A Distraction for Pataki
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Governor Pataki is spending today in Iowa. Next week, according to the AP, he’ll be in New Hampshire. Excuse us for interrupting the Pataki for President campaign, but may we direct your attention to the meltdown of the New York Republican Party under Mr. Pataki’s leadership? The governor may consider it a mere distraction from his jet setting around the early primary and caucus states. But his handpicked candidate to oppose Senator Clinton in 2006, Jeanine Pirro, is humiliating herself and Mr. Pataki with the feebleness of her campaign so far.
A cynical view is that Mr. Pataki doesn’t really want any Republican Senate candidate to defeat Mrs. Clinton because he thinks she will be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election in 2008 than, say, Phil Bredesen. Another cynical view is that Mr. Pataki thinks a noncompetitive Senate race will keep turnout in heavily Democratic New York City low enough in 2006 to allow a Republican candidate to squeak through and get elected governor. A more clear-eyed view is that on balance Mr. Pataki has shown little record of looking beyond his own interests and those of his small circle of cronies.
It’s not that the governor has no record of accomplishment. He cut taxes and displayed some fiscal restraint in his first year in office. He got a law passed allowing the creation of 100 charter schools in New York State that operate outside the public school bureaucracy. Though millions of New York City residents still live in non-market-rate housing, the governor’s move gradually to end rent control and rent stabilization in New York has helped contribute to the growth in homeownership that characterizes the new New York. These are not small accomplishments, and he deserves credit for them.
Still, one looks in vain to discern any principle or idea that Mr. Pataki stands for consistently. It’s not fiscal restraint. As the Manhattan Institute’s nyfiscalwatch.com has documented, the state budget under Mr. Pataki’s leadership has grown to $106 billon from $62 billion. That far outpaces either inflation or the growth in the gross state product over that period. It’s not free markets or educational choice. Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, and the District of Columbia have private school vouchers, but Mr. Pataki has not embraced the idea, let alone succeeded in getting it through the state legislature.
In political terms, Mr. Pataki’s coattails are as short as any in memory. The Republican Party barely clings to a majority in the State Senate through a combination of gerrymandering and geriatric medical care. There are three Republicans in New York City’s 51-member City Council. Senator Schumer was re-elected in 2004 with more than 70% of the vote. It makes Mr.
Pataki’s own ability to get elected three times seem impressive, which it is, but it also underscores how in a sense he is a one-man band.
What’s left as a legacy is patronage appointments and a reputation for Mr. Pataki as the leader of a state government where lobbyists like Alfonse D’Amato are the ones with the real power. It’s a sad end of the line for the governor who once showed so much promise. One can make the case that the lineup of Republican candidates who hope to succeed Mr. Pataki – including a former state assemblyman, John Faso; a former New York secretary of state, Randy Daniels; and a former governor of Massachusetts, William Weld – is a sign he hasn’t entirely destroyed the office. But what does it say that the Conservative Party of New York is said to be considering endorsing not a Republican but a Democrat, Thomas Suozzi, for governor?
Mr. Daniels, who Mr. Pataki chose as secretary of state, has some encouraging ideas, including a plan outlined on the opposite page to cut Medicaid spending “to introduce major across-the-board tax cuts.” Sounds good to us. Mr. Pataki has a commission under way on health care facilities and spending. If he wants to avoid being written off as a lame duck and to build on his substantive legacy, the right move for him now would be to embrace Mr. Daniels’s idea and spend his last year in office tackling health care spending and using the savings to push through more marginal tax cuts. That is going to require spending some time in New York, but it will at least give him something to talk about on future trips to Iowa and New Hampshire.