This pleases us, because we like to think that the left wing -- call it the New York wing -- of the Republican Party is an undervalued stock. On the national stage, the conservatives control the institutions of power, but when they have a political convention, they push liberals and libertarians like Arnold and Rudy to the front. In New York, liberal Republicans have held the important executive offices for a decade, but there's no prominent liberal Republican holding more local office.

Over on the East Side, straight liberal Republicans spent the 1990s losing because Democrats painted them as Bush-DeLay-Gingrich clones. It'll be harder to do that with Murphy, whose group tries (often rather forlornly) to articulate a libertarian Republicanism that's nicely consistent, even if it hasn't exactly caught fire with the base.

If Murphy runs, we hear he'll have what's left of the East Side Republican organization firmly behind him. He can test Christie Whitman's notion of a liberal Republican revival.

Perhaps he'll even give us a City Council race that's still worth watching in November.