According to two separate accounts, he strode into the Republican caucus room adjacent to the county legislature's meeting room prior to a recent meeting, and said, "When things quiet down, I'll tell you some funny stories about running for statewide office."

He then announced, before turning to the business at hand, that it was "time to begin our incumbency campaign," informing a handful of his fellow legislators -- Darlene Harris and Thomas Glynn among them -- that they'd "need some help in next year's election."

"The arrogance of the man is just unbelievable," one of his fellow Republicans said later. "Here's a man who just got soundly beaten, whose own re-election to the legislature next November is now somewhat in question, and yet he's walking around like he's the prince of the world."

"It's very strange" agreed a Republican legislator who professes to admire Blakeman in many respects. "You'd think he'd be licking his wounds, but he's not."

A few days later, at a public speaking event, Blakeman digressed from his text to talk about what he sees as his bright future in statewide politics.

"This race afforded me the opportunity to meet a lot of people I wouldn't have gotten to know otherwise, and... people like me," he said.

While Senator Alfonse D'Amato's loss at the polls was the headline story of the election, there were a number of ways of rationalizing what happened in his race: "he erroneously went decidedly negative," many pundits said.

"He simply overstayed his welcome," others argued.

It was, in Republican terms, sad, but, perhaps, inevitable.

Far more troubling to the Nassau Republican Committee was the humiliation Nassau's Presiding Officer Bruce Blakeman experienced on election night.

Not least of all because, in local circles, the drum beats pronounced him "the rising star of the party."

That said, going into the state comptroller's race against the popular incumbent H. Carl McCall, Blakeman was expected to wage an uphill battle. But time and again Blakeman failed to meet the expectations the party had for him.

Early on -- in fact it was one of the reasons he was chosen as the candidate in the first place -- the party believed Blakeman would bring a significant amount of money into the race, drawing on both his family fortune and his connections. That money never materialized.

What's more, the man once viewed as a rising star in Nassau County politics, not only lost the election, but lost on his home turf. Statewide, McCall handily defeated Blakeman 65 percent to 33, while here in Nassau, the McCall edge was 55 percent to 43.

Worse for a man now facing his own re-election battle next year, Blakeman only squeaked by in his own legislative district, edging McCall by just over 300 votes.

"There's no way Blakeman will lose Nassau," a high-ranking Republican official had said, days before the election.

Now that he has, and now that he has in the fashion he has, many of his fellow Republicans are already saying he's finished in terms of ever achieving higher office.

And the Democrats are already salivating over next year's local legislative elections. "Without question, we're going after him," said one.

Though they would speak only on background, in the days after the election, many Republican officials said Blakeman's performance "removed a big variable in Nassau County politics."

"Chairman Mondello is saying all the right things, publicly," offered one person close to party headquarters. "But the fact is, no matter what's said, Bruce Blakeman lost Nassau County. Having George Pataki, a popular governor, at the top of the ticket, meant nothing in his race... and now people are coming to believe that if Bruce had done better here, Dennis Vacco might have been able to pull out his race for attorney general."

More than numbers and just plain winning and losing, the race for state comptroller has apparently left Blakeman with a heap of political baggage, not the least of which is his relationship with organizations like the Nassau County PBA.

"The bottom line is, we endorsed the guy we thought was more credible," said PBA president Gary Dela Rabba recently. "Bruce Blakeman just didn't seem to have a concept of what the state comptroller's job was."

Dela Rabba, though, declined to comment publicly about what occurred when candidate Blakeman appeared before his group for the "endorsement interview."

A number of people who know the specifics say Nassau's presiding officer walked into the interview having already alienated those who sat in judgment of him and proceeded to alienate them further.

The ill feelings between the group and the lawmaker go back to the contract negotiations between the county and the police department. After an arbitrator gave the police a significant raise, Nassau's presiding officer expressed his displeasure, for the record, in print.

Still, Dela Rabba, contends, had Blakeman done well in the interview for their potential endorsement, he still might have walked away with it.

In the world of political endorsements -- particularly when there is a long-standing relationship between the political party and the organization -- interviews like the one Blakeman went to are considered a slam dunk.

In many cases, prior to the interview, the candidate is not only prepped in regard to the questions, but also told what the anticipated answer should be.

For a group like the PBA, sources said, the main thing to tell them is that their pension fund is sacrosanct.

Bruce Blakeman, a number of individuals have said, promptly walked into this interview and announced he'd raid the police pension fund and invest the money as other pension funds are invested.

After that interview, sources said, the PBA president called Nassau County Republican Chairman Joseph N. Mondello to tell him not only what happened, but -- stressing the cordial relationship the union and the party have had over the years -- telling Mondello that the PBA would have to come out strongly against Blakeman in order to protect their best interests.

Immediately thereafter, the Nassau PBA took out advertisements on H. Carl McCall's behalf in the New York Post as well as several south shore weekly newspapers.

Police officers also reportedly telephoned everyone in the legislator's home district urging a vote for McCall.

It's now believed that the union will wage a similar effort next year to oust Blakeman once and for all from Nassau County politics.

If having the police union against you as a political candidate is bad; having them joined by the village mayors -- especially when you represent a few villages yourself -- is particularly bad.

After the county legislature, just days before the election, slashed a proposal from the county budget that would have provided sales tax revenue to the incorporated villages for the first time in history, members of the Nassau VOA vowed to target certain legislators next year, not least among the Bruce Blakeman himself, Vincent Muscarella, and Thomas Glynn.

"A lot of people are pretty upset," Floral Park Mayor Steve Corbett said. "Now what we are considering is, what's the best way to attack this."

The issue appears to have galvanized the mayors, who are beginning to focus their attentions on just one or two of the legislators.

Knock off just one, the feeling is, and you'll send a message to the rest.

The rub is that in adopting the budget, the vote in the legislature was along party lines, so any legislator targeted, will be a Republican legislator.

"Targeting someone's race is the rude awakening," Mayor Corbett said.

Reportedly along with the mayors' displeasure over what happened with the sales tax, goes the displeasure felt by State Senator Dean Skelos.

In 1996, when the Nassau Legislature was first elected, Barabra Dillon lost the Fifth Legislative District seat to Democrat Edward Oppenheimer by close to 1,000 votes.

Two years later, in large part due to the leadership and political savvy of Dean Skelos, Thomas Glynn won that seat by 100 votes, a turn-around of 1,100 votes.

Believing the sales tax issue has irrevocably harmed Glynn in Rockville Centre, the heart of his district, Skelos is said to be less than pleased with Blakeman.

The reason? Because this past fall Blakeman held the county tax hike down to 3.6 percent at a time when many of the experts, and even many of his Republican colleagues on the legislature, were urging a tax increase of closer to 8 percent.

If they had done that, a number of Republican lawmakers now say, they would have done much more to get the county's fiscal house in order. In addition, they also could have done so while approving the sales tax share.

If Glynn, a likable candidate who has never made waves, goes down to defeat, many of the Republican rank and file are saying, it will be because, in the words of one, "Bruce Blakeman sought to bolster his own standing with the electorate this year."

(Editor's Note: This newspaper attempted to contact both Bruce Blakeman and State Senator Dean Skelos while preparing this article. Neither was available for comment.)