“The future of the NY tech community is in jeopardy,” the email read. “We are writing to call you to an Emergency NY Tech Meetup in New York on January 18 so that we can publicly demonstrate our collective dismay at the unprecedented attack currently being made on the Internet and our industry.”

The email called for a mass mobilization IRL in front of the offices of Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, who had become the public face of the Protect Intellectual Property Act, a bill that they said was necessary to cut down on the kind of online piracy that steals from the film industry, recording studios and pharmaceutical companies. Mr. Rasiej and his cohort describe the bill as “censoring the Internet,” or, with a bit more nuance perhaps, suggest it would cripple the now-booming New York City tech industry by putting at legal liability the owners of the websites that host much of what the web 2.0 has become—user generated content, whether it be music videos or 140-character quips.

It was timed to coincide with a simultaneous blackout engineered by websites that feared they would be most threatened by the bill—Wikipedia, Reddit, Boing Boing—something that brought the bill to the attention of millions of office workers suddenly unable to distract themselves with videos of porcupines drinking coffee.

Police estimate that 1,200 people showed up, and tech scenesters say that up to 12 million lent their names and email addresses to online organizations devoted to fighting the bill.

“I asked the New York tech community to not just make their sites go black or email their congressman. I asked them to come out and physically show their presence on the street,” Mr. Rasiej said in an interview this week. “What the protest would provide was the physical background, the photo-op for the actual human beings representing the Internet. We couldn’t have the news reports on television just put up screen shots of Wikipedia blacked out. We needed to put a human face not only to the New York tech industry but to the future of our country, its economy and its democracy.”

Two days later, in a reversal that seemed impossibly far-fetched just a week earlier, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the vote on the bill would be postponed. The move represented a stunning victory for the nascent tech community, proved a big embarrassment to Congressional Democrats, and left political observers wondering if we were at last on the verge of a long-predicted paradigm shift.

“I used to believe that there were around a million or two million people online that cared about being activists, and that they formed around MoveOn, then went to the Howard Dean campaign, chilled out Ted Kennedy for a while maybe and then went to hang out with Barack Obama,” said Clay Johnson, a technologist who was the lead programmer for Mr. Dean’s 2004 effort, which first tried to turn online organizing into real flesh-and-blood precinct victories (and, notably, failed). “Now I’m not sure. I think the Internet has gotten big enough and people have become active enough and the tools have gotten simple enough that it’s not hard to imagine a new reality. In the long history of government being on the side of the people this was an honest to goodness populist victory. It warms my cynical Washington heart, to be honest with you.”

From the perspective of Senate Democrats, opposition to this bill seemed to explode almost spontaneous this fall. In truth, organizing against PIPA and its House analog, the Stop Online Piracy Act, had begun long before the masses assembled in front of the offices of Mr. Schumer and Ms. Gillibrand. In November 2010, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act was introduced in the Senate and Boing Boing, Reddit and a few other Internet hubs brought the bill’s more baleful aspects to light. It got delayed, a hold was put on, and the bill ultimately died a quiet death.

This time around, tech entrepreneurs like Brad Burnham and Fred Wilson joined the Internet hubs early on, coming out loudly against the bill. Up sprang a number of what Nick Grossman, executive director of Civic Commons called “supernodes”—a handful of small websites, like AmericanCensorship.org or SopaStrike.com, that bloggers and web producers were able to link back to and that provided a quick summary of the issues. He estimated that as the fight heated up, there were tens of thousands of websites publicizing the fight, and for the most part these weren’t so much political websites but the kind of sites that the tech community would visit in the course of their daily rounds. By the time the bill came up for a hearing in November, Tumblr, the popular blogging platform, had blocked users from posting as part of an “American Censorship Day” protest.

According to advocates, 90,000 calls were generated to Congress in a single afternoon.

Opponents of the bill said that they had been barred from testifying—a point Hill staffers dispute—but they noticed that questioning was noticeably more pointed than they expected for the bill’s proponents.

"It was a kind of WTF moment, where people said, ‘Don’t let this happen to your Internet,’” Mr. Grossman said. “It was clear there is a new breed of activism where the approach is viral and distributed and Internet-meme oriented.”

