The big news in the governor’s race is that the Democratic frontrunner is tacking to the right on policy issues. On Monday, the New York Post reported that Eliot Spitzer opposes both a plan the United Federation of Teachers is pushing to turn 50,000 home day care workers into state employees and another union-backed effort to force large retailers to provide health insurance for their workers. Yesterday, the Daily News’s Michael Goodwin took a break from the anti-immigration jag he has been on lately to come in with an interview in which Mr. Spitzer vowed to lift the cap limiting the number of charter schools in the state and in which Mr. Spitzer said, “We can’t raise taxes, we just can’t do it.” Mr. Spitzer said to Mr. Goodwin of tax increases in a Spitzer governorship, “It’s not gonna happen. Not gonna happen.”

It’s not the first time New Yorkers have seen Mr. Spitzer tack to the right. When Mr. Spitzer originally ran for attorney general it was as a centrist, supporting the death penalty and favoring making it easier for authorities detain violent mentally ill people against their will. After he got elected, he tacked left, turning into the scourge of Wall Street. Mr. Spitzer has been in office now for nearly eight years, and he’s had plenty of time to speak out on charter schools. Somehow, he hasn’t managed to prevail over the Democrat-led assembly to lift the cap. Nor do we recall him as a particularly vocal opponent of tax increases over the past eight years that the same Democrat led assembly imposed over Governor Pataki’s vetos.

The candidate with the credibility on these issues is the Republican, John Faso. He was more often on the right side of them while serving in the assembly. What’s more, Mr. Faso has gone beyond opposing tax increases. Mr. Faso has actually proposed tax cuts – eliminating the estate tax and cutting taxes on income between $40,000 and $80,000 – that Mr. Spitzer has not endorsed. We would like to see a far more aggressive approach on tax from Mr. Faso, too, and to see him develop his tax views further. The point to note is that Mr. Spitzer is moving in his direction.

We wouldn’t want to fail to acknowledge it. We interpret the attorney general’s newfound outspokenness on taxes and charter schools to be a sign that Mr. Spitzer is concerned about the impression that is rapidly forming in voters’ minds of him as a tax-and-spend leftist. It is a sign that he takes Mr. Faso’s challenge seriously and that Mr. Spitzer senses that the voters of New York State overall are not advocates of more taxes, more spending, and more regulation of business. New Yorkers are overtaxed as it is. They are receptive to tax cuts and competition in education. So Mr. Spitzer’s shift to the right is a sign that both the Faso campaign and the broader ideas of the free-market movement in New York are succeeding and having an influence. Even in the public sector competition has positive effects.