By Jackie Kucinich, CQ-Roll Call

The National Republican Congressional Committee learned from defeat in the chaotic special election in New York and quickly moved to make sure its 2010 recruits pass muster with conservative groups.

“As a result of [New York District] 23, the level of coordination has gone up — in terms of everyone knows what everyone else is doing,” Grover Norquist, who heads Americans for Tax Reform, said Friday.

Democrat Bill Owens won an open New York seat in Congress Nov. 3 that had been in Republican hands. The campaign exposed the seriousness of divisions within the Republican Party; Dede Scozzafava, the moderate state assemblywoman backed by the GOP establishment, was attacked from the right, and third-party candidate Doug Hoffman benefited from resources and advertising support that poured in from disgruntled conservatives.

The NRCC, which is in charge of recuiting and backing candidates for the House, invited about 20 conservative groups to its headquarters this week to find out if any of their top recruits is in danger of a similar fate in 2010. The gathering was a fence-mending step, according to Norquist, because it showed the NRCC understands the importance of keeping conservatives in the loop.

A full list of attendees at the meeting could not be confirmed. Norquist — who was not there but sent his chief of staff — said more than 40 House challengers were discussed, generally the top- and second-tier list of candidates.

House Republicans, who are 41 seats short of a majority, believe they have an excellent chance next year to wrest control of the House back from the Democrats — or at least come close. They also know that to make serious gains, they need to avoid intraparty skirmishes over candidates and their conservative credentials.

Norquist said the conservative leaders in the room agreed that the GOP recruits met their litmus tests — though he conceded that some who were slightly less conservative were deemed acceptable only because of where they want to run. “That’s as good as it gets in the Northeast,” he said. “That doesn’t keep us up at night.”

“They went through the 45 candidates that they had and there were no problems,” Norquist said, adding that if there had been a similar meeting earlier this year, conservative leaders would not have felt ignored as the party considered its options for filling the House seat vacated by Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh . “This is exactly the kind of meeting that, if you had 20/20 hindsight, [would have helped] months ago when New York 23 poked up.”

The NRCC has been working to expand its outreach to coalitions and hired a coalitions director to oversee the effort.

Ken Spain, a spokesman for the NRCC, declined to comment on the meeting but said that the campaign committee has worked all year to keep its coalition members involved.

“The NRCC under Chairman [Pete] Sessions [Texas] has engaged in an ongoing effort to communicate with grass-roots coalitions,” Spain said. “We believe this is critical to our success in 2010.”

Erick Erickson, who runs the blog RedState.com — and did not attend the meeting — said conservatives will support party leaders’ efforts in 2010 when the candidates they select measure up to the conservative groups’ standards.

“I think the NRCC will make amends not by outreach actions, but by aggressively supporting right-of-center candidates,” Erickson wrote in an e-mail.