At the time, both the opposition and the support for the bill in the House and the Senate had been bipartisan, but just as the tech community in New York was organizing itself in earnest, the right-wing blogosphere was making it clear that it was opposed to the bill too. The Heritage Foundation said that the bill “threatened free speech.” The libertarian Cato Institute accused the motion picture industry of inflating their own statistics. The Tea Party Patriots sent out an Action Alert, warning its members: “Have your own website? Maybe the government will shut it down tomorrow ... without any notice to you.” The influential blog Red State listed the bills sponsors and said that it would support primary challenges to any of them.

Soon, it was as if Republicans spotted a battering ram lying unused on the battlefield, and picked it up, realizing they could use it to pummel Democrats. Prominent Republicans like Marco Rubio, Orrin Hatch and Roy Blount suddenly decided they could no longer even support a bill that they had once sponsored, leaving Democrats seething. From the their perspective, by dropping their sponsorship, the Republicans were taking a politically symbolic stand in lieu of working to improve the bill.

In an interview with The Observer, Marc Cenedella, a tech entrepreneur who is considering running against Senator Gillibrand in the fall, echoed a line that many in the tech community reiterated during the fight—that Congress is ignorant of how the Internet works and what the next wave of start-ups will look like.

“It could cost New York thousands of jobs. It is a very dangerous and potentially damaging bill to the nascent information technology community here in New York City. Senator Gillibrand should have done her homework before sponsoring it,” he said, adding, “This is what happens when Congress tries to regulate things it knows nothing about. You wouldn’t sponsor this bill if you knew how the Internet works.”

(Mr. Cenedella is on somewhat shaky political ground here, however: one of the bill’s most vociferous supporters has been Rupert Murdoch, whose New York Post has also been the house organ of his nascent candidacy.)

Bill O’Reilly, a Republican political consultant who has been advising Mr. Cenedella, said that the ongoing controversy can be used to peel away what was thought to be a core Democratic constituency.

“It’s New York versus L.A., and it’s just the latest example of government overreach into private industry,” he said. “It will be curious to see if that crowd considers how government reaches into other industries now that government is reaching into theirs.”

The bill also became a chance for Republicans to turn some of the Democrats base supporters—namely Hollywood and the labor unions—against the bill.

“Clearly on the left there were some interest groups that were pushing pretty strongly for this,” said Patrick Ruffini, a Republican media strategist.

“It certainly is surprising to me,” said Aaron Swartz, the head of Demand Progress, a non-profit political action group involved in the lobbying effort against the bill, such as it was. “Who would have thought that Republicans would be more responsive to their constituents.”

Democrats meanwhile say that the notion that they were somehow doing the film industry’s bidding in support of election year dollars is hogwash. Jobs in film and music have been decimated due to piracy, which explains why so many of labor unions involved in production came out in favor of the bill. Tumblr, they point out, may glow from a million computer screen, but at the end of the day one of the biggest players in the New York tech scene has fewer than 60 employees..

Plus, they point out, piracy is, you know, illegal—whether its bag sellers on Canal or websites that stream movies for free.

“Look, it’s very easy to say ‘Don’t censor the Internet,’ but that’s never what this was about,” said one advocate of the bill. “You can’t put whatever the fuck you want on the Internet and then say that just because it’s now online it should be legal.”

A number of senior Hill staffers said that they had hardly heard a peep about the bill from their constituents as it made it worked its way through the legislative process over the past year. This was a far cry from other controversial pieces of legislation, which have well-heeled lobbyists and loud-voiced advocates pushing this way and that as the bill moves through various committees.

“What we have here are a bunch of people who are frankly naive about the way Congress works,” said one Hill aide.

The tech community, to a degree concedes this point, and say that they have always assumed that what happened in D.C. didn’t much affect them.

“The rule was technology would always win no matter what government put in front of it, and that’s just not true,” said Mr. Johnson. “Government has tanks and technology doesn’t. Government makes the rules and technology has to play.”

Senators Schumer and Gillibrand had been regularly meeting with members of the local tech community before the legislation unraveled and had been tweaking the bill address the tech community’s concerns, although it appears as if news of those meetings didn’t trickle down to the rank-and-file, who never heard of them.

