalo. Again, Lazio flaunted his New York credentials.

"This is all going to be about New Yorkers electing a New Yorker, a New Yorker who's been with them for eight years, not someone who's just shown up when they want something," he told the assembled scribes and television cameras crowded around him on the sidewalk.

In response to a television reporter's question about whether he was "going negative," he replied: "I don't think I'm being negative at all. Do you think that raising residency and commitment to New York for eight years is going negative? Then I guess we're on a different wavelength ... (New Yorkers) shouldn't be looking for a candidate who's not been with them just over the last five or six months, but been with them for the last eight years, delivering."

From the diner he proceeded to the Statler Towers in downtown, for a $25-per-head "Women for Lazio" luncheon in the hotel's chandeliered grand ballroom (circa 1921). There, he worked the roomful of Republican activists, operatives and local businesspeople.

He hugged. He shook hands. He stared out at people in the crowd and gave the two-part wave/thumbs-up, sputtering out standard grip-and-grin salutations: "How are you?" "Good to see you!" "Oh, thank you!"

He was introduced by Lt. Gov. Mary O. Donohue, who couldn't resist taking her own jab at the first lady. "Hillary is scared," she declared. "She's so scared, she's forgotten her last name."

But Lazio warned his supporters about cheap shots expected from the other side. "We're going to have a lot of mud thrown at us," Lazio told the crowd. "You should be ready for that. That's the modus operandi on the other side, and they're going to find something out about this New Yorker and about our New York state: We don't back down from a fight!"

In what has become a staple of the modern political contest, the Clinton campaign wasted little time firing off the obligatory e-mail response to Lazio's address almost immediately after he finished his roughly 30-minute acceptance speech.

"Today Rick Lazio offered the people of New York recycled insults and rhetoric that doesn't match his record," wrote Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for Clinton's campaign. "Time and time again Rick Lazio has voted against New York's working families in Washington. Hillary Clinton has been running an inclusive campaign since day one and fighting for children and families for thirty years. New Yorkers will always be able to count on Hillary to stand up for them in the Senate."