ALBANY -- An internal e-mail reveals that Senate Republican staffers, facing the end of their days in the chamber's powerful and lucrative majority, planned to use taxpayer-funded researchers to help senators win re-election.

But Senate Republican spokesman John McArdle is shooting down the directive first reported Monday in the New York Post. McArdle calls the e-mail dumb and says the plan it outlined was never implemented and would never be authorized by Senate GOP leader Dean Skelos.

The e-mail says that based on previous discussions, the Senate Research Project, now controlled by Republicans, would expand to support specific senators on district issues and to aid their re-election bids.

McArdle says the memo went too far and that what he calls pure politics is kept separate from legislative action.

For more on this story, see Tuesday's edition of The Citizen.