ITHACA - State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, by a wide margin, bested his opponent for the Democratic nomination for governor, Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, in a straw poll conducted Saturday by New York's Democratic Rural Conference.

It was their first showdown since Suozzi announced a week ago that he would challenge Spitzer for the Democratic nomination.

While the Spitzer victory Saturday served to promote his camp's marketing of their candidate as the certain party choice, it also served the Suozzi campaign's strategy of presenting him as the political outsider not beholden to party leaders or special interests.

Andrew Cuomo won the DRC straw poll Saturday in his bid to replace Spitzer as attorney general.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won the DRC Senate race straw poll.