Kathy Hochul Is Here to Stay
For ten years, Andrew Cuomo dominated New York politics through force of personality and the hoarding of power. His successor, Kathy Hochul, after winning the Democratic gubernatorial primary election on Tuesday, appears poised to do something like the opposite.
Hochul was no one’s first choice to be governor. In 2014, Cuomo tapped her to be lieutenant governor, in part because of how politically nonthreatening she was. A former county clerk from Buffalo, she was best known for once opposing a plan to provide driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. For seven years, she stayed on the margins of state politics. In 2020, when Cuomo wrote a self-congratulatory memoir about New York’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he didn’t bother to mention her once. Last summer, when Cuomo was forced to resign and Hochul suddenly found herself in the top job, many considered her more a placeholder than a replacement.
But then something strange happened. The governorship of New York is one of the most visible jobs in American politics, and New York is not lacking in talented, ambitious, and well-resourced politicians. This is a state where, until recently, rumors of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mounting a primary challenge against Chuck Schumer were cropping up every few months. Yet no one stepped up to seriously challenge Hochul, a figure with far less clout than the Senate Majority Leader. Last year, Letitia James, the state attorney general, whose investigations of Cuomo’s alleged misconduct led to his resignation, announced that she was running for governor, and then pulled the plug on her campaign after only a few weeks, despite many seeing her as the prohibitive favorite. Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, then became the left’s preferred candidate, only to wind up raising barely more money than necessary for a down payment on a New York City apartment. Tom Suozzi, a Long Island congressional representative, took another tack, making appeals to centrist and conservative Democrats, with little success. On Tuesday, in a low-turnout election, Hochul won easily. She will face Representative Lee Zeldin, the winner of the Republican primary, in the general election in November, but barring a shocking upset Hochul will continue to be New York’s governor.
For months, local political reporters have tried to answer the question of what Hochul wants. A November profile of Hochul in New York called her a “cipher,” “malleable,” and a “vessel for the will of her constituency.” A Hochul aide told the reporter, Laura Nahmias, that the Governor has a strong “moral compass” but a movable political one. When she was representing the citizens of Erie County, she strove for the endorsement of the National Rifle Association. Since becoming Governor, she has signed reforms to the state’s ethics, sexual-harassment, and voting laws; pledged to make New York a redoubt of abortion rights; and enacted serious gun-control measures in response to the Buffalo massacre. She’s also gifted hundreds of millions of dollars to her home-town N.F.L. team, the Buffalo Bills, for a new stadium; raised tens of millions from special-interest groups, including the real-estate, gambling, and cryptocurrency industries; and seen her own pick for lieutenant governor indicted on federal corruption charges. (He has pleaded not guilty).
Perhaps a better question to ask is what the rest of New York’s political system wants from Hochul. Cuomo’s downfall was about wrongdoing, but it was also about power. New York’s governor is particularly powerful compared with those of other states—in New York, it’s the governor who writes the state budget—and, over the years, Cuomo had become the most powerful New York governor in memory. He maintained and increased his power by pitting the two main factions of the Democratic Party, the left and the center, against each other. This arrangement eventually became intolerable to state lawmakers, particularly to a new crop of left-leaning members in the state legislature. By the time he resigned, Cuomo had few defenders left in either the Assembly or the State Senate.
That Hochul is a weaker governor than her predecessor has been a welcome change for many in state politics. Even after a budget season in which the left was stymied on many priorities, there’s still a sense that Hochul’s malleability offers something for everyone. And, in the months since she took office, the importance of New York state politics, in terms of national Democratic Party priorities, has only increased. The Times, in endorsing Hochul’s candidacy in the primary, noted the many issues on which the federal government has stalled out, including climate change, housing, and education. “With the federal government paralyzed on many of these issues, states are poised to become an even more powerful force in American life,” the newspaper’s editorial board wrote. “New York is among the few that have been dedicated to defending these essential norms that are under attack elsewhere in the country.” Hochul is no longer a placeholder. Now she’s in charge. ♦
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June 29, 2022 at 07:29PM
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Kathy Hochul Is Here to Stay - The New Yorker
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