It’s time for New York Republicans and Conservatives to consider whom to nominate for statewide offices next year.

This is against this backdrop:

¯ Not since 2002 have Republicans or Conservatives won a statewide race in New York.

¯ Since then, New York Democrats’ enrollment advantage over New York Republicans has increased.

¯ The state’s Republican region — Western, Central, Northern, and Upstate New York — has a decreasing share of New York’s population.

¯ Meanwhile, the state’s Democrat region — New York City broadly understood as including Long Island, New York City itself, and multiple downstate counties north of New York City — has an increasing share of New York’s population, and

¯ Democrats control all of state government, including the state Senate, which Republicans controlled for most of several consecutive decades.

Nevertheless, Republicans’ and Conservatives’ best chance to win any statewide race in New York is when Democrats hold power in Albany and Washington, mess up, depress their base, and fire up the Republican and Conservative bases, thereby converting into persuadable voters a significant number of those who tend to vote for Democrats.

It takes no political genius to see all of those stars beginning to align.

Hello 2022.

Five statewide offices — all with Democrat incumbents — are up in 2022: Governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller, and United States senator.

Let’s focus here on the races for governor and lieutenant governor.

New York Democrats include many good people with conservative inclinations. Show them a liberal Republican, and they have nothing in common with either label. Show them a conservative Republican, and they already have one thing in common.

It won’t do to go down the path of a Rockefeller Republican or a Republican In Name Only, or RINO.

The people of New York — given a choice between a Democrat and someone who might as well be a Democrat — will likely vote for the real thing.

Republicans’ and Conservatives’ best chance of winning New York’s 2022 gubernatorial election is with a ticket of:

¯ Committed movement conservatives who can

¯ Passionately, convincingly articulate their principles

¯ In a pleasing, engaging way

¯ Across all of New York, from Findley Lake to Plattsburgh, and from Niagara Falls to the Hamptons.

This includes having candidates who are both willing and committed to going to places that Republicans often don’t go, or don’t go enough.

One part of an effective, winning message, particularly yet not only in such places, is this simple point: Liberalism in New York — primarily in recent decades from Democrats but also from some Republicans — has, on the whole, failed.

For example, despite many efforts and successes from many in both the private and the public sectors, many regions of New York have never truly emerged from the recession.

Of the 1970s.

In such regions, no one born since 1960 has any recollection of sustained local economic prosperity. In 2025, those regions will begin to have senior citizens with no such recollection.

This is the primarily — nay, overwhelmingly — the fault of liberalism from Albany.

Turning the wheel of the ship of state starts with a commitment by rank-and-file Republicans and Conservatives from across New York to take a winning, effective message all across New York.

With that commitment comes the task of finding the right gubernatorial ticket.

That means not just candidates who have a winning campaign message but also those who are committed to carrying it out after winning.

In selecting candidates for statewide offices, no demographic category into which potential candidates fit is relevant.

Republican and Conservative voters, and many persuadable Democrats, are on the whole way too smart to fall for selecting candidates based on demographics.

Such demographics were a factor in 2018 candidate selection.

In 2022, Republicans and Conservatives may have the best chance they’ve had in a long time to win back New York’s executive branch.

This would be a good time to run an especially good campaign.

Randy Elf joins those understanding that no political party gets everything it wants, yet it’s better to reach for the stars and get half way there than reach for the ground and make it.

COPYRIGHT ç 2021 BY RANDY ELF