ALBANY

WESTCHESTER County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro is within days of making an announcement that will decide not only her own political future but – for many years to come – the future of the New York Republican Party.

If Pirro wants to become a national celebrity and conservative heroine with plenty of bucks to burn on high-priced consultants and TV ads (and perhaps with her own cable-TV show as a reward down the road), she’ll run against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and go down to a high-profile defeat.

If Pirro wants to attract almost as much national attention and become a darling of what many will see as the ethically-challenged folks on Wall St. – while still stuffing the coffers of millionaire political consultants and keeping open the possibility of a national TV show – she’ll run for governor against Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, and go down to a less-high-profile defeat.

But if Pirro wants to stay in public life by winning an important elective office – while at the same time keeping New York’s moribund GOP on the life-support that 500 lawyers’ jobs can provide – she’ll take the only course that makes political sense, the one that really fits her life’s experience and personal resume: running – with a real chance of winning – for attorney general of New York.

All three nominations are virtually her’s for the taking, according to state GOP Chairman Stephen Minarik and other Republican leaders.

Ah, many New York Republicans might ask, if only a Dr. Frankenstein was available for cloning duty so that a Jeanine Pirro-like candidate could be run for each of those offices.

Yet the state GOP has long had its own “Dr. Frankenstein” – well, Dr. Finkelstein, as in political consultant Arthur Finkelstein – available for regular, highly paid service.

His work – and the work of his numerous protégés – has been on display in New York for several years now: the defeat of Sen. Al D’Amato and AG Dennis Vacco in 1998; the initial push (in order to block Rudy Giuliani) for Rick Lazio to run against Hillary Clinton in 2000, and the transformation of Gov. Pataki into an ersatz Democrat over the past eight years.

At this very moment, some of those same consultants are believed to be urging Pirro to run for governor or the Senate – because that’s where their money can be made

And there’s the rub that’s weighing so heavily on party leaders at 315 State St., headquarters of the New York GOP.

The state Republican Party is a political organization with virtually no talent pool, and it got that way thanks to the conscious decision of Pataki’s advisers that absolutely no one – not a mayor of New York City, not a state commissioner, not a lieutenant governor, not a senior advisor to the governor, not a private-sector success – would ever be allowed to emerge as a high-profile, talented and articulate political leader.

It’s been an open secret for years within the Pataki administration that the governor, except in the rarest of circumstances, couldn’t stand seeing anyone else get credit for his administration’s actions.

And it’s long been known in Republican Party circles that Pataki wasn’t interested in fielding strong candidates against Democratic opponents because any major Republican success would produce a new GOP star, who might then overshadow the governor.

Put another way, it wasn’t by accident that the Pataki-controlled GOP fielded Rick Lazio, Dora Irizarry and Howard Mills – you’re excused if you can’t recall at least two of those names – for statewide races in recent years.

Which brings us back to Pirro, whose involvement in politics and whose successes as the high-profile Westchester County DA predate the Pataki era.

Pirro, in fact, is the rare exception – along with Rudy Giuliani – to what became the Pataki-era rule: a genuine GOP star, highly articulate, strikingly attractive, personally charismatic and a genuine vote-getter.

Even if she had to bow out of facing re-election because of the very real possibility that she would be defeated this year – for which she can say, Thank you very much, Albert Pirro.

But even with her husband as a heavy figurative millstone, Jeanine Pirro could still win in a statewide race for attorney general.

“She’d be very formidable, she’ll attract suburban women and she already has a suburban base and she can energize upstate Republicans, who are crying out for someone they can believe in.”

The assessment of a top state Republican?

No, that’s the view of one of the Democratic contenders now seeking his party’s nomination for attorney general.

If Gov. Pataki wants to take a baby step towards reversing at least some of the damage he has done to the New York GOP, he’ll get on the phone today with Pirro – a sometime social acquaintance – and urge her to run for attorney general, according to Republican insiders who have the state party’s best interests in mind.

But if Pataki wants his legacy to be just more of the same set of failures, he’ll encourage Pirro to enter one of the high-profile vanity races – for U.S. Senate or governor – knowing she can’t win but hoping that she’ll reap some kind of personal financial reward down the line.

Much like Pataki himself may do in the race for president, not long down the line.

Fredric U. Dicker, The Post’s State Editor, has covered state government for more than 25 years.