“It’s just ridiculous,” said Mr. Swartz, the head of Demand Progress, a nonprofit political action group involved in the lobbying effort against the bill, such as it was. “Who was telling them this bill was a good idea from the tech industry? I don’t even know anyone who knows anyone who had been negotiating with Congress on this bill.”

Mr. Rasiej, the founder of the NY Tech Meetup, had been in regular contact with both Ms. Gillibrand and Mr. Schumer’s office, and said that “it is true that we were in touch with both Schumer and Gillibrand, but when we got to the point that Reid was making everyone aware that we are going to a cloture vote, we requested that Schumer and Gillibrand publicly state that they are no longer going to support it. They had been talking about minor adjustments. We asked them to state that they would no longer support the bill or that they would say specifically what amendments they wanted to bring.

“We made it unequivocally clear that this bill should not exist at all. Unless they were willing to publicly state what amendments they were working on behind the scenes, we weren’t going to give you the political cover. Minor modifications weren’t enough to satisfy us. The political establishment had to be punched in the face a bit and they didn’t expect that.”

A major question going forward is what the tech community will do with its new found lobbying powers. Conversations with a half-dozen organizers of the anti-PIPA effort revealed that they weren’t quite sure.

“Our group is not D.C. insiders, so we rely to some extent on what we hear. What we can do now is build consensus around what the movements are that made Wednesday happen into something we can build a campaign around,” said Holmes Wilson, a cofounder of the Participatory Democracy Foundation. “The next time one of these bills comes out we will be much faster.”

According to Mr. Johnson, this is exactly the wrong approach. Technologists need to get on the offense, he says, now that they have the momentum.

“The Internet can’t be on the defensive,” he said. “Are we going to call for a compromise, or are we going to go all in for what we want—reasonable fair use, an end to ridiculous copyright law. It may be time to go all Lessig on the place.”

The Senate, meanwhile, sounds anxious to just begin again, but given the messy demise of SOPA and PIPA, most agree it will be a long time until further antipiracy legislation is proposed.

“What it really was about was democracy in action,” said Senator Gillibrand this week. “These issues are so important and people really have to be heard on them. I think the bill was complex and it took awhile for people to really weigh in and have their voices be heard. But at the end of the day, it worked. We will know go back to the drawing board to reach this balance better.”

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Schumer has long called for the extradition of al-Megrahi, after the convicted terrorists was issued a compassionate release from a Scottish prison in 2009, on the premise that he only had a few months to live. Earlier this year, Schumer  suggested extraditing al-Megrahi would be a good way for the rebels to prove their goodwill to the rest of the world -- a call he reiterated last week, as rebels were just beginning to take control of Tripoli.

The transitional government has resisted that call. "We will not give any Libyan citizen to the West," NTC Justice Minister Mohammed al-Alagi told CNN in a report posted last night. An accompanying video appears to show al-Megrahi in a coma, breathing through a tube.

But Schumer has his doubts.

"This wouldn’t be the first time that Libyan officials claimed al-Megrahi was on his death bed," Schumer said in a statement this afternoon. "We’re going to need a lot more verification than the word of local Libyan officials. There is no justifiable basis for the rebels’ decision to shield this convicted terrorist."

Update: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who has also called for al-Megrahi's extradition, said she's asked the State Department to verify his condition, in the hopes of holding him accountable.

"The release of Al-Megrahi was a total miscarriage of justice. If we’re ever going to win the fight against international terrorism, the rule of law must hold strong," Gillibrand said in a statement. "I have asked the State Department to obtain verified information about Al-Megrahi’s condition. Now that there has been a change of government in Libya, we must get all the information we can learn about the Lockerbie bombing and hold all those responsible accountable."

The CNN video:

“David Weprin is the right choice for voters because he will fight to protect Medicare and Social Security and work to get our economy back on track,” Gillibrand said in a statement.

“David understands that the key to protecting the middle class is to fight against the Republican efforts to privatize Medicare and Social Security. I'm proud to endorse David Weprin and I look forward to working with him on behalf of the working families and seniors who call Brooklyn and Queens home.”

