As I wrote in today’s column, the scuttlebutt is that the fix is in tonight for incumbent Westchester County Executive Andy Spano, a Democrat, to win the Conservative Party endorsement.

If this should come to pass, it will have very little to do with pure Conservative ideology and everything to do with a cynically rigged system that runs purely on connections and favors. It would be proof positive that elections aren’t really decided on election day in November, but in the hot days of spring and summer when nobody’s paying attention to the deal makers who convene in the proverbial smoke-filled rooms.

Simple Fact No. 1: Andy Spano is not a Conservative. By any definition, he would be characterized as a classic New York liberal.

Simple Fact No 2: Rob Astorino, the Republican candidate in the race, is philosophically a Conservative in every respect, though it would be an unfair stretch to say that he is, well, a Rush Limbaugh-style Conservative. And what happened?

Simple Fact No. 3: Well whaddya know? Only four years ago, the Conservatives nominated Astorino when he unsucessfully ran against Spano the first time.

So how is it that Spano is now the worthy Conservative candidate and Astorino is chopped liver?

A possible answer lies in the conspiracy theory that Larry Schwartz, who works for Gov. David Paterson and was Spano’s deputy county executive, engineered a deal with county Conservative Party Chairwoman Gail Burns—using former State Sen. Nick Spano (no relation to Andy) as the go-between.

Burns worked for Nick Spano when he was in the state Senate and has maintained close ties with him.

In exchange, the theory goes, Nick Spano would get powerful Democratic Party support down the road for his kid brother, Assemblyman Mike Spano, who has strong designs on the Yonkers mayoralty and possibly the county exec post as well. Does this sound far-fetched?

Well, it’s certainly more believable than Andy Spano getting hit by lightning and becoming a follower of the cable-TV teachings of Sean Hannity.

Sue Swanson, the chairwoman of the Mount Pleasant Conservative Party and a supporter of Astorino, smelled a rat when Andy Spano was interviewed by the party leaders. She said she attempted to ask him how he felt about gun control—and Burns wouldn’t let him answer the question.

Swanson also discovered that a sizeable number of her election district votes were snapped up by Burns, presumably as a tactic to stack the deck for Spano.

“She told me not to make trouble,” Swanson said of Burns. “I said, ‘I’m put on this earth to cause trouble.’ ”

Burns denies any of this happened, including the rigged endorsement. We’ll see what happens tonight when the party holds its closed-door convention at the Polish Community Center in Yonkers.

But Burns has already state a rationale for picking Spano over Astorino. It goes like this—See, there’s a dichotomy in Conservative thinking. There’s the state-level Conservative philosophy, personified by state chairman Mike Long, who is right of center on fiscal issues AND social issues such as abortion and gay marriage…and then there’s the Westchester Conservative.

The Westchester Conservative is tough on fiscal issues but a softy on everything else. Spano is that type of Conservative, and therefore deserves the Westchester Conservative Party nomination.

Do you buy this baloney?

The obvious fallacy is that no one in mainstream politics ever cops to being in favor of big government with high taxes and free-wheeling spendiing. Everybody claims to be a Conservative on that score, even when it’s not true.

The bottom line is that Andy Spano is in no way a born-again Conservative, not even a fiscal one.