With speculation rampant that Governor Pataki will not run for a fourth term, New Yorkers are starting to think about what will happen to the state’s Republican Party – and more importantly, to the struggle for free market principles in the Empire State – after him. In order to understand where the Republican Party and the free-market movement in New York is going, though, it’s worth pausing for a quick summary of where we’ve been.

When Mr. Pataki acceded in 1995, the state budget was about $62 billion. The one passed this month in Albany was $106.6 billion, representing a combined spending increase that easily outpaced both inflation and the growth in the gross state product during that period. The expansion of government was paid for by taxing and borrowing, though Mr. Pataki boasts on his Web site of enacting “more than $100 billion in tax cuts.”

The bottom line is that after 10 years of Mr. Pataki, New York still has a state and local tax burden far greater than the national average. When Mr. Pataki was elected in 1994, New York had the highest state and local tax burden in the country. Now, according to the Tax Foundation, New York has the second-highest state and local tax burden in the country – the only state with a higher state and local tax burden is Maine. And New York is second only to Alaska in combined state and local government debt per capita.

The governor boasts of his record in fighting crime, but a judge he appointed joined in striking down the state’s death penalty law. And in any event, crime-fighting is primarily a local and federal, not a state, responsibility. Mr. Pataki boasts of his education record, and he does deserve credit for gaining passage of the state’s first charter school law. But the law limits the number of charter schools to a scant 100 statewide. Faced with a court order to improve public education in New York City, the word “voucher” has never passed the governor’s lips, at least in public, so far as we’re aware.

On the political front, Mr. Pataki’s achievements, beyond his own re-elections, have been similarly limited. When Mr. Pataki took office as governor in 1995, there were 36 Republicans in the state Senate. Today there are 35. The state comptroller and attorney general of New York are both Democrats, as are both United States senators and 48 of 51 members of the New York City Council. In other words, it’s not even a question of whether Mr. Pataki has had any coat-tails. His total garment would consist of a hatband – and a skinny one at that.

We don’t think that Mr. Pataki is either lazy or stupid, and we understand it’s difficult to achieve even gradual improvements when faced with entrenched Albany interests like the government employee unions and the Democratic majority in the Assembly. But if New York is going to avoid becoming a one-party state with all the corruption and ideological stultification that that entails, the Republicans in this state are going to have to become a party of bold ideas, by which we mean aggressive tax and spending cuts and genuine school choice.

It’s not as if there is no hope. Mayor Giuliani showed the possibilities, as have Governor Schwarzenegger, President Bush, and Governor Bush in Florida. Some groundwork is being done in New York by the Manhattan Institute and by the Monday Meeting led by James Higgins, Mallory Factor, and Stephen Moore. Candidates and possible candidates like Randy Daniels, Edward Cox, Rep. John Sweeney, and Jeanine Pirro, not to mention Mayor Bloomberg, are in the arena or poised to enter. A younger generation of leaders awaits. Some of them may be unknown, but then, who had heard of George Pataki back when he was the mayor of Peekskill?