New York’s next governor

New Yorkers are presented this year with five candidates for governor who come with assets and liabilities, some good ideas and some not so good. For many voters, especially those who don’t just make check marks down a party line, the choice is likely to be far from clear.

And so it was for our editorial board, which considered not making an endorsement this year at all. We debated whether to just lay out the pros and cons of the candidates and leave it at that. That’s not something we can recall ever doing before, however, and in the end we concluded that if we’re going to urge voters to make a choice, we could do no less.

If you’re expecting a full-throated endorsement, though, you’ve come to the wrong place. That’s not what we arrived at in the end; rather, we’ve made a choice based on a range of factors — the candidates, political reality, and the backdrop of policies coming out of a presidential administration that risk real harm for New York, the nation and the world.

Yes, who New Yorkers choose for governor matters that much, because even with the slow erosion of its representation in Congress, New York still matters. It’s the fourth-largest state and the financial center of the world. It’s the birthplace of women’s rights and LGBT rights. It embodies the American melting pot. With its wealth, its legacy, and its diversity come a special responsibility to stand as a moral voice in America.

The gubernatorial field this year includes three minor party candidates whose sincerity we don’t doubt.

Howie Hawkins, a shipping company line worker from Syracuse, is making his third bid for governor on the Green Party line. He chides Gov. Andrew Cuomo for failing to clean up corruption, and favors replacing the Excelsior Scholarship with a true free-tuition program, implementing a single-payer health care in the state, and committing to a 100 percent clean energy plan by 2030.

Larry Sharpe, a businessman running on the Libertarian line, calls for legalizing recreational marijuana, less prosecution and imprisonment of nonviolent drug offenders, and various steps to make the state more business-friendly and boost opportunities for women and minorities. He would also relax gun controls and renegotiate state pension arrangements.

There is also former Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner, running on the Serve America Movement line, which bills itself as a bipartisan party (she’s a Democrat; her running mate, Michael Volpe, is the Republican mayor of Pelham). Of particular note is her bold proposal to eliminate the state’s multi-billion dollar economic development aid program and shift the spending to infrastructure, including broadband, as a better way to attract and retain business. As an experienced leader who knows both upstate and urban issues, she is the most impressive minor party candidate New York has seen in years.

Which brings us to the major parties. Marcus Molinaro, the Dutchess County executive, is the most credible candidate Republicans have put up in recent times. He’s especially refreshing after the tea party bile of Carl Paladino and the almost invisible bid of Rob Astorino.

Mr. Molinaro puts forth some moderate, sensible ideas, including taking over local costs of Medicaid over 10 years to relieve property taxes and save money through efficiencies, and imposing a 3 percent spending cap on state government. He is clearly optimistic about finding $4 billion worth of “corruption savings,” but rooting out the cost of pay-to-play politics is a noble goal. He would appoint an independent Moreland Commission to go after corruption. And he talks about things not many Republican candidates often do, including sales taxes on internet purchases and a “red flag” law that would allow family members to petition for guns to be taken away from relatives they consider dangerous.

Yet there are elements of Mr. Molinaro’s candidacy that give us pause. He sees no urgency to protect women’s reproductive rights in state law, even in the face of an increasingly right-wing Supreme Court, saying New York can deal with that if it happens. That’s a risky leap of faith to ask of voters. Most distressingly, though he says he’d stand up to President Donald Trump, he doesn’t disavow ads from the state Conservative Party, on whose line he is also running, that say a vote for him is like a vote for Mr. Trump. If that is true, New Yorkers should want nothing to do with him.

Finally, there is Mr. Cuomo. We are concerned about the corruption at the highest levels of his administration, and about a continuing federal investigation into a questionable $25 million state grant to Crystal Run, a medical corporation whose principals contributed heavily to his campaign. His scrapping of his Moreland Commission in exchange for a weak ethics law was disappointing. So were episodes of retaliation in his administration against whistleblowers on sexual harassment. He bears a big share of the responsibility for the mess in New York City’s mass transit system. And his alliance with Senate Republicans, which speeded state budget passage, stymied progress on abortion and campaign finance and ethics reform.

There is no denying, though, that Mr. Cuomo has done much good for New York. He lowered taxes. He paid strong attention to upstate through the Buffalo Billion and a sustained emphasis on technology in the Capital Region and points west. He’s held the line on state spending. His property tax cap has moderated school taxes. He got marriage equality and stronger gun control passed. It’s no small achievement that he got the new Tappan Zee bridge built.

And, importantly, he is one of the nation’s most forceful voices in standing up to the Trump administration’s hurtful, bigoted and damaging policies on immigration, taxes, and the environment.

How you cast your precious vote is a personal choice. You may want voice a protest on a third-party pick. You may like Mr. Molinaro’s promise of change, or prefer Mr. Cuomo’s pragmatism.

Mr. Cuomo is far from perfect. His mastery of transactional politics gets results, but also yields regrettable compromise, especially on ethics. We don’t know if the ethical cloud over him will pass.

Right now, though, we believe he’s the right choice — a skilled politician who gets things done, has his heart in the right place and is a firm opponent of all that is wrong in Washington. Reservations and all, we endorse the governor.