ALBANY - Many of the folding chairs at the Mack Center at Hofstra University were empty on that summer day in 2006 at the New York Republican convention. Candidates and party faithful seemed to almost accept the coming Democratic wave, which would take every statewide office that year.

The wave crested Tuesday, when Republicans lost their 40-year grip on the Senate majority, their only power base in Albany, along with half of the GOP's remaining congressional members. Democrats in New York now control the governor's mansion and both houses of the Legislature for the first time since 1935. Democrats outnumber Republicans in the Congressional delegation 26-3.

Now Republicans say the party needs re-branding if it is to avoid a long stay in the political wilderness.

“We've got to do things differently,” said former U.S. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, a moderate who was dean of New York's Republican delegation and in Washington for 24 years. “But we're not going to gain the confidence of a majority of the electorate until the party shows it is dealing with the needs of the majority of people in a meaningful way.”

That, he said, means the party shouldn't be led by the platform of the far right if it hopes to makes gains in Congress and statewide. Instead, Republicans need to create bold solutions to pressing, current issues such as property taxes and school quality.

“Now, throughout the 62 counties, this is an organization that is not as strong as it once was,” he said. “Quite frankly, most county committees have limited influence in the overall process of creating the state party platform, of influencing the direction for leaders.”

Seizing on grass roots concerns is part of how Republican Bill Weld won two terms as governor of heavily Democratic Massachusetts. But it didn't even get him the GOP nomination for governor in New York in 2006.

“The Massachusetts Republican party in 1986 was a laughing stock,” Weld said in an interview. “Four years later, I got elected governor of Massachusetts - and I was not a very strong candidate.”

“I eked into office with 50.1 percent of the vote, and four years later, economics again conspired to make it a Republican year and we got 71 percent of the vote,” Weld said.

Weld, a former federal prosecutor, came down hard on the most pressing issues for constituents - taxes, welfare reform and crime among them.

“I'm sort of way out there on the right wing on the fiscal polices and way out on the left wing on the social policies, so I come out somewhere in the middle,” he said.

In the case of New York's Republican Senate, its platform has long highlighted its efforts to cut property taxes, attract big employers and blame failure on uncooperative, big-spending Democrats. Meanwhile, the upstate economy has sunk deeper for decades, property taxes are among the nation's highest despite state subsidies of $5 billion a year, and lavish spending on special interests contributed to a fiscal crisis.

“People upstate don't buy the baloney anymore,” said Ray Meier, a former Republican state senator who lost his bid to replace Boehlert in 2006. He is considered a leading candidate to be the next state Republican chairman.

“One of the things I learned after losing my congressional race is you need to step back and reflect,” he said. “And this party needs to develop a message and we need to talk to people about things that are relevant.”

He said that means reviving the upstate economy, lowering property taxes, making health care affordable and accessible, and improving the quality of schools, even if politicians have to cross powerful lobbies.

“Unless you have something interesting to say, you don't have a future,” he said. “Successful political movements are about ideas.”

For example, when Democratic Gov. David Paterson this spring proposed to cap property tax growth at 4 percent a year, then-Senate Republican leader Joseph Bruno wouldn't even let it get to the floor. The state teachers' unions, a major ally of and campaign contributor to Senate Republicans, strongly opposed the cap.

“Our party should have been out in front on that,” Meier said.

Bruno's successor, Sen. Dean Skelos of Long Island, quickly supported the tax cap, but only after the issue was already shelved by the Democrat-led Assembly.

Some Republicans, who date to the days when little known George Pataki toppled Democratic icon Mario Cuomo, say today's party needs a sharp political operative and fresh faces.

Powerful local Republicans such as Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney and Erie County Executive Chris Collins have made a mark without state party help and had the kind of executive experience that voters like. It helped Pataki, the former Peekskill mayor; and Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, a former town supervisor.

“This party has the opportunity to reinvent itself by creating bold, creative answers to problems,” Meier said. “And look around - there's nothing for us to lose.'

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Michael Gormley is the Albany, N.Y., Capitol editor for The Associated Press. He can be reached by e-mail at mgormley(at)ap.org.

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