There’s not much to be said in favor of the Independence Party, which in New York City is dominated by Lenora Fulani. But Thos. Golisano’s victory in the primary on Tuesday means that the wealthy businessman and political windmill-tilter is in a position to put some pressure on Governor Pataki in the general election. The danger to Mr. Pataki’s re-election Mr. Golisano presents is made clear by Joseph Mercurio in the adjacent columns. Simply put, Mr. Golisano’s candidacy means Mr. Pataki will not be able to take his conservative base for granted. We hope that this will serve as an anchor to the windward, preventing the governor from drifting too far from the principles on which he originally ran. And the governor certainly has been drifting over the past few years, on symbolic issues like Vieques and substantial issues like health care and responsible budgeting.

Mr. Pataki’s drift to the left over the past six years no doubt has been a calculated strategy, coming as it does in a state in which registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by a five-to-three ratio. One incident that stands out in Mr. Pataki’s ideological journey is the laundry list of expensive statewide projects that Mr. Pataki asked Congress to fund in the aftermath of September 11, a list that did not succeed in generating funds for the state but did reinforce New York’s (generally unwarranted) image as a place that sucks in federal dollars. He has embraced Local 1199, using taxpayer funds to answer the demands of the union at a time when the state needs to be extremely chary in its outlays. He has retreated from the battle for the reform of rent control. He has joined in piling on excessive excise taxes on cigarettes, one of the most regressive tax moves in memory.

Our Albany man, William F. Hammond Jr., reports on page one today that Mr. Golisano, having spent more than $23 million of his own money to snatch the Independence Party nomination, is promising to spend tens of millions more on the general election. His spokesman, Ernest Baynard, says his campaign theme will be “lowering taxes, bringing back fiscal discipline, cutting spending, and creating jobs.” Ironically, such a platform echoes Mr. Pataki’s own victorious campaign of 1994, when he toppled Mario Cuomo. Both Mr. Pataki and the Democratic nominee, H. Carl McCall, have pledged to avoid tax increases next year, but neither has been articulating the kind of principled supply-side approach for which Mr. Golisano is preparing to spend tens of millions of his own dollars campaigning.

One of the points that Mr. Mercurio makes in the adjacent columns is that when Mr. Golisano mounted an assault on Mr. Pataki accusing him of being insufficiently conservative, it resonated among the more conservative voters in Pataki’s base and especially upstate. He notes that even before the full effects of Mr. McCall’s primary win have been absorbed by the public, the comptroller has already cut Mr. Pataki’s lead to 15 points, at least according to the new Marist College poll released Monday. The actual spread, Mr. Mercurio reckons, is probably fewer than 10 points. All of which makes this week quite a wake-up call for a governor who has been widely perceived as a shoo-in. We don’t mind saying that it’s a wake-up call to which we’d like to see the governor respond, making the course corrections and commitments on which so many have been counting.