I normally require some anti-depressants and vodka to think back on the New York Senate election of 2000, but enough time may have passed for me to now do so without breaking down sobbing and going to lie down in a dark room. At the time, I invested a fair amount of my time, energy and money in a futile effort to help Rick Lazio prevent our Senate seat from being carpetbagged by Hillary Clinton. The results were… well, it’s probably best not to delve too deeply even now.

But the former congressman may be looking at a comeback next year. The New York Daily News reports Empire State Democrats are facing the fallout from a series of scandals and internecine fighting between their Upstate voters and Manhattan, so Republicans like Lazio are smelling blood in the water.

Lazio, 50, took aim not just at liberal Democrats, but at the Republican status quo that’s “more concerned about staying in office and playing tactical politics than about where we were going as a state and what kind of vision we might have for ourselves.”

Since 2006, the Republicans have lost the governor’s mansion and the state Senate, which has a Democratic majority for the first time since 1965.

“We can look at this and we can be discouraged, or we can look at this and we can say this may be our moment,” he said.

New York’s Conservative Party isn’t big enough actually put candidates in state wide office, but they control enough of the votes normally courted by Republicans that their influence is beyond dispute. Lazio took his speaking engagement as an opportunity to articulate the direction he thinks Northeast Republicans should be taking.

“As long as New York Republicans are identified with southern fundamental conservatism, we’re going to struggle because it’s going to be very hard to break through and to talk to people who are new immigrants and the different demographic groups that we traditionally haven’t won,” Lazio said.

“So, I think the northeast’s Republicans need to get back to a heritage where they had that kind of relationship and they need to be able to talk about issues, and I don’t mean just individual candidates running.”

“You need to have support at the higher levels. You need to have the sort of aircover that there are people who got ideas that mean something, that are relevant to people that are from different ethnic backgrounds. We just have not done as good a job as we need to. We’ve done a poor job as a matter of fact, if truth be told, in that.”

Lazio strikes a much needed tone and his message is spot on. As much as it may make some diehard Christian Conservatives from the Bible Belt chafe, that sort of message simply doesn’t sell up here. Republicans and conservatives in the Empire State are still of the Rockefeller school. More libertarian in nature, they tend to dislike high taxes, push for smaller government and fiscal conservatism, and generally just went Big Brother to keep his nose out of their lives. Single issue advocates who focus on abortion or gay marriage generally won’t get the time of day from them.

If the recent affairs of Elliot Spitzer, coupled with the dust up over Hillary Clinton’s replacement have left voters with a sour taste in their mouths, Rick may be correct in thinking there is an opportunity coming up. The governor’s mansion and both Senate seats will be up for grabs next year, and tensions are running high between the rural upstate region and the city. Chuck Schumer’s seat looks to be safe, but Kirsten Gillibrand is expecting a bloody battle in her own party if she is to win the chance to fill out Hillary Clinton’s term.

People tend to think of New York as one of the bluest of the blue states, but it’s worth noting that similar conditions to today existed back in the eighties. We had not only a multiple term Republican governor, but a Senator as well, and Reagan carried the state twice. New York could do a lot worse than Rick Lazio and you never know… stranger things have happened.