With Philadelphia's Republican Party in the hunt for recapturing City Hall after a 48-year absence, party leader Michael Meehan doesn't really mind when Sam Katz tries to downplay his ties to the GOP.

"I understand what Sam is doing," said Meehan, whose family has been the heart and soul of the Republican Party over three generations of rising and falling political power.

"The object here is to get one more vote than the other guy," said Meehan, a lawyer who holds the innocuous title of general counsel for the party but who is viewed as the GOP chief. "We in the Philadelphia Republican Party are not the same as the national Republican Party."

The unassuming Meehan and other party leaders, like chairman Vito Canuso, have been largely invisible to the public as the well-funded and well-known Katz has pulled dead-even with Democrat John Street in his quest to become Philadelphia's first Republican mayoral winner since 1947.

Meehan's low-key performance stands in sharp contrast to that of his Democratic counterpart, U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, who made an urgent plea to ward leaders Friday to stay behind Street. Brady has been campaigning almost nightly with his party's nominee.

That doesn't mean Meehan has been sitting on his hands.

He said he talks daily with Katz's campaign manager, Bob Barnett, and confers every other day or so with Katz himself. Besides raising money for the election, Meehan and party leaders have put out an urgent plea for lawyers to patrol for polling problems on Election Day. He has also worked on getting together a field operation.

It won't be easy. Meehan concedes that there is little or no GOP presence in as many as 700 of the city's 1,700 election districts. Many are in the city's black and Latino wards, where interest in the Republican Party is low.

However, Meehan and other party leaders believe their quiet efforts on behalf of Katz will put to rest once and for all one of the great myths of Philadelphia politics: that winning City Hall is the last thing the Meehans have wanted.

To understand why the myth has persisted, it's important to recall the history of the Meehans - the clan that many have called the last urban Republicans bosses in America.

Michael Meehan's grandfather, city Sheriff Austin "Aus" Meehan, was the city GOP leader for 25 years until his death in 1961, and was Philadelphia's dominant political figure for much of his time. But it was also under the sheriff's watch that the Democrats won control of city government for the first time, in 1951.

Austin Meehan's son, William Meehan, a convivial, jowly man with a raspy voice who smoked cigars most of his life and was addicted to golf, took over the GOP when his dad died.

Over the next 33 years, the popular Meehan was the indisputable boss of his party, and even though he never recaptured the mayor's office, the GOP carved out a tiny patronage state in places like Traffic Court and other agencies.

Indeed, it was Billy Meehan's ability to keep power and patronage and to broker deals with Democrats that gave rise to the belief that he wouldn't want a Republican mayor who might challenge him for party control.

But Michael Meehan, who assumed the party's leadership role after his father's death in 1994, says the legend isn't true. He and others have said Billy Meehan was crushed when popular DA Arlen Specter fell a few thousand votes short of ousting incumbent Mayor James H.J. Tate in the 1967 race.

And current Republican activists, including some who've had an up-and-down relationship with the Meehan-Canuso regime, scoff at the suggestion that the party brass - defied by Katz when he challenged endorsed-candidate Ron Castille in the 1991 GOP primary - aren't working hard for Katz today.

Insiders say that Meehan and other party leaders, in deciding to back Katz in 1998, got assurances that they would play a role in a Katz mayoral transition.

That could mean placing hundreds of new people in city jobs, although Meehan and others scoff at Democratic warnings of mass firings, noting that most jobs are protected by public service laws.

Some party activists say that the complete opposite of the longstanding myth is true, that Meehan could face a challenge to his role as party leader if he loses next month.

Meehan shrugs off talk about his job security.

"Hey, if the Yankees lose the World Series, Joe Torre's head could be on the line."