You'd be wrong.

He may be a long shot, but John "Jack" Cheevers, a small-town politician from Endicott, is running a vigorous campaign to become New York's next governor. He wants the Democratic line - and he's started his run in a most unusual way: with a lawsuit against the State Legislature.

"The Albany machine has delivered only high taxes, late budgets and endless bureaucracy driving businesses and people out of the State," Cheevers says. "As industry and employment plummet, the State deficit has skyrocketed, approaching $40 billion before the Sept. 11 tragedy."

So, Cheevers has labeled his campaign, "Saving New York," and plans to start by "Fixing Albany."

His platform so far is based on a list of 10 "Albany's Outrages," where he energetically attacks both the Democratic and Republican leadership of State government for:

• "Back room" deals on casino gambling - Cheevers wants gambling widely legalized, to take it out of the hands of Indian tribes and the politically-connected, and insure the State gets more of the revenues, but also wants a referendum on gambling put before voters for final decision;
• The vast State and local outstanding debts - New York has half of California's population but twice the state debt, up 30 percent during the Pataki administration, and combined with the City's and MTA's debt, is now up to $8,500 per man, woman and child in New York;
• Seventeen years of late State budgets, including last year when no actual final budget was ever enacted at all;
• "Machine" control of State election laws, and party machine control of the State Legislature - both of the Democrat-controlled Assembly and Republican-controlled State Senate.

All of this has led to New York's decline, according to Cheevers.

"The vast majority of [upstate] residents can't sell their homes for what they paid for them 10 years ago," he said. "And we are losing our most valuable asset, our young people who are looking elsewhere to build their future. Ignoring the root causes of these problems, the New York State Legislature marches on in an enforced lockstep using chairmanships, bonuses and stipends to keep every member in line with the leadership - no innovation, no fresh thinking.

"New York State has turned out to be a government by the politicians, of the politicians and for the politicians. It is a State without true leadership and without a vision for the future."

So, Cheevers has filed a suit in State Supreme Court alleging that the Legislature's structure of stipends and staffing - where favorite members of the majority party get extra pay for choice chairmanships and large allocations for staff and offices, and members of the minority get shut out of almost everything - violates the "one person, one vote" principle of equal representation. Cheevers' suit claims that those represented in Albany by Republican Assembly members (as Cheevers is) are deprived of their rights, "because my assemblyman is a second-class assemblyman, my vote is a second-class vote."

Cheevers' suit, which names Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and State Senator Majority Leader Joseph Bruno as well as State Comptroller H. Carl McCall, seeks to permanently enjoin the State comptroller from paying unequal amounts to members of the State Legislature.

"The disparate amount of cash allowances paid to different members of the New York State Legislature are not based upon, or are justified, by reason of any difference in work load, work difficulty, population, experience or any other fair and reasonable factor," he says.

Cheevers is willing to go along with extra pay for Silver and Bruno (who each get $43,000 on top of their $79,500 salary as legislators - legislators also get $138 per day for Albany sessions and $244 per day for committee meetings in New York City), but not for any of the other dozens of chairmen and leaders.

Cheevers is himself a politician, of course. He has served five terms as supervisor of the Town of Union in Broome County - the equivalent of mayor for the locality that is next to, and actually larger than, the City of Binghamton (the Town of Union, a section of Broome County that includes smaller incorporated villages like Endicott, has a population of about 59,000). Cheevers has bounced in and out of this office: he was first elected town supervisor in 1976, then chose not to run for re-election, came back to the office in 1984, then again chose not to run for re-election, ran again in 1996, and is now in his fifth two-year term.

This is also not Cheevers' first time as underdog: he took on a five-term incumbent from his own Democratic Party the first time he ran, and beat Republicans consistently in a town where Republicans hold a voter registration advantage. The one election he lost was in 1972, when he first entered politics and took on Republican State Senator Warren Anderson, coming within nine percent of beating the long-time incumbent (Anderson was made State Senator majority leader right after that election, and was long the State's second most powerful politician).

When not supervising Union, Cheevers is chief executive of an investment firm he founded. A Navy veteran, and a graduate of Clarkson University in upstate Potsdam, he was a broker for First Albany Corporation before founding his firm.

His resources are admittedly meager. "This is a non-traditional campaign for unusual times," he says. "Consequently, I don't have access to traditional campaign funding. The other candidates have millions to throw at you, so it's coming down to message over money."

He's been running since last July, and has been far out-stripped in both publicity and fund-raising by McCall and Cuomo, but Cheevers has picked up one endorsement, that of John Burns, State Democratic Party chairman from 1966 to 1972 who was mayor of Binghamton in the early 1960's and an official in Governor Hugh Carey's administration in the early 1980's.

"I'm helping Jack because I think he has an important message to give, a message that needs telling, a message that is vital to the people of New York State and indeed, to the workings of State government itself," Burns says.

The Cheevers Campaign website is www.jackcheevers.com.