The majority leader of the state Senate, Joseph Bruno, is throwing his weight behind a bid by the chairman of the Nassau County Republican Party to take over the state party.

A day after the state party chairman, Stephen Minarik, said he was stepping down in the wake of the Democratic sweep of statewide offices in Tuesday’s election, a top aide to Mr. Bruno said the majority leader is turning to Joseph Mondello, a fixture of machine politics in the suburban Republican stronghold for more than two decades, to lead the weakened party forward.

“Joe Mondello indicated to Senator Bruno that he wants to become chairman, and Senator Bruno is going to strongly support him,” the aide, John McArdle, told The New York Sun.

In an interview with the Sun from his home in Oyster Bay Cove, Mr. Mondello, 68, said the party was facing difficult times and needs a “new cadre of young, energetic Republican candidates that are going to be able to challenge” Democrats.

“Let’s face it,” he said, “it’s been very difficult for Republicans in recent years.”

On Tuesday, Republicans lost every statewide race by more than 15 percentage points and also lost three congressional seats, putting the party in its weakest position since World War II. Whoever succeeds Mr. Minarik, who served two years as chairman, will face the challenge of rebuilding a splintered party infrastructure in the face of an eroding upstate Republican base.

Mr. Mondello said he “some ideas” for rebuilding the party, but he declined to share them. Asked what the Republican Party stands for, he said, “We are a party of the people who want to have less government.”

Saying he was most disturbed about the re-election of Alan Hevesi as comptroller, Mr. Mondello said the Republican Party must begin to cultivate candidates to reclaim statewide offices. New Yorkers, he said, “elected an individual whose ethics are in serious question. The people of New York just selected him. That’s abhorrent to me.”

As the de facto leader of the party, Mr. Bruno, whose Republican caucus survived the Democratic tidal wave on Tuesday to hang onto its slim majority, wields significant clout over the party’s more than 400 delegates who are expected to vote on a new chairman by the end of the month. With the weighted vote favoring counties with the highest numbers of registered Republicans, Mr. Mondello’s position would seem strong. His base in Long Island accounts for a fifth of the weighted vote.

Still, it’s not guaranteed that upstate Republican county chairmen will immediately fall in line with Mr. Bruno. Mr. Mondello could face opposition from possible contenders such as state Senator Raymond Meier, who lost the 24th congressional race to Michael Arcuri.

The executive director of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, Edward Lurie, had expressed interest in the job, but will likely bow out of the race.

A victory by Mr. Mondello would concentrate the party’s power base and potentially its resources in Long Island, where Republicans have a monopoly on the Senate seats. For Mr. Bruno, a focus on Long Island is a crucial part of his strategy to preserve his 34–28 majority.

Republican sources said county chairmen may demand that Mr. Mondello relinquish his post as county chairman out of a fear that there would be a conflict of interest if he held both positions at once.

For more than 23 years, Mr. Mondello has pulled the strings of the Nassau County Republican Party, a political machine that was once a major player national party politics but has declined in influence in recent years.

Once an engine of patronage, the party has seen countywide offices and the Legislature fall into Democratic hands. As demographics have shifted, the number of registered Democrats has risen by about 70,000 while Republican ranks have been stagnant.

Mr. Mondello briefly attracted attention during the Republican state convention in June, when it was thought that he would play role of kingmaker in the battle of the party’s designation between John Faso and William Weld.

Going against the wishes of Governor Pataki, who supported Mr. Weld, Mr. Mondello split his support between the two candidates. As it turned out, Mr. Faso would have won the delegate vote regardless of Mr. Mondello’s backing.

Mr. Mondello is also of counsel to the law firm of Berkman, Henoch, Peterson and Peddy. An Army veteran, Mr. Mondello served as a Hempstead council member between 1979 and 1987 and held the position of Hempstead presiding supervisor between 1987 and 1993.