EVEN NEW YORKERS GET IT – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  Hard to believe, but even residents of my home state, as well as Californians, are starting to learn that it's a good idea to cut spending to match income.  Most real people learn that in junior high.  From Michael Barone:

"Government in New York is too big, ineffective and expensive," the candidate's website proclaims. "We must get our state's fiscal house in order by immediately imposing a cap on state spending and freezing salaries of state public employees as part of a one-year emergency financial plan, committing to no increase in personal or corporate income taxes of sales taxes and imposing a local property tax cap."

Some right-wing Republican? No, it's Andrew Cuomo, son of three-term Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo. Interestingly, he's the only Democrat with a significant polling lead in the governor races in our eight largest states, which together have 48 percent of the nation's population.

And he's running as a fiscal con...well, not quite.  Let's say he's running as a Dem who might actually look at the amount of a check before signing it.

State governors can't resort to deficit spending without risky gimmicks, and what's more, as Andrew Cuomo's platform suggests, voters don't want them to.

As a result, Republicans are leading or running even in governor races in seven of the eight largest states. In California, Democrat Jerry Brown -- at 72, seeking the office he first won at 36 -- is below 50 percent against eBay billionaire Meg Whitman. In Texas, Rick Perry leads Democrat Bill White, who had a moderate record as mayor of Houston.

In Florida, all polls have shown Republicans leading the one Democrat in statewide office.

In Pennsylvania, Republican Tom Corbett seems likely to regain the governorship for his party in a state where party control has shifted every eight years since 1950.

In Illinois, would-be tax-raiser Pat Quinn, elevated to the governorship when Rod Blagojevich resigned, trails a little-known downstate Republican legislator.

In Ohio, Democrat Ted Strickland, popular for his first two-and-a-half years, is only even with John Kasich, former chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee.

Perhaps most surprisingly, in the nation's No. 1 unemployment state, Michigan, voters are leaning toward replacing tax-raising Democrat Jennifer Granholm with one of the four Republicans running in the August primary over either of the two Democrats.

And voters will respond well to budget cuts made wisely:

You might wonder whether spending cuts will prove as unpopular as big spending programs. That's unclear -- but there's an interesting test case in the nation's 16th largest state, Indiana.

In 2008, even while Indiana voters went 50 percent to 49 percent for Barack Obama, they re-elected spending-cutting Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels by a 58 percent to 40 percent margin. Daniels carried young voters 51 percent to 42 percent and college-educated voters 62 percent to 34 percent. He ran ahead of Ronald Reagan's 1984 showing in Indiana's most affluent county while winning 25 percent from blacks and 37 percent from Latinos. Among all these groups, he ran ahead of John McCain by double digits.

Finally:

His performance is evidence that the polls showing voters in our biggest states favoring smaller government may not just be a passing fancy. Congress may vote more money for the public employee unions. But in New York, Andrew Cuomo seems to have gotten the message.

COMMENT:  And I would hope that voters will be able to resist the ultimate weapon, the last-ditch defense of those who let spending go out-of-control:  "We're doing it for the kids."  They don't tell us that it's the kids who'll get the bill.

Which reminds me:  I think the next big domestic target is going to be education at all levels, but especially at the college level, starting with the parental question, "Just what is my kid getting for $42,000 a year?"  For years education has been treated as a sacred cow.  Now we're learning that the cow isn't sacred, just fat, with much more discipline in order.

June 21, 2010