Danny Hakim at the Empire Zone reports that New York State Republicans, unsurprisingly, are "pining" for a Giuliani nomination -- since it looks to be about the only thing that could rescue their Albany fortunes at this point. In recent presidential election years, the extra turnout has helped Democrats in swing districts; the state's GOP dinosaurs are hoping that a Rudy candidacy would turn that trend on its head.

Serph Maltese, himself an endangered old elephant, sounds positively giddy:

Having Mr. Giuliani at the top of the ticket, he said, “ensures that we hold the State Senate,” which would be no small victory. The Senate is the Republican Party’s last statewide power base — and one that Gov. Eliot Spitzer covets.
“You know we will certainly take aim at the Klein seat, the Nancy Larraine Hoffmann seat,” Mr. Maltese said, referring to the Bronx-Westchester seat of Senator Jeffrey D. Klein, a Democrat, and the Syracuse-area seat once held by Ms. Hoffmann, a Republican. Mr. Maltese added that he also thought the party could win back the Westchester seat that Nicholas A. Spano lost last year.

The question is whether a candidate who supports gun control and the right to abortion, and who may very well be excommunicated from the Catholic church -- whether for the abortion stance, his adultery, or both -- could really turn out New York's conservative base. Certainly, his fraught history with the state's Conservative Party doesn't bode well for those hopes.