The state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, all but ruled out a tax hike if he is elected governor, telling a Jewish nonprofit group last night: “We can’t raise taxes.”

The front-runner for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination said that while the state would have to deal with a steadily rising Medicaid tab, it also needs to “invest a significant sum of money” in education. A tax increase, though, is the not the way to generate needed revenue, he said.

“The real question is, are we going to be raising taxes in a way that is injurious to our business climate? The answer is: Absolutely not,” Mr. Spitzer said.

Mr. Spitzer made the comments during a forum with the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty at a senior center in Murray Hill. Speaking before a supportive crowd of about 70 people, the attorney general made brief opening remarks before taking questions on a variety of topics, including education, housing, and health care.

Mr. Spitzer treaded carefully when pressed about the prickly political issue of state education aid to the city. Mayor Bloomberg and a host of city Democrats are pressuring Albany to comply with a court order to send bil lions more each year in funding for city schools. Governor Pataki has appealed the ruling, and Mr. Spitzer, as New York’s top lawyer, is representing the state in the case.

“It is a potential liability that the state has got to confront,” Mr. Spitzer said, adding that because of his position as attorney general, “I have to be a little careful about what I say about it as pure litigation.”

Mr. Spitzer said the school aid issue pitted one part of the state against another. Any additional money invested in schools would have to be done as part of a “statewide agreement,” he said, not by simply rerouting funds to New York City.

“There will not be a political way to resolve the issue when upstate says, ‘You’re taking how much from us and sending it downstate?’ That can’t happen,” Mr. Spitzer said.

Mr. Spitzer was not asked about his challenger for the Democratic nomination, Thomas Suozzi, and he notably refrained from criticizing Mr. Pataki, who has been in the hospital for about two weeks.

Mr. Spitzer said he would work to increase the state’s housing stock if elected governor, and he pledged that by the end of his first term, “every child in the state of New York will be insured.” There are 500,000 children currently without health insurance, he said.

Mr. Spitzer kept the tone light, even cracking a joke about his much-talked-about temper. Recounting a recent meeting with John McEnroe, who was notorious for his on-court tantrums during his days as a tennis professional, the attorney general said: “He wondered why I would have been a fan of his. I told him: It wasn’t his backhand, it wasn’t his overhead, it was his temper.”