Nathaniel Brooks for The New York TimesCaesar Trunzo, 81, a Republican state senator from Long Island, has made it clear that he will run for re-election in the fall.
ALBANY — Last year was a tough one for State Senator Caesar Trunzo.
He slipped on the steps of a restaurant here after a Republican reception, broke three ribs and missed much of the legislative session in February. Then his wife became ill and had a kidney removed, so he missed most of April, tending to her.
“And then in June, she fell and broke her ankle,” he said.
But Mr. Trunzo, of Long Island, who is 81 and arrived in Albany when Nelson Rockefeller was governor, has made one thing clear to his fellow Republicans: He will run for re-election in the fall.
The Republicans are desperate to hang on to their two-seat majority in the Senate in November. But doing so relies on the staying power of an increasingly older bloc of senators, some with health problems and some with challengers a third their age.
Fifteen of the 32 Republican senators will be at least 65 by November. Seven will be at least 75.
All but one of them have agreed, at the urging of the Senate majority leader, the 78-year-old Joseph L. Bruno, to run for re-election and try to fight off a Democratic effort to gain control in the Senate for the first time in four decades.
Senator Owen Johnson, a Long Island Republican who is 79, said he would remain in office “till the Lord calls you away, I guess.”
Senator William J. Larkin Jr., a Hudson Valley Republican who is 80, said he had no retirement plans “unless the guy upstairs does.”
Democrats, who have begun an aggressive campaign against several senators, are raising the subject of age, though often gingerly, with suggestions that the silver-haired senators do not represent modern New York. Only two Democratic senators have reached the age of 70.
In a recent radio interview, the minority leader, Malcolm Smith, said that Senate Republicans, like the presidential candidate John McCain, represented “yesteryear.”
“It has nothing to do with age,” added Mr. Smith, a Queens Democrat. “It has to do with an old way of thinking.”
Christopher Bodkin, an Islip Town Board member and a Democrat, is considering challenging Mr. Trunzo, who is 21 years his senior. Mr. Bodkin likened the situation with the Senate Republicans to the United States Senate: “Look at Strom Thurmond: They just kept him going and going because they needed to hang on to a slim majority.”
“I certainly won’t challenge Senator Trunzo on his age,” he said. “He’s there and going back and forth to his district and so forth. I will run on the theme that it’s absolutely time for a change.”
The battle for the Senate is expected to be intense, and several factors suggest it could be especially hard for Republicans this year. Democrats are hoping for a huge turnout for their candidates because of the excitement over the presidential election. And Mr. Bruno, the state’s top Republican, is being shadowed by a federal investigation into his business activities.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who has had scandals of his own to contend with, has made no secret of his desire to reclaim the Senate. His political team has been aggressively raising money to help finance Democratic challengers. But the long-serving Republicans — the group includes veterans of World War II and the Korean War — stress that they are rallying around Mr. Bruno, who has emerged as an outspoken critic of Mr. Spitzer.
Strategists on both sides said that the Republican with the most tenuous grip on his seat is Serphin Maltese of Queens, who came within a few hundred votes of losing to a largely unknown candidate in 2006. Mr. Maltese, 75, is expected to face a far more prominent challenger this year, City Councilman Joseph P. Addabbo Jr., 43.
Mr. Maltese said that he had discussed his re-election bid with Mr. Bruno and that they agreed he needed to rely on the deep pockets of Mr. Bruno’s political operation.
“The realism is that there are a number of us over 70,” Mr. Maltese said. “I’m sure he’s had a conversation with all of us and had a conversation with me a while ago. And he said, ‘Are you planning to run?’ And I said yes, and he said he’d protect me.”
Doug Forand, a top political strategist for Senate Democrats, suggested that robust challenges to some of the elderly Republicans may test their physical stamina.
“Honestly, I think the changing enrollment of the state and the changing political attitudes are the stronger political indicator than the age of their conference, but the reality is that it’s not so much age as it is physical frailty,” Mr. Forand said.
“It does make it harder to campaign,” he added. “That’s going to be a challenge for somebody in Senator Trunzo’s condition.”
Mr. Trunzo, however, said during an interview this week that he was feeling much better this session and was keeping a busy political schedule.
“You know, I’m 81 years old right now, but I don’t feel like it,” he said, smiling as he walked through the halls of the State Capitol. “I was out to how many functions on Saturday and Sunday? I went to four fire departments on Saturday night, and yesterday afternoon, I drove up here.”
Mr. Larkin, who recently turned 80, like Mr. Bodkin, cited parallels with the United States Senate. But he viewed the presence of very senior members there as evidence of the value of longevity.
“Look at Mr. Byrd, Mr. Kennedy,” he said, referring to Senator Robert C. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who is 90, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who is 75. “It isn’t your age as much as it is your ability to function and worry about what you’re doing.”
One day last week, Mr. Larkin sat on one of the plush green couches in a lofty hall abutting the Senate chamber. He wore a charcoal suit and an alumni ring from Officer Candidates School, which he attended in 1948. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Army. Before and after sessions, he can often be found here, in “his office,” as he calls it, listening to the entreaties of lobbyists.
“This is my 30th year,” he said, grinning. “Yesterday, I was 80 years old, so I’m in not too bad shape, right?”
Mr. Bruno says he has been using a soft sell to urge the men who have been his colleagues for decades to run for re-election.
“My philosophy is people have to do what’s in their hearts and their own minds,” he said. “If they are committed and want to stay in public service, they’ll stay, and when I’ve talked to them, all of them, that’s kind of what I say. Make up your own minds, make up your own judgments. Of course I’d like to have them stay.”
Asked whether age was an issue for his party, Mr. Bruno said: “You know, everything’s relative. What is old? Everybody has to make their own judgments on life, and experience means a lot.”
Then he told a reporter who was less than half his age: “I’m older than you are, and so that counts for something.”
