Rudy Giuliani

There have been rumors for some time about the possibility of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani running for governor of New York State next year. Now that the election year is getting closer, that process seems to have been shifted into a higher gear. The New York Times has reported on the current state of things. Rudy has made no final decision, but the Times is able to confirm definite activity in that direction.

New York has been solidly Democratic in recent presidential elections. Ronald Reagan, in his 1984 landslide reelection, was the most recent Republican presidential nominee to take the Empire State's electoral votes.

But New York Republicans have been able to win some state and local contests. Republican George Pataki was governor from 1995 to 2006. New York City's incumbent Mayor Michael Bloomberg is nominally a Republican, although his ties to that party are not very deep (he briefly severed what ties he has to the GOP, when he was mulling an independent run for the presidency). Giuliani himself was Bloomberg's predecessor, winning the office twice on the Republican line.

Those New York Republicans have largely shunned the socially-conservative party line that prevails elsewhere. However, Giuliani, when he ran in the 2008 presidential campaign, and Pataki, when he was testing the waters for such a run, made some more conservative noises than they had generally made at home.

Governor David Paterson, a Democrat who moved up from lieutenant governor when Eliot Spitzer resigned, faces a likely primary contest against the state's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

After its near-death experience in the 2008 elections, the Republican Party is showing some signs of life. Giuliani, a proven vote-getter, at least in the City, might face a favorable Republican trend, and a divided Democratic Party, if he makes the race. So, despite having fallen about as flat as it's possible for a candidate to fall, in his presidential run, he could have a pretty good shot at Albany.