In respect of the state Legislature, this year’s elections have become a referendum on the need for change at Albany, an impulse we endorse. Yet many of the entrenched incumbents in both the Assembly and Senate face little, if any, contest, which has the effect of sidelining many citizen soldiers in what could have been a taxpayer revolt. The fault here lies with the party on the outs in each district – which, in the precincts of New York City, almost always means the Republican Party – for utterly failing to recruit and support credible candidates. And city voters could do worse than to cast their ballots, as the New York Post suggests, for a straight anti-incumbent ticket – to vote against any sitting legislator of either party and, if necessary, write in a challenger where none otherwise exists.

Our own attention will be on two competitive races for open seats in the Senate. In the 34th Senate District, which straddles the northern Bronx and Westchester County, we endorse John Fleming. And in the 23rd district, which covers parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island, we support Albert Curtis. Both are Giuliani Republicans who would be voices for efficiency and integrity in state government.

Mr. Fleming, 46, is a former homicide detective with the New York City Police Department who once coordinated Mayor Giuliani’s security detail. Running a shoe-string campaign on a platform of lowering taxes and fighting crime, he managed to defeat the anointed candidate of the Senate Republican leadership, Democratic Assemblyman Stephen Kaufman, in a Republican primary. He therefore owes very little to the Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, and would bring an outsider’s point of view to the GOP conference.

While we have misgivings about his get-tough rhetoric on illegal immigration, Mr. Fleming is the clear choice over his two opponents, Assemblyman Jeffrey Klein on the Democratic ticket and Mr. Kaufman on the Independence and Conservative lines. Mr. Kaufman made a game revolt against the corrupt speaker, Sheldon Silver, but at the end of the day, he, too, voted for the commuter tax and other levies. Both he and Mr. Klein are too enmeshed in the politics of the Democratic Party and of the Bronx to present themselves credibly as agents of reform.

Mr. Curtis, 44, a former commissioner of youth services under Mr. Giuliani, is running for a seat to be vacated by the retirement of Seymour Lachman. Mr. Curtis is a proponent of giving parents more choices about where to send their children to school, a crucial component of struggle for the future of education. He also stands to become the highest-ranking African-American holding elected office in New York State, which would bring much-needed diversity to the state GOP. His opponent, Diane Savino, is a social worker who spent most of her career as a union activist. By our lights, the last thing Albany needs is another lawmaker in the thrall of organized labor.

It is true that electing Messrs. Fleming and Curtis to the Senate would tend to shore up the Republican majority of the Senate and, inter alia, the sway of Jos. Bruno, an amiable individual in person but a man who has betrayed the hopes of Republicans who aspire to see their party as the engine of reform and the friend of limited government. The part of the Legislature that most needs change, however, is the Assembly, which is dominated by big-government liberals, public employee unions, and trial lawyers. Given the possibility of a Democrat being elected governor in 2006, exchanging even the weak-kneed Senate Republicans for an all-Democratic Legislature is a type of reform the taxpayers of New York State cannot afford.