He glided with broad shoulders through downtown Lancaster during the Fall of 2008 as if he'd come back to the city block where he grew up. One of the most recognizable Republicans anywhere, he mingled with shop owners and competed in a good-spirited jabfest of words with Democratic Mayor Rick Gray that left both smiling and laughing.

Politics and schmoozing are to Tom Ridge what swinging a bat must have been like to Ted Williams. A retired Williams must have lain awake late at night unable to sleep, knowing he could no longer dig his cleats into the dirt by home plate, look a Yankee pitcher in the eye and smoke a fastball down the line in Fenway.

And I wonder if Ridge has similar feelings since retiring as Pennsylvania governor in 2001 and stepping down as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security in 2004. Does Ridge lie awake at night haunted by the images of shaking hands with enthusiastic supporters, whipping large flag-waving crowds into a frenzy from behind a patriotic podium and skillfully navigating the jagged, treacherous landscape of lawmaking?

A political heavyweight

Wherever Ridge is these days, he's hearing the call of electoral politics, again. But will he answer?

The worried eyes of moderate Republicans in Pennsylvania are turning toward the 64-year-old Ridge in the wake of U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter's defection last week to the Democratic Party.

The only heavyweight candidate left in the GOP's 2010 primary is conservative Pat Toomey, a former U.S. Congressman who polls predicted would crush Specter.

But in a state with more than 8 million registered voters, where 239,000 registered Republicans and independents switched to the Democratic Party in 2008, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 1 million, where the key strategy to winning a statewide election is to slam dunk Democratic Philadelphia and its moderately Republican suburbs, many pundits have questioned whether an idealistic conservative candidate could win a general election against a Democrat.

So Ridge's name has slipped from the lips of several politicos I've talked to since Specter quit the GOP.

After watching Ridge enthusiastically campaign last year for his friend and fellow Vietnam veteran U.S. Sen. John McCain, I have to wonder if Ridge is tempted to run, again. For retired politicians, particularly those who ran in competitive races, the fire in the belly, the need to be involved, the thrill of the campaign lingers long after they've left elected office.

Ridge has the energy. The charisma's still there. So too is the charm. He would be an electoral force, for certain.

Or second-string?

But any discussion about Ridge as a Senate candidate has to include why he's always the target of flirtation by Republican presidential nominees interested in a running mate but always ends up a surrogate, not the pick for vice president.

What's kept Ridge off the Republican ticket every four years is the conservative perception that he not only supports abortion rights despite his Roman Catholic background but that he was as governor a big-government Republican who supported a lawmaker pay raise and state money funneling to things like sports stadiums, according to a 2008 article published in the American Spectator.

Speaking of abortion, with President Barack Obama preparing to nominate his first Supreme Court justice by the end of 2009, the issue of reproductive rights has a good chance of coming front and center for the 2010 election, particularly if there's a pro-abortion GOP senatorial candidate vying against a anti-abortion GOP candidate in the Republican primary.

Still, in a Democratic state like Pennsylvania where Rick Santorum lost to Bob Casey Jr. in 2006 by 17 percentage points and Barack Obama, John Kerry, Al Gore and Bill Clinton beat back their GOP opponents, some Republicans see the road back to electoral victories being blazed by a moderate.

And I wonder if Ridge isn't lying awake at night, glorious visions of past gubernatorial victories and last year's campaign for McCain floating in the air, the fresh voices of folks still ringing in his ears urging him now to make one more last great campaign after a life that's been full of them. The last Republican governor of Pennsylvania, the savior of the state GOP — that has to be tempting.

E-mail: dpidgeon@lnpnews.com