The mayoral debate – yesterday’s was the second in the general election, and the first in which Mayor Bloomberg deigned to participate – will serve as a reminder of what a wonderful influence an approaching election can have on a politician’s mind. Mayor Bloomberg, who on March 1 had declined to say he wasn’t going to raise taxes in his second term, yesterday was more forthcoming. When Errol Louis asked the mayor if voters can expect more tax and fee increases in a second Bloomberg administration, Mr. Bloomberg responded, “No. I think they can expect to see a continued focus on doing more with less.” He said that he thought next year’s city budget gap could be closed “without any tax increases or fee increases” and that the city’s increase in the personal income tax would “sunset on time as scheduled.”

Maybe the way to reduce the city’s tax burden, among the highest in the nation, is to have annual elections. Certainly Fernando Ferrer, who spent the primary season rolling out one tax increase after another – $6 billion worth, to cite an estimate Mr. Bloomberg used yesterday – has suddenly rediscovered a commitment to tax reductions and to property rights as the election approaches.

Still, even the prospect of an approaching election isn’t enough to make Mr. Ferrer’s ideology clear or to make him an attractive candidate. It was hard to tell whether Mr. Ferrer opposes the use of eminent domain on principle or whether he just opposes it for luxury condominiums but would favor it for “affordable” housing. Sometimes Mr. Ferrer seemed out of touch with reality, as when he claimed “there is no housing boom.” Other times he seemed like he was running as an isolationist, as when he complained of closing firehouses in New York while opening them in Baghdad. It’s not a zero-sum game, and Mr. Ferrer might want to consider that American aid abroad can help secure America and with it New York.

Mr. Bloomberg himself wasn’t ideologically consistent, either. He came in to the left of Howard Dean on gun control and approvingly quoted the Reverend Al Sharpton as an authority on economic development. He boasted of having given public school teachers a 33% raise in the past four years, of having supported a state increase in the minimum wage, and of having intervened “so that prices don’t go to market rate” in Mitchell-Lama housing. Still, he sounded a note of caution in response to a question about homelessness, wanting to avoid “just saying the government will subsidize everyone.”

It would have been a livelier debate had the Conservative Party’s candidate, Thomas Ognibene, been invited to participate, as he was at the first debate. In the absence of a genuine free-market candidate, Mr. Bloomberg was the winner yesterday, avoiding Mr. Ferrer’s isolationism and emerging as the low-tax candidate.