Mr. Republican

National Review, April 7, 1997 by Matthew Carolan, Raymond J. Keating

To his credit Pataki has called for charter schools. Unfortunately, the Assembly already supports charter schools, with a twist. Legislators of both parties -- under pressure from the state's powerhouse teacher unions -- want "teacher certification," i.e., mandatory indoctrination into the sorts of educational fads that have already pushed New York's average per-pupil cost to $9,175, compared with a national average of $5,767. If charter schools are to work, Pataki will have to risk considerable political capital fighting the unions, something he has shown little proclivity for.

The governor's declarations that New York has become a job-creating juggernaut (ready to "roar into the twenty-first century") also sound hollow. While private firms are creating jobs, the annual rate of private-sector job creation continues to lag well behind the national average -- 0.62 per cent in New York versus 1.62 per cent nationwide in 1996. What the state needs is tax and regulatory cuts far deeper than Pataki or anyone else in Albany currently contemplates.

While Pataki has had his successes (as CHANGE-NY's Tom Carroll points out, the changes in policy and rhetoric on welfare from Gov. Pataki and Mayor Giuliani have produced "two hundred thousand fewer welfare recipients . . . nothing to sneeze at") the real test will be in a second term -- assuming he wins one. "On taxes he's adopted one of the largest tax cuts in the nation's history, but at the end of the day there's a lot more that needs to be done, particularly on the income-tax cut." Carroll also called Pataki's $1.7-billion increase in funding for public education "unhelpful."

New York Post columnist Ray Kerrison, a respected social conservative, is also ambivalent about the governor. He gives him an A for economic per- formance but a C for his environmental-bond act and an F for his lack of leadership on a partial-birth-abortion ban, which Pataki meekly said he would sign if it "reached his desk." It did not last year, and looks as if it will not again this spring.

SO WHO is Gov. Pataki? Despite the hoopla, he fits the profile of the Northeast establishment Republican: He is willing to reduce taxes some, but unwilling to cut government deeply. He is willing to make marginal changes in education, yet has increased education spending as an election looms (New Jersey Gov. Christine Whitman and Mayor Giuliani are doing the same). He is willing to spend lavishly on government environmental schemes and is outspokenly pro-choice on abortion. As Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council notes, "A Pataki type of Republican may in fact be exactly the right kind of candidate for Governor of New York. . . . but to run for a national campaign the . . . profile would have to be different."

There is no doubt that Al D'Amato, who recently shifted $1.9 million in soft money from the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee to the Pataki war chest, wants to change that. But con-servatives outside New York should heed this early warning. George Pataki has failed to engage his own legislature or to attempt to educate New Yorkers about bold solutions. He certainly does not go as far as his putative hero, Barry Goldwater, in attacking Rockefeller Republicanism.