Rick Lazio's campaign for governor received a much-needed boost, as the state's Conservative Party gave him its crucial ballot line on Friday in its Midtown Manhattan convention.

Yet the news was not all good. Lazio only got about 54 percent of the vote, just barely above the threshold needed to get on the ballot.

A dissenting Conservative Party member got about 36 percent, setting up the possibility of a Conservative Party primary for governor this fall.

"You know that we have the answers, you know we have the solutions, and you know that they are the problem," said Lazio.

Some Conservative Party members were angry that the party's Chairman Mike Long was pushing Lazio, and broke with tradition by holding the convention prior to the Republican convention.

"Never before has our party leader moved in such a deliberate manner, to minimize the rights of candidates wanting only an equal opportunity," said Erie Country Conservative Party Chairman Ralph Lorigo.

"The pressure's here, and I don't want the headline to be, 'Conservatives Worried About Where They Are In This State.' I'm not," shot back Long, who said all the delegates should have nominated the candidate. "... [Lorigo] shed this party in a negative light. I have no doubt about the future of the party, none whatsoever."

Regardless of the infighting, Lazio goes into the Republican convention with a leg up. No Republican candidate in decades has won statewide office without the backing of the Conservative Party.