Gillibrand's endorsement comes as national Democrats are taking a greater interest in the race, after a Siena poll showed Republican Bob Turner within six points in the heavily-Democratic district.

But the two senators wouldn't appear to be too concerned just yet. Both endorsements came by press release, with neither senator having appeared with Weprin so far. Earlier this year, in the special election in New York's 26th Congressional District, Schumer and Gillibrand each traveled to western New York to appear with Kathy Hochul, who eventually upset a heavy Republican favorite.

“It is vital we preserve Medicare and Social Security, and the only candidate for Congress who will do that is David Weprin,” said Senator Schumer, invoking the Democratic talking points that helped them win an upset.

Schumer held the seat for 18 years, building a reputation as an outspoken liberal, which he used to jump to vault to the Senate in 1998 -- when he was replaced by Anthony Weiner, who hoped to use his Ninth District perch, and a similar strategy, to move from Congress into the mayor's office.

Now, with the Ninth a presumptive placeholder likely to be sacrificed in the next round of redistricting, Democrats are merely hoping to avoid an embarrassing loss.

Schumer's endorsement would seem to help in that regard. The district seems to remember its old congressman rather fondly: he had a 62 percent approval rating in the latest poll of the district.  Though it seems to remember a former mayor even more fondly. Schumer's favorability was trumped by Ed Koch, who endorsed Republican Bob Turner last month, with an approval rating of 69 percent.

Schumer's email -- which said the video "has to be seen to be believed" -- was part of an all-out push by Democrats to capitalize on Romney's comments. In Iowa, the DNC rushed out an ad with the video, and bought a block of ads across Iowa.

"This video is so important because it so clearly shows the contrast between Democrats and Republicans," Schumer wrote in the email.

The senior senator even doubled-down, including a second video of "former half-term governor of Alaska Sarah Palin" supporting Romney's comments. "Republican obstruction has gone beyond misguided and cynical to reveal a much deeper misunderstanding," Schumer said.

The email is one of Schumer's first forays into the partisan fray of next year's presidential campaign, and the next day, he tried to push the White House to do the same kind of politicking. In a front-page story in Sunday's New York Times, which reported on a divide in the Obama administration over how much to pursue compromise with intransigent Republicans, Schumer prodded the White House:

“The president’s team puts a premium on being above the partisan fray, which is usually the right strategy,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate. “But on this issue, when he knows what the right thing to do is, and when a rather small group on one side is blocking any progress, you have to be willing to call that group out if you want to get anything done.”

And, of course, there was the Sunday press conference. While he was calling for legislation to beef up background checks at utility plants, that was an asterisk in the press release; the focus was on Schumer's call for Congress and the White House to focus on jobs "like a laser," as he prefers to put it.

“The President placed the blame for this deadlock where it belongs—squarely on the shoulders of an extreme bloc within the House Republicans that refuses to compromise even one inch," Schumer said in a statement emailed shortly after the speech. "As the President made clear, their approach will drive the U.S. economy over a cliff, and take millions of American families’ budgets with it."

While House Speaker John Boehner continued to push his own proposal for raising the debt ceiling, in a separate address after Obama's, but Schumer said the focus should be on the plan offered by Senate Democrats, and their Majority Leader, Harry Reid.

"The only viable solution at this late stage is Senator Reid’s plan that would cut $2.7 trillion from the debt and avert a catastrophic default," Schumer said. "Reports that Speaker Boehner’s plan would perhaps cause a credit-rating downgrade give even further momentum to the Senate proposal. Americans hope Speaker Boehner will show the courage to resist the clarion call of those on the extreme right and work out a bipartisan compromise.”

It's unclear whether the president's direct appeal for the public to contact their members of Congress will have much bearing in the week remaining before the country would face default on August 2.

“I am supporting Democrat Michael Simanowitz for Assembly because he will be a powerful voice for seniors, students and all the taxpayers of Queens,” said Senator Schumer in a statement. “We need fighters in Albany and Michael will never stop fighting for our families.”

Simanowitz served as Mayersohn's chief of staff for 15 years, and has also served as a district leader. He called Schumer "a model elected official and a friend."

