ALBANY - Democrat Eliot Spitzer, vowing to “replace delay and diversion with energy and purpose,” was to be sworn in as New York's 54th governor during a private ceremony at midnight Sunday at the governor's mansion.

Taking over for three-term Republican Gov. George Pataki, who did not seek re-election and is eyeing a run for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, Spitzer inherits a state government facing significant future budget deficits and recent scandals that have caused, among other things, the resignation of state Comptroller Alan Hevesi.

“In order to return to policies of opportunity and prosperity, we must change the ethics of Albany and end the politics of cynicism and division in our state.” Spitzer planned to tell New Yorkers in his inaugural address Monday.

Excerpts from the speech were provided Sunday by the governor-elect's staff.

The excerpts left no doubt Spitzer felt change was in order after years of Republican rule.

“Over the last decade, we have seen what can happen when our government stands still in the face of great challenge and inevitable change,” he planned to tell New Yorkers.

“We've seen it in the burdensome property taxes and the health care we can't afford; in the jobs that have disappeared from our upstate cities and the schools that keep failing our children; in a government that works for those who hold office - not those who put them there.”

“The reform we seek is substantial in size and historic in scope,” Spitzer said. “It will require a new brand of politics, a break from the days when progress was measured by the partisan points scored or the opponents defeated. No longer can we afford merely to tinker at the margins of the status quo or play the politics of pitting one group against another.”

Already being talked up by some Democrats as a potential future national candidate, Spitzer's speech evoked the memory of President Kennedy's famous inaugural address.

“What is needed now more than ever is a politics that binds us together, a politics that looks to the future, a politics that asks not what is in it for me, but always what is in it for us?” Spitzer said.

Spitzer, New York's two-term state attorney general who gained international celebrity by taking on major Wall Street institutions, won the governorship on Nov. 7 with a landslide victory over former state Assembly Republican Minority Leader John Faso.

A public inauguration ceremony was be held in a park outside the state Capitol on New Year's Day.

The timing of the outdoor ceremony, a first for a governor's inauguration in New York, was shifted from noon to 1 p.m. in an attempt to avoid the cold rain that was forecast for Monday morning in Albany.

Also being sworn in was Democrat Andrew Cuomo, the elder son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo who was elected to replace Spitzer as attorney general. The younger Cuomo, who had served as federal housing secretary under President Clinton, had unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for governor in 2002.

The state Legislature will chose a successor for Democrat Hevesi who had won easy re-election in November even after it came out that he had used a state employee as driver-companion for his wife. That scandal led to Hevesi pleading guilty on Dec. 22 to a felony and resigning. He was fined $5,000, but will not go to prison.