Senator Schumer’s landslide re-election victory may position him better for another campaign that has caught his eye: the 2006 contest for the governor’s office.

Mr. Schumer, who won across demographic, geographic, and party lines Tuesday, broke an election record set in 1988 by Senator Moynihan. After 12 years in the Senate, Mr. Moynihan managed to garner 67% of the vote across the state. Mr. Schumer crushed that record with 71%, or 4.2 million votes, yesterday. At the top of the ticket, Senator Kerry, while comfortably carrying New York, lagged well behind his Senate colleague, winning 58% of the vote.

“He has emerged as the giant of New York State politics,” a political strategist, Hank Sheinkopf, said of Mr. Schumer. The senator drew cross-party votes upstate and in the suburbs and won the Catholic vote, which makes up 42% of the voters in New York State.

“How could he not be encouraged?” Mr. Sheinkopf said.

Indeed, the senior senator was one of the few New York politicians to emerge unscathed from Tuesday’s elections. A roster of local pols, from the Manhattan borough president, C. Virginia Fields, a possible mayoral contender, to Attorney General Eliot Spitzer had been angling for jobs in a Kerry administration and now will have to content themselves with positions closer to home.

“To the winner goes the spoils,” another strategist, George Arzt, said. “There were many people in New York who were active in the Kerry campaign, and they are upset by the results.”

Ms. Fields might have won a regional Housing and Urban Development position, Mr. Arzt said, and Mr. Spitzer was considered a contender for U.S. attorney general had Mr. Kerry prevailed. Instead, Ms. Fields, who is prevented by the term-limits law from seeking re-election, may now take a second look at challenging Mayor Bloomberg for city office, and Mr. Spitzer could redouble his resolve to run against Mr. Schumer for governor.

“The thing that changes the calculus in the governor’s race isn’t Schumer’s big win, it is the fact that Kerry lost,” a Baruch College professor of public policy, Doug Muzzio, said. “If Kerry had won or the Senate had gone to Democrats, Schumer would have more incentive to stay in Washington. With Bush in the White House and a Republican Senate it will be less satisfying being a senator.”

Steve Malanga, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute, agreed. “The more important point is that the Republicans solidified control of the Senate and that makes Schumer more powerless in the Senate,” he said. “That, more than anything, would prompt him to leave Washington. Odds are he probably will run for governor.”

Three New York political giants are thought to be considering making a run for the state’s top office in 2006: Mr. Schumer, Mr. Spitzer, and Mayor Giuliani. Mr. Schumer and Mr. Spitzer, both Democrats, would have to face off in a primary before locking horns with the former mayor. In two years, meanwhile, Senator Clinton is likely to be running for re-election.

Governor Pataki, for his part, is expected to get a high-visibility post in the new Bush administration. “It is hard to imagine a situation where he won’t be offered something if he wants it,” Mr. Sheinkopf said.

Mr. Pataki’s possible retirement from the field of battle, and the big win this week across the state, gives Mr. Schumer the advantage in the gubernatorial stakes, Maurice Carroll, who runs the Quinnipiac poll and is a longtime observer of New York politics, said.

“Schumer is the first Democrat who ever decided that he wouldn’t stop at the Yonkers line to woo voters,” Mr. Carroll said. “Does his big win drastically change the calculus of the governor’s race? Probably not – he was always going to run, and he is not going to scare any challengers off with the latest results. But does this tell him he can be pretty confident? Sure it does.”

Mr. Schumer has been publicly coy about his plans for higher office. When asked during a recent debate whether he would run for governor, the senator demurred, saying he could “never say never.”

Mr. Schumer’s overall approval rating also stands him in good stead against the competition. A Marist poll released late last week showed that 61% of those asked rated him either good or excellent, compared to 57% for both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Spitzer, and 41% for Mr. Pataki. The poll involved interviews by telephone with more than 650 New Yorkers.

The survey didn’t pit the senator against Mr. Giuliani, who seems more focused on getting a top job in the Bush administration than a job in Albany.

“The real question for Rudy is what is the best way to run for president, as governor or America’s mayor?” Mr. Muzzio of Baruch said. “He is thinking of 2008, and if he decides the governor’s job in 2006 will help him win the presidency, he’ll throw his hat in the ring.”

More fundamentally, Mr. Arzt said local politicians should be worried about the more general fallout for New York, which is a blue state on the electoral map. “I’m concerned about what this does about Washington’s attitude toward New York,” he said. “Republicans in Congress could keep feeding their base and do very little for a state like New York that is heavily blue.”