It's not too surprising. Schumer -- by his own account -- "always" endorses Democrats. And Simanowitz is running alongside another Schumer favorite, former aide Phil Goldfeder, who is seeking another open Assembly seat in Queens in the September 13 special election.

Inside the office, the ranking was treated like a joke, as such lists inevitably are. To honor Mr. Lawsky’s standing, a few of his colleagues bought a copy of I Am Third, the autobiography of former Chicago Bears running back Gale Sayers, blew up the cover, and superimposed Mr. Lawsky’s face on it.

But just because no one outside Mr. Cuomo’s inner circle actually knows exactly what Mr. Lawsky does—which is often the case with Cuomo aides, who are prized for their loyalty, competence and willingness to deflect all positive attention to the boss—it’s not wrong to suggest he occupies a special place in the governor’s firmament. His official titles were, respectively, “special assistant” and “chief of staff.” What that meant, in practice, was that whenever something had to get done, and Mr. Cuomo didn’t have the time, inclination or ability to handle it himself, Mr. Lawsky was entrusted to take care of it.

“To the extent there were specific cases which the governor wanted to handle directly or wanted to ensure day-to-day oversight at the highest level, the majority of the time it was Ben’s role to be the point person,” said Mr. Cohen. “He seems to me to be somebody whose legal guidance and his sense about government are so right on that the governor trusts him implicitly with, whether it’s the hot project of the day or something that needs to be delegated and paid attention to,” said Jennifer Cunningham, the powerful Democratic and labor operative and longtime Cuomo confidante. “I think often those are the projects that Ben was asked to head up, but I think he’s also fully in the thick of things in terms of all the other inner circle goings-on.”

Mr. Lawsky’s wide-ranging brief is a reflection of the skill-set yielded by his prior experience with politics, policy and the press, and his potential to maximize the positive attention that would redound to a reticent Mr. Cuomo’s benefit. It is also a reflection of Mr. Lawsky’s sharing some attributes with Mr. Cuomo himself, namely a ferocious work ethic, a talent for public relations management and, significantly, a willingness to advance the cause, sometimes at the cost of relationships with colleagues and rivals.

And, while other top deputies have either slipped away to private practice (Mr. Cohen left last week) or continued in roughly their same role for the new governor, Mr. Lawsky has stayed, and risen.

Last month, he was unanimously confirmed as the first superintendent of the state’s new Department of Financial Services, a sprawling fiefdom that regulates the state’s insurance and banking industries, and one that will require Mr. Lawsky to transition from his decade as an aggressive prosecutor to being a more business-friendly regulator, capable of stoking the state’s economic engines.

In his new corner office on the 6th floor, overlooking the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, Mr. Lawsky, 41, recalled first meeting Mr. Cuomo, on Dec. 6, 2006—memorable for its being his future boss’s birthday. The attorney general-elect was turning 49 and was plotting his own political resurrection, following a disastrous 2002 campaign that many had expected would end his political career. Mr. Cuomo, a graduate of Albany Law School who had only briefly practiced, was recruiting a team of prestigious former prosecutors who he hoped could make the office speak for itself.

“It’s funny, the thing I remember most about the interview, he basically wanted to know what I was passionate about,” Mr. Lawsky recalled last month. “And I remember speaking about that, and then he sort of told me what he was passionate about. That was sort of the interview.”

Mr. Lawsky recalled talking about the good and bad of government: his grandparents, who had immigrated from Nazi Germany to an apartment on 192nd Street after his grandmother’s father had been killed at Auschwitz; his parents, in turn, had made good through public schools, graduating from Bronx Science and C.C.N.Y. His father was in the U.S. Public Health Service, and Mr. Lawsky and a twin sister were born on a Navy base in San Diego before the family moved to Pittsburgh, where Mr. Lawsky grew up waiting tables and selling funnel cakes out of a food cart. As a high school point guard, he was recruited by several small schools but chose to attend Columbia, where he played briefly as a walk-on before taking up long-distance running. (Colleagues in the attorney general’s office recall an inexplicable pile of worn-out running shoes stashed behind Mr. Lawsky’s desk.) He wanted to study architecture, but, faced with drawing cubes, switched to art history. He became interested in the law when a controversial exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs in 1989 sparked a national conversation about art and the First Amendment. He graduated cum laude and enrolled in Columbia Law.

