ALBANY — For New Yorkers who love a political drama, pull up a chair.

The decision on who will fill the U.S. Senate seat expected to be vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton, nominated to be secretary of state, will get a long run in New York.

And the stars are aligned for a global audience like never before: Next-generation Democratic luminaries like Andrew Cuomo and Caroline Kennedy leading a growing pack of more than a half-dozen hopefuls for a Clinton seat.

Subplots include Andrew Cuomo’s sticky divorce five years ago from a cousin of Caroline’s, which split the Cuomo-Kennedy Democratic dream team.

At the center of it all is Democratic Gov. David Paterson.

Eight months on the job, he is faced with the sole vote on who that will be, along with some other little chores including fighting off a state fiscal crisis and trying to help Democrats secure the fragile Senate majority they won in November despite dissidents threatening to go Republican.

“The truth of the matter is, the seat does not become available for at least six weeks,” said Steven Greenberg of the Siena College poll.

“So while it’s fun for reporters and for political spectators like myself to watch and conjecture and guess and look at every machination, my guess is the governor is far more focused on his budget that comes out next week and who will actually show up when he calls a legislative leaders’ meeting,” Greenberg said.

Yet bloggers and political writers are already tapping away at a breathless pace.

“Cuomo is by far the better choice,” stated Wednesday’s editorial in The Buffalo News in an unusual endorsement of a candidate for which there is no traditional campaign. “A Senate seat should go to someone who has earned it in his or her own right ... that description best fits Cuomo.”

“With a constellation of talent to choose from in New York, the last thing the citizens of the Empire State need is for (Paterson) ... to appoint a member of the Kennedy clan because her name, by virtue of birth, is magic,” said a Kingston Freeman editorial Wednesday.

“Where else would Caroline Kennedy be seriously considered for a U.S. Senate seat, even for a millisecond?” asked Fred LeBrun, columnist for the Albany Times Union. “Have we lost our collective minds?”

Boston Globe columnist Scot Lehigh said that although Kennedy is an accomplished author and lawyer, a Senate seat isn’t a “barony to be awarded as a political perk to the lightly experienced scion of a famous family.”

The Huffington Post Web site this week turned reticence, a common critical description of the daughter of slain President John F. Kennedy, into a virtue.

“Anybody who underestimates Attorney Caroline Kennedy, who wants to view her as somehow lightweight or just a celebrity name inside a business suit, does so at the risk to his and her sense of reality,” wrote Huffington blogger Al Giordano. “Her skill sets are not merely adequate, but, rather exceptional and extraordinary. She was ‘no drama’ before ‘no drama’ was cool.”

Newspapers worldwide are already weighing in, like The Courier Mail of Australia with a headline, “Caroline’s time is nigh.”

Maybe. But nigh is going to take awhile.

“It has all the elements needed to keep people chattering for weeks, that’s especially true because of the star power,” said Republican commentator Robert Bellafiore, former press secretary for GOP Gov. George Pataki.

“And chatters would rather be in the parlor game than the budget talks.”