If the attorney general of New York, Eliot Spitzer, wanted to signal to the taxpayers of New York that he was on their side, he couldn’t have done much better than he did this week with a filing before Judge Leland DeGrasse in the case of Campaign for Fiscal Equity against The State of New York. The motion was all the more dramatic because the Campaign for Fiscal Equity is chaired by a political consultant to Mr. Spitzer, Luis Miranda. And because the campaign is backed by the teachers union and most other factions of the usual tax-and-spend Democratic establishment in the state.

And because Mr. Spitzer, a Democrat, is running for governor in 2006. In the court documents, he seeks to preserve the powers of the governor’s office, as well of those of the Legislature, from encroachment by the courts. “Neither the Governor …nor the legislature or legislators … may be compelled by the courts to exercise their discretion in a particular manner with respect to matters within the sphere of their assigned powers, or subjected to contempt for discretionary acts, and since decisions as to the content and enactment of laws are discretionary they cannot be dictated by the judiciary, or be the subject of contempt proceedings,” Mr. Spitzer wrote in the filing this week. He also argued that the $23 billion that a panel appointed by Judge Leland DeGrasse wants to lavish on the city’s already well funded schools is too much. The “panel’s decision would award more money, more quickly, than it could be efficiently spent,” Mr. Spitzer argues.

It’s terrific for Mr. Spitzer to make these arguments in court documents, but as the attorney general, he is acting as Governor Pataki’s lawyer. The question is whether Mr. Spitzer will make the same arguments on the stump, when he is speaking for himself and not for the governor. The political dynamics of New York certainly present the temptation for him to talk out of both sides of his mouth. Is he going to say one thing in court and another on the stump? Or is he going to make the same argument to the voters that he is making to the judge. It would not be too much to suggest that as voters watch this matter unfold they will be right in considering it as a test of Mr. Spitzer.