ALBANY – State Senator Martin Golden sweeps into his spacious, ninth-floor office across from the Capitol, sinks into an armchair, and smiles. The 54-year-old Republican from Brooklyn has just rushed back from the floor of the Senate, and he’s ready to talk. And talk. And talk.

A relative latecomer to politics, Mr. Golden unseated a Democratic incumbent two years ago in one of the most heavily Democratic Senate districts in the state. Yet neither that campaign nor his re-election last year has slowed the former police officer or moderated the conservative views that helped him stand out among elected New York City officials after little more than a single term in office.

“My days are pretty hectic, but I’m one of those guys who doesn’t need a lot of rest,” Mr. Golden said. “I was always one of those guys who, if I didn’t have a lot to do, I’d get myself into trouble.”

Not that Mr. Golden has kept away from trouble in Albany. In the past six months alone, he has led an effort that has kept the United Nations from obtaining city property in Manhattan, vehemently opposed state-financed research using stem cells from human embryos, and rankled teachers unions by proposing unlimited charter schools and a tuition tax credit for parents of children in private schools.

As one of only four Republicans from New York City in the GOP-led Senate, Mr. Golden was assured a place at the table that his predecessor, Vincent Gentile, a Democrat, never had. And he has not been reluctant to use it. He is the lead sponsor on no fewer than 169 bills before the Senate this session, and he often speaks at lobbying events and Republican press conferences.

The upshot: If Mr. Golden is a latecomer to politics, he is a latecomer of whom even senior lawmakers must now take notice.

Then, too, Mr. Golden’s athletic build, ruddy complexion, and broad smile help attract attention. He comes alive behind a podium, speaking alternately in hushed tones and a booming tenor. He is a backslapper who likes to say he is fluent in two languages, English and Brooklynese. If the borough president, Marty Markowitz, is the Democratic face of Brooklyn, then Mr. Golden has quickly become its Republican face to the rest of the state. He is Brooklyn’s other Marty.

Mr. Golden is the oldest of eight children, whose parents moved to Brooklyn from Ireland in 1949. He said his family, like most immigrant families, started out strongly Democratic. And the political legacy of that generation remains strong today: Of the registered major-party voters in the borough today, only one in seven is a Republican.

Mr. Golden might have remained a Democrat himself had it not been for two important events.

The first was the election of President Reagan. He was not politically active until after Reagan’s election, he said, but he has considered the Californian a political hero since.

“He was a guy that looked like he was on a mission, and the mission he was trying to accomplish was something I believed in – God and country and family,” Mr. Golden said. “He was someone I admired, someone who stuck to his convictions regardless of what it meant, and achieved a great deal for the world.”

The other event was Mr. Golden’s forced retirement from the New York Police Department in 1983 after a debilitating accident, in which, while chasing a drug dealer, he was struck by a car. Though he is not visibly impaired now, the accident ravaged ligaments in both his legs.

After his retirement, Mr. Golden opened a catering hall, the Bay Ridge Manor, with family members. It was while building up the business, he said, that he saw the opportunities opened up by government action. A former member of the City Council, Sal Albanese, rented an office above the catering hall, and Mr. Golden got to see political action up close. He became a member of the local community board, advocating for changes in the way the police patrolled his neighborhood and fighting zoning changes he thought would damage business.

It was not until 1997 that Mr. Golden first took an elected office. At age 47, he ran for and won the council seat that had been vacated when Mr. Albanese decided to run for mayor against Mayor Giuliani. Mr. Golden said he began to think about higher office as a way to deliver even more to the residents of Brooklyn’s southern edge. He ran for Senate in 2002 and won. By then, Mr. Golden and his wife, Colleen, had two young children, Michael, now 14, and Patrick James, now 6.

Mr. Golden’s tenure on the Senate got an early jolt last fall when he was asked to vote for legislation that would allow the United Nations to expand onto land in Midtown East that is occupied by the Robert Moses Playground. His refusal to approve the deal and his eagerness to explain his reasoning made headlines. Mr. Golden said he is proud of blocking the expansion and still refuses to act on legislation favorable to the body until its secretary-general, Kofi Annan, resigns.

“They can go wherever they want as long as they don’t need state legislation,” Mr. Golden said with a smile. “If they need state legislation, they’re not going to get it. We’re not willing to discuss it unless there are some positive changes, and the only positive changes I can see is Kofi Annan stepping down.”

Mr. Golden’s shoot-from-the-hip style and willingness to speak out as a conservative on social issues is welcome to those who think the majority leader of the Senate, Joseph Bruno, has capitulated on traditional Republican issues. Yet Mr. Golden is not without his conservative detractors. His endorsement of Mayor Bloomberg for another term has drawn the ire of a former council member, Thomas Ognibene of Queens, who is running against Mr. Bloomberg; and of the chairman of the state Conservative Party, Michael Long.

“I think Marty’s a very strong-minded conservative, and I think the endorsement of Michael Bloomberg is inconsistent with his own personal beliefs,” Mr. Long said. “That’s why the Republican Party is in trouble in this state, because they don’t adhere to the principles they advocate. When you walk away from your principles, you’re not showing people that there is a different way to govern. I think Michael Bloomberg is a very nice man, but that’s not the way to grow the party.”

Mr. Golden defends his outspokenness and his social views – no abortion for any reason; no gay marriage – as representative of his district. He said Republicans in the state, who fear the possible loss of the governor’s office next year and a narrowing of their majority in the state Senate, would do well to adopt a political philosophy closer to his own. Mr. Golden stopped short of openly criticizing his Republican peers in the Senate or Governor Pataki, who Mr. Golden said will run and win a fourth term against the presumptive Democratic candidate, Eliot Spitzer, the attorney general.

“There are issues out there that definitely affect this state, and sometimes you’ve gotta wonder if, in fact, the state is making some decisions that are not the greatest,” Mr. Golden said. He went on to say, however, that if the Democratic Party took over, “You’d have a sign on the city that said ‘Gone fishin.'”

“I think there is a great future here in the city and the state,” Mr. Golden said, “but only if you have a Republican Senate and a Republican governor.”

Asked about his own political ambitions, which have been said to include everything from mayor of New York City to governor of New York, Mr. Golden is uncharacteristically reserved.

“Whatever door is open I take,” he said. “Right now the door that’s open is the New York state Senate, and that’s the door I’m going to take.”