In the early days of the office, Mr. Cuomo was fond of telling his new hires that he didn’t know any of them, and that he didn’t care about their party affiliation, or whether they had even voted for him. (“In the primary or the general?” joked Eric Corngold, the executive deputy attorney general for economic justice.)

Mr. Lawsky’s own politics had been all over the place. After Columbia, he clerked for federal judges Carol Bagley Amon and Dennis Jacobs, both Republicans, before moving on to Washington to work in the Justice Department of Janet Reno, as a nonpolitical attorney in the civil division.

In 1999, the newly minted senator, Charles Schumer, who had distinguished himself as a particularly liberal Democrat in the House, hired Mr. Lawsky to serve as his counsel in Washington. “From day one he did a great job and it was clear he had all the tools to be very successful,” said Mr. Schumer, through a spokesperson.

Mr. Lawsky also had the skill set Mr. Schumer especially prized, and one that would later set him apart in Mr. Cuomo’s office. “It was clear early on that Ben understood the nexus between policy, press and politics incredibly well, and that led to an almost endless flow of ideas for new legislation, op-eds and events,” said Bradley Tusk, who was Mr. Schumer’s press secretary in New York at the time.

In Mr. Cuomo’s office, the Schumer model was turned on its head. Rather than feed a hungry press corps with a steady stream of attention-grabbing press conferences, the attorney general effectively went into hiding, refusing to sit for profiles or comment on the political news of the day, emerging only to trumpet the biggest, most visible cases. The press releases were designed, quite literally, to speak for themselves.

“Let the ball do the talking,” as Mr. Cuomo frequently told his staff. To find lawyers who could sufficiently move the ball, Mr. Cuomo had turned to the Southern District, the stocking pool for ambitious young attorneys who would come with pre-existing experience in moving high-profile, public-interest cases. The core curriculum consisted of a year in general crimes and a year in narcotics, followed by a turn prosecuting terrorists, or mobsters, or public officials. Mr. Lawsky joined the district office in 2001 and still keeps a plaque with a prosecutor’s creed on the wall of his sparsely decorated office.

A year later, he married Jessica Roth, a public-interest attorney who would later join the Southern District, and the daughter of Paul Roth, a founding partner at Schulte, Roth & Zabel and the self-proclaimed “dean of the hedge fund bar.” After his first two years, Mr. Lawsky chose the organized crime unit, where he worked on a sprawling prosecution of the Colombo crime family with Preet Bharara, who would later take Mr. Lawsky’s job as Mr. Schumer’s counsel before being appointed to head the Southern District.

“He was somebody people wanted to work with, which is probably the best compliment you can pay someone working at the U.S. attorney’s office,” said Neil Barofsky, who worked with Mr. Lawsky after he moved to the securities fraud unit.

In one of his bigger cases, Mr. Lawsky convinced a former Goldman analyst to turn state’s witness, and reveal an elaborate insider trading scheme that infiltrated a printing factory to steal advance copies of Businessweek, took tips from a Merrill Lynch analyst, and culminated in a lucrative trade before a planned takeover of Reebok became public. Insider trading was still relatively unchecked, and the office was making a concerted push to send a message. Fortune magazine ran a 4,000-word feature on the Reebok case. For Mr. Lawsky, the lessons from Mr. Schumer’s office seemed to have stuck.

“He was a guy I noticed right away,” said Michael Garcia, who became head of the office in 2005 after being appointed by President George W. Bush. “I just thought he really understood, not only the cases—he’d put together a terrific insider trading case—but he also understood getting the message out and how to convey them.” (Mr. Lawsky makes a silent cameo in Client 9, the documentary about former governor Eliot Spitzer’s downfall, standing behind Mr. Garcia in a stock photo from an earlier press conference.)

He left in 2006, taking a post at the state level, even as most of his Southern District colleagues were leaving for lucrative jobs at white-shoe firms. “The U.S. attorney’s office is a pretty conservative place, and when people do things that are nontraditional, it always raises an eyebrow or two,” said Mr. Barofsky, who made a similarly nontraditional move when he left in 2008 to become the inspector general of TARP. “This was certainly something out of the box when he did it. I think it was a courageous move.”

