After meeting yesterday at the Desmond, the 10 Republican county leaders in the 20th District have set up a a time line to endorse a candidate against Rep. Scott Murphy, D-Glens Falls. Prospective candidates should announce their intention to run by March 7, according to Warren County Republican Chairman Mike Grasso, and make their rounds to the individual county committees before March 31. The 10 chairs will then meet in Albany to ballot toward an endorsement, which will be determined based on the weighted vote of the counties. “We intend to have a candidate probably ready to go the first week of April. That’s our plan,” Grasso told me by phone this morning. “It’s very difficult for committees to interview a couple of people who have announced and then have other people come forward. It’s very difficult to ascertain…We’re going to ask everybody’s who’s interested to come to us by March 7, so we can then arrange during a three-week period of orderly interviews with them.” Of course, this doesn’t guarantee a candidate will get on the ballot. Unlike a statewide race, the party’s endorsement is just that: an endorsement. Any prospective candidate – irrespective of whether they’ve been endorsed by some, all, or none of the Republican leadership–can get on the ballot by securing the valid signatures of 1,250 enrolled party members in the district. Republicans who have expressed interest in challenging Murphy are John Faso, David Harper, Assemblyman Jim Tedisco, Queensbury Supervisor Dan Stec and Patrick Ziegler. Christopher Gibson, an Army Colonel from Columbia County, is also considering a run, according to several Republican leaders in the district.