One of the election themes emerging over the last few days, highlighted by a campaign ad for Sen. Elizabeth Dole, is that North Carolina state voters need to keep her seat Republican. The worry, the ads suggest, is that a win by Sen. Barrack Obama will give Democrats control of the White House and both houses of Congress.

A similar pitch is making its way through New York state with the Republican majority in the Senate holding on by one seat in the 62-member upper chamber. Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Malcolm Smith want to flip two seats to take control of the house that has been controlled for 69 of the last 70 years by the GOP.

Senate Democrats, once led by then minority leader, and now governor, David Paterson, have been picking off GOP senators for the last several election cycles to be within a breath of taking control of the Senate, which would give the Democrats all three branches of state government. The last time one party had such control was in 1974, when the GOP was in charge.

While voters will likely re-elect both Sens. Michael F. Nozzolio and David Valesky by comfortable margins, the districts bordering central New York, including to the north and west in Rochester and Buffalo, see some hard fought races, where Democrats hope to pick up seats, along with at least one downstate.

Doing so would change the dynamic in Albany completely, though how is anyone's guess (will the governor and Assembly and Senate leaders all get along together and steamroll legislation or, quite possibly, be at each other's throats to show who is in charge of their party?) - only time will tell.

What is clear is that the GOP is trying its best to hold on to what it has, since the next election cycle will likely start the process of legislative seat re-districting, that could make it impossible for state Republicans to get control back for decades.

What may be most troubling about this fact is that Smith has been careful not to be pinned down as to what his conference will do on a whole host of issues. While he talks about “reform,” the 20/20 Plan that his conference has been working on has not been detailed in public.

With the polls tightening across the state, there is another scenario, beyond one party controlling the Senate, that has many in Albany wondering. What happens if the Democrats only pick up one seat? Without a lieutenant governor to break a tie, a 31-31 Senate is a recipe for gridlock, paralysis and any other negative process word that fits.

Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be contacted at cozguytho@aol.com