Yes, New York candidates may run on several different ballot lines, and yes, someone who runs on both the Republican and Democrat lines would be pretty much guaranteed reelection, but I find it very telling that Rudy Giuliani wanted to run on the Democrat line but showed absolutely no interest of running on the Conservative Party line. In fact, the Conservative Party told Rudy that all he had to do to run on its line in the 2000 Senate election against Hillary was to support the ban on partial-birth abortion, and Rudy decided that he’d rather continue to support what even Senator Pat Moynihan (the liberal Democrat he was trying to replace) had called “infanticide.” Thus, Rudy’s statement that he would like to run on the Democrat line is very different from, say, State Senator John Marchi being cross-endorsed by the Democrats, since Senator Marchi was also a proud standard-bearer of the Conservative Party.
The 2nd Amendment is not a social issue... nor is the 1st.