JOHNSTOWN -- The Democratic presidential candidates may be grabbing all of the attention, but Republicans gathering here on a recent soft spring night were showing no signs of unease.

Even as a commercial for Sen. Barack Obama flickered a few steps away on the TV in the Holiday Inn lobby, members of the Cambria County GOP listened, rapt, as one of their party's boldface names waxed bullish about the prospects of the other presidential candidate in this race: Sen. John McCain.

"Given all the money the Democrats are spending in this state, he should be behind in the polls, but he isn't," declared Karl Rove, President Bush's longtime political guru, to a crowd of about 150 local Republican activists at the $150-a-ticket fund-raiser.

"Only one man [among the three presidential candidates] has had the guts to stand up and say it is vital to fight for the future of this country," Mr. Rove declared to all-out applause.

Given his political persona as a moderate and a maverick, Mr. McCain has never fully endeared himself to the party's conservative base that was so carefully nurtured by Mr. Rove, but those very qualities of independence are what give the GOP the best chance in decades to win the Keystone State this fall, Republican leaders believe.

Polls last week that showed the Arizona senator erasing Mr. Obama's 10-point lead nationally, and actually leading him in New York, have given them even more reason for confidence.

"There's no question in my mind that John's personal and political appeal -- as a consistent conservative who is also very much his own man -- will win him the support not just of his own party but independents and Democrats," declared Tom Ridge, the former governor and homeland security secretary and now a national co-chairman on the McCain campaign.

Earlier this year, Mr. Ridge, who entered Congress at the same time as Mr. McCain, brought in powerhouse fund-raisers David Girard-DiCarlo, of Philadelphia, and Leslie Gromis Baker, of Mt. Lebanon, to help Mr. McCain build a war chest in the state.

Save a few low-key visits to big donors in Eastern and Central Pennsylvania earlier this year, Mr. McCain has been all but invisible in the state in this primary season.

That is about to change: Tomorrow night, he arrives in Pittsburgh for a 6 p.m. fund-raiser at the Omni William Penn, followed by an economic policy speech Tuesday at Carnegie Mellon University.

"I've personally sold 100 tickets to the fund-raiser at $1,000 apiece," said former Allegheny County Executive Jim Roddey, who now chairs the county's Republican Committee. "The excitement about Mr. McCain is really high."

Perhaps, but when Mr. McCain begins campaigning in Pennsylvania -- whose 21 electoral votes make it an important prize in the general election -- he will find a party struggling to regain its footing after some devastating setbacks, including the loss of a U.S. Senate seat, the re-election of a Democratic governor, two Democratic victories on the state Supreme Court and a new, if tiny, Democratic majority in the state House.

"In 2006, the Pennsylvania GOP lost more federal legislators than any other state in the nation: four congressmen and one senator. No other state lost that many," said John Brabender, the Pittsburgh-based Republican political consultant who is one of Mr. McCain's national media advisers.

The 2006 debacle left the party "in terrible shape in this state, with no leadership within the party," added William J. Green, another longtime Republican party consultant. "My God, the Republicans didn't even put up a candidate against [Allegheny County Executive] Dan Onorato. How crazy is that?"

Still, Mr. Green praised Robert Gleason -- a Johnstown insurance executive who has headed the state's party apparatus since 2006 -- for injecting new energy into the state GOP. And indeed, in Johnstown last week, Mr. Gleason radiated sunny optimism, noting the GOP has $1 million in cash on hand for state races and that Mr. McCain should have no trouble raising $5 million to compete here, he says.

An infrastructure will also be in place as of June 1, with 18 "victory centers" complete with paid staff, opening around the state. Not only that, Mr. Gleason says, he fully intends to net $150,000 at tomorrow's McCain fund-raiser.

"We had a bad time in 2006, no question. All I could do is sit by and watch us go down," said Mr. Gleason, who nonetheless also recalled that two years earlier, his native Cambria County went for Bush despite a 3-1 Democratic voter registration edge.

And therein lies the key to a McCain victory in Pennsylvania: wooing back the state's numerous Reagan Democrats, who like the senator's anti-abortion stance, and independents, who respond to Mr. McCain's record on campaign finance reform, global warming and Pentagon procurement practices.

