New York Conservative Party Extends Influence at Polls and in Capital "The Conservative endorsement was extremely important in helping to win the Republican primary," Ms. Long said. "It essentially acts as a "Good Housekeeping" seal of approval for many conservative Republican voters and Tea Party members when they are evaluating candidates." This month, the party celebrated its 50th anniversary (at which the talk show host Sean Hannity spoke), having notched several legislative victories during the session that just ended - capping a successful electoral record in a decidedly blue state in which the Conservatives have elbowed the Republican Party to the right. Not so far right, though, Conservatives say, that the party has outlived its original objectives or become a victim of its own success. "If the state Republican Party was where the national party is," said Michael R. Long of Brooklyn, the Conservative state chairman, "we'd be out of business." The Conservative Party's endorsement of Ms. Long, a Manhattan lawyer who is not related to Mr. Long, helped her win the three-way Republican primary to go up against Senator Gillibrand because of a political equation that has gone unaltered for nearly four decades: Since 1974, no Republican has won statewide in New York without the official backing of the Conservative Party. The number of enrolled Conservatives has been dwindling for a number of years - it now stands at about 140,000 of the state's 10.5 million registered voters ("they're aging out or moving to Florida, California and Texas," Mr. Long said). But two years ago, the party regained a place high on the ballot for statewide elections by drawing 232,000 votes on its line for Carl P. Paladino, the Republican candidate for governor who lost to Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat. Conservative voters provided the margin of victory in a half-dozen State Senate races, helping Republicans to recapture control of that body. Conservatives were credited with killing two bills in the latest legislative session, one that would have raised the minimum wage and another that would have decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana. Last year, Conservatives were stung when four Republican senators voted to support making same-sex marriage legal, prompting Mr. Long to withhold his party's endorsement for their re-election - a decision that could cost Republicans control of the Senate. One of the four decided not to run again and the other three face primary challenges. "I would still like a Republican Senate," Mr. Long said, "but I certainly can't flinch and change my word on that, or then we become meaningless." The party was organized in 1962 by leaders who were alarmed by what they viewed as the liberal bent of Republican elected officials in New York, and who sought to form a counterweight to the Liberal Party. The new party rapidly singled out three Republican targets: Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, Senator Jacob K. Javits and Mayor John V. Lindsay. "We always had a target, and that target was the liberals," said Serphin R. Maltese, Mr. Long's predecessor as state chairman and a former state senator from Queens. "Certainly the word "liberal" was much more approved of than "conservative." Look at it now: we were initiators of a great movement. We did it in New York, the liberal bastion of the United States. In 1962, the party's candidate for governor got only 142,000 votes. But in 1965, William F. Buckley got nearly 350,000, or 13 percent, as the Conservative candidate for New York mayor. The following year, building on the campaigns of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Mr. Buckley in 1965, Paul L. Adams got 513,000 votes as the Conservative candidate for governor, bumping the Liberal Party from one of the higher lines on the ballot. In 1970, James L. Buckley ran solely on the Conservative line and squeaked past a Democrat and a Liberal to win Robert F. Kennedy's former Senate seat. And within less than two decades, all three of the party's original targets were eliminated politically. Mr. Lindsay mounted a short-lived presidential campaign in 1972 and decided not to seek re-election as mayor the following year; Mr. Rockefeller was bounced from the national ticket as President Gerald R. Ford's running mate in 1976; and Mr. Javits was defeated in a Republican primary and then in the general election in 1980 by Alfonse M. D'Amato. "The unholy trinity of Javits, Rockefeller and Lindsay were the raison d"être for the party's establishment in 1962," said Kieran Mahoney, a political consultant whose father, J. Daniel Mahoney, was the party's second state chairman, "and in one fashion or another we got all three of them." In 2001, James P. Molinaro, a top Conservative Party leader, was elected Staten Island borough president. The following year, the Liberal Party lost its automatic state ballot line in large part because of Mr. Cuomo's abandoned campaign for governor that year. "If you think 50 years ago, our original intention was we had targets because you needed somebody to inspire people," Mr. Maltese said, adding that the original targets happened to be incumbent liberal Republicans. Today, there are still in the Republican Party many people who resent the Conservative Party, but the vast majority realize we have a working partnership.