There were a few familiar faces when Mr. Lawsky arrived at 120 Broadway, in the attorney general’s Manhattan office. He had gone to Columbia and worked in the Southern District with Mylan Denerstein, the incoming counsel to Mr. Cuomo, and he had argued a union racketeering case against Mr. Cohen, who had been a partner at Cooley Godward Kronish after his own Southern District stint. (Mr. Cohen’s side eventually won, though Mr. Lawsky said it’s only because he wasn’t there to prosecute it.) For Mr. Cuomo, the prize cases were public-interest efforts that could generate positive headlines while casting the office as a people’s champion.

On the office’s first big case, an inquiry into student loans that began under Mr. Spitzer, Mr. Lawsky served as its quarterback and, when necessary, its press agent, in venues large and small. He testified before Congress and presented PowerPoint slideshows to high school auditoriums (accompanied by a press aide). The case churned steady headlines in papers across the country, as the office impugned the loan practices of some of the nation’s largest colleges, and eventually led to state and federal regulations. Mr. Cuomo was pleased. “I know the governor is very proud of that initiative and I was thrilled to be part of it,” Mr. Lawsky said.

Some of his colleagues sought his counsel about how best to bring their own cases. “I would go to him for strategic advice on the best way to move forward with an environmental initiative,” said Kit Kennedy, who served as the special deputy attorney general for environmental protection. “He was very helpful in terms of strategizing with me, trying to predict questions that would come up from the outside world, from press, trying to figure out timing, and when would be the most strategic moment to move forward with an environmental initiative to have maximum impact.”

But not everyone enjoyed Mr. Lawsky’s relatively high profile and obvious closeness to Mr. Cuomo. As one attorney in a regional office put it, “He may be one of the best and brightest, but he lacks cordiality and affability, and could use a lesson or two in collegiality. It might also be helpful if he would return phone calls once in a while.”

Inside 120 Broadway, there was considerable competition among some attorneys for the attention and affection of the principal, Mr. Cuomo. One former colleague said Mr. Lawsky held Mr. Cuomo in such esteem that he would unconsciously slip into the boss’s mannerisms. “Andrew’s approval is very important to Ben, sometimes to the exclusion of all else,” said one former colleague.

Mr. Cohen shrugged off the criticism as predictable. “When you are part of a new team charged with taking control of a large institution and when you take to heart Governor Cuomo’s belief that we work for the people and that getting results for the people in real time is an actual requirement of the job, sometimes egos get bruised,” said Mr. Cohen.

When necessary, Mr. Lawsky also served as a vigorous defender of the Cuomo narrative. Reporters stretching for bigger stories, ones that went beyond the steady stream of press releases—an enterprise story, say, or, in a flight of fancy, a profile—would often receive a call from Mr. Lawsky. A New York Post feature recounted one reporter’s attempt to profile Mr. Cuomo in 2009, which included a series of conversations with Mr. Lawsky, who suggested a number of potential narratives, including Mr. Cuomo as a Comeback Kid, but the governor was ultimately not available.

Reporters griped that Mr. Lawsky underdelivered on promises, and overzealously sought to spin them. (Even with Mr. Lawsky shifting outside the regular press operation, several reporters declined to offer even anonymous quotes for fear of crossing Mr. Cuomo’s shop.)

Occasionally, Mr. Lawsky simply stood in for Mr. Cuomo himself. When the attorney general summoned Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis to 120 Broadway, during its investigation of executive bonuses, it was Mr. Lawsky who spoke for the boss. “The A.G. is disappointed, severely disappointed, at Bank of America’s decision not to turn over some information,” he told an assembly of television cameras in the building’s lobby. “We intend to get it and will do so by any means necessary we deem going forward.”

Mr. Lawsky had been intimately involved in that case, which was praised as a sort of populist crusade, even as Bank of America accused the attorney general of political grandstanding. (A spokesman for Bank of America declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation with the attorney general’s office. A spokesman for Mr. Lewis also declined to comment.)

