Mayor Bloomberg will no doubt take special note of the special election for City Council District 43. Tomorrow, voters in Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst, and Fort Hamilton will choose from among five candidates to replace Martin Golden, once one of the City Council’s few Republicans and now a state senator. What’s remarkable about the race is that all five candidates — there are four Democrats and one Republican, though the race is technically non-partisan — are running against the mayor’s 18.5% property tax increase. The message seems to be resonating with voters. Call it a tax revolt.

To the skeptical, this revolt might look like simple posturing — setting one’s self against something unpopular that nonetheless is a fait accompli. As Sal Albanese, a Democrat who held the council seat for 15 years, told our Matthew Sweeney, “No one is going to roll it back…Once it’s done it’s done.” We’re not so sure. We see a picture closer to that drawn by candidate Vincent Gentile, a Democrat and a former state senator. Mr. Gentile reckons that this Brooklyn special election is just the canary in the coal-mine on the tax issue. New York is angry about the levy, as is being seen in this election, and as has been reflected by the mayor’s sinking poll numbers.

Perhaps many New Yorkers feel bamboozled and agree with Rosemarie O’Keefe’s statements, made to The New York Sun yesterday, that “We should have looked at some of these things” — these things being ways to cut the budget — “before we so quickly voted on a real estate tax.” And perhaps many New Yorkers feel like those we interviewed on the streets yesterday. There was Phil Clyne, a father of three children who is already paying for private school because the public schools are such miserable failures. “If it goes up any more,” Mr. Clyne said, “I’ll just go somewhere else where I can get more for my money.” There was also Ray Edwards, an 84-year-old co-op owner on a fixed income who thinks he is being taxed as if he were a press baron. And there was also Mike Kennedy, a 45-year-old disabled veteran who is thankful for his disability tax credit — and who thinks the mayor has gone “a little crazy.”

There is certainly sympathy on the street for the dilemma the city is facing. No one seems to believe that taxes can be held down and spending left untouched. But people in the 43rd City Council District don’t seem to believe that Mr. Bloomberg has gone the distance yet as to cutting waste in government. And no wonder, for the mayor has repeatedly stated that he doesn’t believe such a thing exists. While Hizzoner is waiting for the results to come in, he could do worse than read up on the history of the tax revolt that started in California and rocked the nation. For the sort of thing that’s happening in Brooklyn tends to be catching.