Betsy McCaughey’s announcement that she is standing for governor of Connecticut is good news. We’ve been among her admirers since before she was lieutenant governor of New York. She is a brilliant woman, driven by ideals. She holds a Ph.D. in the history of the Constitution, the one parchment to which all officers, legislators, and judges must be sworn. We’re glad to be the first newspaper to endorse her.

We first met Ms. McCaughey after the tumult over Hillarycare. That was the effort of the 42nd First Lady to construct a national health plan. Ms. McCaughey wrote a devastating series of articles for the New Republic magazine on Hillarycare. From there she began writing columns for the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Sun, among other papers. She has emerged as a tribune of limited, honest, reformist, constitutional government.

The Nutmeg State, which has in recent years come to be dominated by the Democrats, is in sore need of the kind of political reform that Ms. McCaughey envisions. She is vowing to “stop Hartford’s war on homeowners” and to put an end to “soaring property taxes,” which are a particular burden for retirees. Candidate McCaughey avers: “The vast majority of seniors will be exempt from property taxes. They’ve paid their share.” 

Ms. McCaughey currently lives at Greenwich, but as a native of Milford and Westport, she says she recalls when Connecticut was “the opportunity state.” Now, in her telling, “it’s the evacuation state,” as residents flee for lower-tax, more affordable climes. The frustration is such that, she says, “basically I’m being drafted to run” by voters looking for an “experienced fighter to clean house in Hartford and save the state.”

Ms. McCaughey certainly has the track record and political acumen for the job. As New York’s lieutenant governor, she pushed for reform of the state’s soaring Medicaid spending, a problem that has only worsened under Democratic party rule. In 1998, she launched her own bid for governor, running against Mr. Pataki, but she withdrew before the election. Election rules forbade her from withdrawing her name from the Liberal Party line on ballot. 

Ms. McCaughey’s interest in the health care sector later led her to form a charity, the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, known as RID. The committee aims to combat the scourge of needless deaths from illnesses contracted in hospitals. Her work in that field has often put her at odds with a medical establishment that, in Ms. McCaughey’s telling, often puts the bottom line ahead of patient care. 

Ms. McCaughey, too, building on her criticism of the statist impulses animating the Clinton-era health care takeover, emerged as an opponent of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Her concerns proved prescient amid a subsequent surge in health insurance premiums. That debacle is even now roiling Capitol Hill as lawmakers weigh whether taxpayers should foot the bill to subsidize the high cost of Obamacare policies. 

Ms. McCaughey has her work cut out for her as a GOP candidate in a state like Connecticut that has increasingly tilted to the left. There will be a primary and then the general election in November. Yet in the race to unseat the incumbent, Ned Lamont, Ms. McCaughey’s  commitment to constitutional ideals and her astute advocacy for free-market, low-tax, and deregulatory economic policies make her a formidable candidate. She’s got our vote.