As Mayor Bloomberg positions himself for an independent run for the presidency, let us spare a thought for the Republican Party in New York State. We take nothing away from Mr. Bloomberg when we note that his abandoning the local Republican Party after using it to launch his political career represents a kind of mini-tragedy. We’re not passing value judgments. But it’s something to reflect on what might have been.

In 2001, Mr. Bloomberg changed his affiliation from Democrat to Republican and entered the race to succeed Mayor Giuliani. Mr. Bloomberg wasn’t just a nominal Democrat, but a funder of Democratic causes and candidates. To win the Grand Old Party’s nomination Mr. Bloomberg had to defeat another former Democrat, Herman Badillo, whose intellectual voyage from the Democratic camp to the Republicans was far clearer than Mr. Bloomberg’s.

Mr. Badillo was overwhelmed in the primary by the resources that Mr. Bloomberg brought to his effort. And while Mr. Bloomberg has since adopted some of Mr. Badillo’s ideas, such as ending social promotion in the public schools, it is fair to point out that the mayor was never much of a Republican. And for all his accomplishments as mayor, it is astonishing how little he did to vivify the political party he used to gain office.

Mr. Bloomberg replaced almost all of Mr. Giuliani’s commissioners, often with veterans of earlier Democratic administrations. The local Republican Party got little, if anything, in the way of patronage. It was widely reported that of the first 60 or so judges Mr. Bloomberg appointed, none identified as a Republican. The mayor did endorse Governor Pataki for reelection in 2002, President Bush in 2004, and an occasional local office seeker. He did open his checkbook to the GOP as well. But he made no effort at party building. Not that Mr. Pataki set a great example.

When Mr. Bloomberg sought reelection in 2005, two Republicans sought to derail him, a former City Councilman, Thomas Ognibene, and an investment banker, Steven Shaw. It was a measure of just how low the local GOP had sunk that neither man, even after trying to combine resources, could gather enough signatures to win a space on the primary ballot. Mr. Bloomberg won the nomination by default. Nor did the Republicans field candidates for the other citywide positions, Public Advocate and City Comptroller.

Last year, as the state Republican Party was fighting for its survival, Mr. Bloomberg eschewed an endorsement of the party’s standard-bearer for governor, John Faso. He failed to aid any of the other statewide candidates of his party. It wasn’t the only reason that 2006 was a disaster for the state GOP, which lost all statewide offices and a number of Congressional seats. The GOP held onto its last bastion, the state senate.

While we delight in the possibility of three New Yorkers competing on the national stage, the collapse of the state party bothers us. When the state or city needed a course correction, such as when Fiorello LaGuardia was elected mayor in 1933, when Mayor Giuliani was elected in 1993, and indeed when Mr. Bloomberg was elected in 2001 as the smoke still rose from ground zero, the Republican Party was there to build a coalition around, one that independents and Democrats were eager and grateful to join. Will that be true in 2009, 2013, or 2033?