Mr. Gleason attributes the recent surge of Republicans switching into the Democratic party -- 5 percent of the state's Republican have changed their registration, according to the latest numbers -- to excitement over the state's unusually important role this year in the presidential nominating contest.

"The only ones who are having a primary in this state are the Democrats," Mr. Gleason said. "People are frustrated that they can't participate in this presidential selection process, so they're switching."

"In most of Pennsylvania, people are conservative Democrats, and they don't like the way the party has drifted on abortion or gay marriage," he added. "It turns them off big time. In Cambria County, 70 percent are practicing Catholics. They're going to vote in this primary, because that's what they do, and then they're going to go back to their conservative beliefs in the general election," he said.

Not surprisingly, Democrats, and some pollsters, are skeptical about that claim.

Reagan Democrats may indeed flock to Mr. McCain, especially if Mr. Obama, who is perceived as more liberal than Mrs. Clinton, is their party's nominee, said Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College.

Most polls show Mr. McCain running about even in the state with the Democratic nominees, he added.

But, Mr. Madonna said, Mr. Gleason "is assuming that there will be single-issue voters [in November] and that cultural concerns will trump concerns about the economy, which is the greatest single issue to voters at the moment. If the economy is still bad in November, I don't think cultural issues will predominate."

Dan Wofford, son of former U.S. Sen. Harris Wofford and an Obama supporter who narrowly lost in 2006 to Republican Jim Gerlach in the state's 6th Congressional District, said he believes this year is similar to 1991, when his father won an upset victory against Republican Dick Thornburgh, the former governor, U.S. attorney general and perceived front-runner.

"Voters are focused on larger issues more central to their safety and economic well being. That is why my father won in 1991 and why Bill Clinton won in 1992 -- and why the Democrats did so well in 2006," Mr. Wofford said.

Another hurdle: winning back conservatives unhappy with Mr. McCain's frequent departures from GOP orthodoxy, from his support of immigration reform to his opposition to the Bush tax cuts (which he's since recanted). Mr. McCain has been hammered daily on conservative talk radio, and two leading Pennsylvania conservatives, former Sen. Rick Santorum and former U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey, have yet to embrace the putative Republican nominee.

But a move is under way to smooth ruffled feelings among the party's right wing, said Mr. Roddey, noting that several friends and admirers of both Mr. McCain and Mr. Santorum, including South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham and former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, have been involved in that effort.

"Rick has been a critic of McCain's for a number of reasons," said Mr. Roddey, "mostly having to do with other issues when Rick was in the [Senate] leadership and McCain was sort of a maverick. But McCain did raise money for him and he obviously really doesn't want to see Sen. Obama in office."

Mostly, though, independents remain the key, said Mr. Brabender, who says poll data from 2000 and 2006 found that Mr. Santorum won 87 percent of Republican vote, but that "a sizable number of independents voted Democratic. I do think it's very important that Sen. McCain start a dialogue with independents in Pennsylvania. And he will do that," he said.

Moreover, it's not clear if the "change" message touted by Mr. Obama -- and more recently by Mrs. Clinton -- will be what motivates voters this year, unlike 2006, which was what Mr. Brabender calls a "change" election, not a "candidate" election.

"It was a referendum on what was going on in Washington, when people were not too happy about the war and other things, but it's not clear if the same will be true this year," he said.

Then there are also current polls that show twice as many Democrats defecting to Mr. McCain as Republicans defecting to Mr. Obama, while three times as many Democrats defect to Mr. McCain as Republicans defect to Mrs. Clinton, said Mr. Rove.

"You always have some Republicans voting for Democrats and some Democrats voting for Republicans, but a 2-to-1 margin like that in a matchup with Sen. Obama, for example, is a pretty good sign for McCain," he added.

Indeed, Mr. Gleason says he can already feel the pendulum swinging his way.

"All politics is cyclical," he said. "In the fall, they will all be for McCain, I know it. Any Republicans who switched to Democrat for the primary, we know who they are, and we feel they will support the principles of the Republican party in the end. And I think the Reagan Democrats will be coming back to us in November with a vengeance."