Andrew Cuomo’s speech at the Cooper Union just made the race for governor a lot harder to predict. That’s the reaction from Tom Carroll, the president of ChangeNY, the Albany-based think tank that was set up in 1991 largely in reaction to the tax hikes pushed through by Andrew Cuomo’s father, Mario. Mr. Cuomo’s speech is likely to get attention for what he said about the redevelopment of downtown Manhattan. But in Mr. Carroll’s view, and ours, the news is that the candidate for the Democratic nomination has thrown down the gauntlet on an issue — taxes — on which Governor Pataki thought he was unassailable.

Mr. Cuomo dealt with the tax issue only briefly in the course of a long disquisition on the situation after September 11. But his paragraph on taxes was something a lot of people have been waiting for a Democrat to say. He noted that the Empire State has the largest combined state and local tax burden in the nation and said that taxes must begin to come down. “We cannot infuse new energy into our economy unless we remove the weights that drag our economic actors down,” he said. “We cannot be the economic engine of the nation if we are the tax capital of the nation.”

The candidate didn’t offer a lot of specifics, but the campaign is young. Mr. Carroll reminds us that in 1994, when Mr. Pataki toppled Mario Cuomo, he didn’t unveil his detailed tax cut plan until after Labor Day. The thing to watch out for in the weeks ahead is whether Mr. Cuomo falls into the Democratic Party’s penchant for doling out tax cuts in targeted giveaways to specific interest groups or voter blocs, a fault for which the Clinton administration was notorious. Or whether he goes for the kind of strategic, marginal tax cuts through which President Reagan set the stage for the great expansion of the late 20th Century.

In the meantime, Mr. Cuomo’s remarks suggest he’s prepared to take certain strategic risks. He is in favor of Mayor Bloomberg’s bid to gain control of public schools in the city. He solicited and has gained the endorsement of Al From of the Democratic Leadership Council. And he has publicly embraced charter schools. If he keeps this up, he’s going to have the Comptroller, Carl McCall, looking retrograde. And he’s going to put Mr. Pataki in a pickle, for the governor seems to have taken for granted the notion that he can run as a liberal Democrat and not lose his conservative base upstate. Between Thos. Golisano on the right and Mr. Cuomo, the governor may find himself in a squeeze play.

And we can’t help contrasting Mr. Cuomo’s remarks with the drama in Connecticut, where a demagogic attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, is trying to block the Stanley Tool Works from moving its corporate domicile to Bermuda. The poor saps at Stanley had the idea that if American law allowed it, they were free to leave the state that was once a cradle of liberty. It turns out that if a company tries to escape Connecticut, the Democratic attorney general there will seek to stick its corporate feet in the tax equivalent of cement shoes. If Mr. Cuomo follows through on the risk he suggests he’s prepared to take, he could realign the political debate in the whole tri-state region.