Now to the Polls

Editorial of The New York Sun
November 7, 2006

As New Yorkers go to the polls, we offer this recap of The New York Sun's endorsements: A Republican Congress, John Faso for governor, and Christopher Callaghan for state comptroller. They are the candidates for lower taxes and more economic growth. At the national level, they would sustain the low unemployment and the strong stock market results that the Republicans have achieved in the remarkable economic expansion that followed the post-September 11 recession.

At the state level, while the Democrat running for governor, Eliot Spitzer, has promised not to raise taxes, he has also promised tens of billions of dollars in new spending and promised to impose a new tax on bottles of juice and water, a tax that Mr. Spitzer claims isn't a tax. He is ensconced in a party of tax-raisers. Mr. Faso, by contrast, has a long record as a fiscal conservative and a temperament more suited to public service.

In the national race and here in New York, this is a wartime election, and, as Republican candidates nationwide have been making clear in commercials, a Democratic Congress is more likely to deny the president the tools he needs to win the war against our country's Islamist foes. The Democrats are the party more likely to underestimate the threat posed by the terrorists.

The war is even spilling over to here in New York City, where, as our Russell Berman reports this morning, the hard-left Working Families Party is distributing flyers featuring the filmmaker Michael Moore and the anti-war mother Cindy Sheehan urging voters to cast their ballot for Eliot Spitzer on the Working Families line, thereby sending a message about the need to get American troops home from Iraq.

In the Senate race in Connecticut, the strong vote on national security is the one for the independent candidate, Senator Lieberman, whose campaign is a test not only of sentiment about the war but also of the presidential prospects of Mayor Bloomberg, another independent-minded northeastern politician who has strongly backed Mr. Lieberman. If he wins, his victory will be all the sweeter because of the message it sends to the party that turned him out.

Here in New York, integrity is on the ballot, as electing Mr. Callaghan as comptroller would ensure that the state's fiscal watchdog isn't either the ethically challenged incumbent, Alan Hevesi, or a Hevesi replacement hand-picked by Albany insiders such as the speaker. Mr. Hevesi is so tainted by corruption that even his own party's gubernatorial candidate, Mr. Spitzer, withdrew his endorsement. All good reasons to make it to the polling place today and participate in the act of voting in a free election — an act that, if it were up to the anti-war Democrats like Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore, Iraqis would be deprived of to this day.