But are they ready for the new Tony Avella, the conciliatory and circumspect, the cautious and calculating politician?

That appears to be what they are getting as Avella, the former mayoral candidate and enfant terrible of the New York City Council works his was back into the good graces of the Queens Democratic Party he once scorned and is reaching out to the very same elected officials he publicly lambasted over the past eight years.

“Tony is trying to delicately get his way back into the good graces of people he’s been pissing all over for the past few years,” said one Queens Democrat.

In between glad-handing at the Senate Democrats’ reception following Gov. David Paterson’s State of the State address in early January, Avella explained that he was in a deliberate effort to shore up every pocket of support, “talking to the players that would be involved in a race as important as this, and just making sure that we can have a united front—which we can.”

Gone are the angry dismissals of political deal making, as is the distance Avella had put between himself and the Queens County Democrats, whose support he expects despite their endorsement of Bill Thompson in the Democratic mayoral primary.

“This will be a united effort, where a lot of people will be on board who couldn’t be in the mayoral race, because Thompson had the bulk of the Democratic support,” Avella said. “But this race will be totally different.”

Take, for example, his position on the gubernatorial nominee.

Asked at the first mayoral debate whether he would support Paterson for the Democratic nomination this fall, Avella said no, and later compared the governor to a “deer in the headlights.”

Asked after the State of the State whom he wants to see as the nominee, he would only say, “I think whoever serves the city and the state best.”

In a race against incumbent State Sen. Frank Padavan, a race Democrats tried to recruit Avella for in both ’06 and ’08, not only would the former city councilman have the benefit of running in a district where he outperformed Thompson in the primary, but he comes with an antitax, anti-government record in a year that seems sure to be defined at least in part by voters’ exhaustion with both. Plus, Democratic voters in the district have put Democrats in every seat that overlaps with Padavan’s except for the one Avella himself held until last month.

That has Democrats predicting that Avella will have a significantly stronger showing than Jim Gennaro, a lower-profile Council member who represented a much smaller overlapping piece of the Senate district, but still forced Padavan into a protracted court battle in 2008.

Queens County Republican chair Phil Ragusa, however, dismissed the 2008 margin as nothing more than a result of Barack Obama’s coattails.

“This is going to be more of a traditional race,” Ragusa said, shrugging off a pattern in the past few years of aging urban Republican senators—Roy Goodman, Nick Spano, Serph Maltese—narrowly eking out wins in one election only to see their districts go heavily Democratic in the next.

Ragusa lives in both Padavan’s Senate district and Avella’s former Council district, and he ran against Avella for Council in 2003, but he said that people in the district have come to think of Padavan as the person to go to for constituent problems.

“Most people said, ‘Gee, what is he doing?’” he said of Avella’s mayoral campaign. “They didn’t think that it was a serious run. And I think he spent a lot of his time in Manhattan.”

Ragusa said he believed the neighborhood has soured on Avella.

“I think a lot of people who were behind him in the past will not support him in this next election,” he said.

Meanwhile, Queens Democrats seem ready to forgive Avella’s harsh words against them if it means another pickup in the Senate.

“Tony’s had good relationships with some of his colleagues before that, and Tony will have good relationships with some of his colleagues after that,” said one person familiar with Avella’s plans.

And as for those that Avella has had bad relationships with, said the source, that will ultimately play to his advantage, explaining, “he has certainly rubbed some people the wrong way— but that’s also what led him to be the only Democrat ever elected in that district.”

And though neither Avella’s candidacy nor the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee’s support of it have yet become official, Democrats are preparing to prioritize the effort against Padavan.

“The DSCC is going to fully invest in the race to replace Senator Padavan, and we look forward to working with and fully supporting whoever that candidate ends up being,” said DSCC executive director Josh Cherwin.

But those who have known Avella for the past decade say the prospect of him in the Senate still makes them nervous. This is the person, after all, who frequently found himself one of the lone dissenting votes on the City Council, and who seemed to revel in not playing along.

“The Senate Democrats are not sure they want Tony,” said the Queens Democrat. “They’re a little afraid he could become Hiram Monserrate, without the girlfriend beating.”