But, to his credit, or not, Mr. Cuomo never quite rattled the boardrooms of Wall Street in the same way as Mr. Spitzer. His office eschewed the kinds of structural cases that had made his predecessor a national star, and instead of storming the Street, he quietly cultivated some of Mr. Spitzer’s high-profile enemies, like Ken Langone—a friendship that was formalized when the new governor named Mr. Langone to his transition team last year. (Mr. Langone did not return a request for comment.)

When Mr. Lawsky officially left the office to join Mr. Cuomo’s campaign in the fall of last year, a Wall Street Journal item carried the headline: “Breathe a Sigh of Relief, Wall Street: Cuomo’s Top Prosecutor Defects to Campaign.”

Among the defense bar, though, there was a feeling that Mr. Lawsky was someone they could do business with. “What I observed is him being sensitive to Cuomo’s political needs, but he did so in a way that made some sense legally,” said one defense attorney at a white-shoe firm, who negotiated against him on several high-profile cases. “I found him to be a straight shooter. He didn’t bullshit. You knew where he was coming from.”

“Put it this way: he’s fair,” said Dan French, a former U.S. attorney in the Northern District who has known Mr. Lawsky since his days with Mr. Schumer, and is now a defense attorney with cases before the A.G.’s office. Mr. French said defense attorneys looking for guidance in navigating the office would frequently come to Mr. Lawsky. “I think the defense bar pretty much appreciated his role in the matter,” he said.

In January, when Mr. Cuomo ascended to the governor’s mansion, it was unclear what role Mr. Lawsky would play in an office focused on moving legislation rather than on pursuing prosecutions. He was named chief of staff—a similarly nebulous job to his previous “special assistant”—and he was involved in passing the legislation that combined the Insurance and Banking departments, which, initially, sought to transfer some of the attorney general’s powers to the new institution.

The challenge for Mr. Lawsky will be in becoming the manager of a massive department, with 1,700 combined employees, and adapting to his new role as a regulator, pursuing multiple goals at once and working alongside the industry, rather than simply policing it. Mr. Lawsky called it a different posture but an “extension of the qualities” he brought to prosecuting cases in Mr. Cuomo’s office.

The new job will likely require him to access some of his other qualities, too.

“I think it is very important he gets the legislative and political ramifications of a job that, frankly, does have those components," said Eric Dinallo, who was superintendent of the Insurance Department from 2007 to 2009, and served on Mr. Cuomo’s 2006 transition committee. “You are a governor’s appointee and you are balancing things other than pure enforcement.”

rpillifant@observer.com

Liberals had called on President Obama to fight for Warren's appointment, but with a bloc of Republican senators refusing to yield, Schumer said the White House was doing the only thing it could.

"Well, the White House dropped consideration of Elizabeth Warren because the Republicans in the Senate said they will not let her pass. Period," Schumer said. "Even were the President to try a recess appointment, they wouldn't allow the Senate to recess. So the President was just facing reality when he said that he couldn't nominate her because she never would have been approved. Forty-four senators I believe signed the letter; 44 Republican senators that wouldn't allow her to come."

The Senate stalemate has given rise to speculation that Warren, unable to beat the upper chamber, might try to join it. Warren is a professor at Harvard Law and is said to be interested in running against Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown. Brown claimed the seat of the late Ted Kennedy in an upset victory two years ago, but will have to stand for a full term next fall.

Schumer, who guided the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to big victories in 2006 and 2008, was recently seen dining with Warren in Washington.

Asked today whether Warren would make a good candidate, and whether he had discussed the possibility with her, the senator was unusually reticent.

"I have had conversations with Elizabeth Warren on a whole variety of subjects but I'm going to keep those to myself," he said.

Kirsten Gillibrand posted a 54-percent approval rating, tying the best she's ever done in the poll. And with just 22-percent disapproving of the job she's doing, it's slightly better than her previous best.

Chuck Schumer got a 64 - 24 approval rating, his best showing in years (though short of his personal best 69 percent approval back in 2004.)

It's not clear why exactly the public is so fond of both senators right now. Senate Democrats haven't exactly made big headlines in Washington of late, as they wrangle with Republicans over slightly opaque issues like the federal debt ceiling and judicial appointments.

File any theories in the comments.