She said: “If I can demonstrate that women can govern with strength, courage but also heart and compassion and show a different way to lead this state – we bring people together as women – then other women will be able to follow behind me and step into the roles of power.”
Immediately, she faced the spectre of Covid’s most virulent and infectious mutation (then delta), lagging vaccination rates, the fallout of the Cuomo scandals, the loss of more than 1.9 million jobs, and widespread economic uncertainty. She had to strike a delicate balance, building on Cuomo’s accomplishments as joint wins – gay marriage, minimum wage increase, improvement in infrastructure – while distancing herself from his misdeeds.
In short order, she corrected the official New York death toll to reflect the 12,000 deaths the Cuomo administration had obscured in an apparent effort to make its Covid abatement efforts look better. She then implemented a vaccine mandate for all public health facilities and courts, playing hardball by announcing that those who did not comply by the deadline would be fired. Hochul then followed through on her promise to bring ethics transparency to state government, replacing Cuomo’s ethics board and most of the senior managers from his inner circle.
“All her work throughout the state all those years is paying off,” says David Weinraub, managing partner of Brown and Weinraub, New York’s top lobbying firm. “Because of her deep and many relationships in New York State, she has lured great, experienced people with incredible resumes to help bring out her best.”
Recently Hochul presented her first $216bn balanced budget proposal for the state, which she projected to remain balanced through to 2027 thanks, in large part, to federal aid, adding a potentially controversial proposal for three casinos in the NYC area to further fill the coffers. Also Tuesday, after a rough autumn fighting off rivals for the all important Democratic nomination in her quest to earn the governor’s seat for herself, her greatest remaining obstacle, former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, suddenly pulled out of the race. In a state as solidly Democratic as New York, this more or less clears the path for Hochul to secure the governorship on her own in November as no strong Republican candidates have emerged.
It has been quite a meteoric rise for her, from what amounted to being Cuomo’s errand girl as lieutenant governor to, five months later, being a popular incumbent governor and favorite for re-election. With Hochul’s Miss Congeniality personality and middle of the road pragmatism, she looks for common ground important both to the moderate Democratic base and its far Left-like firebrand New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – women’s rights issues, protecting the environment, and education, for example.
Her reach-across-the-aisle pro-business stance makes her, at least, not repugnant to Republicans in a general election in a particularly divisive time.
“I’m ushering in a whole new era of collaboration,” she told civic leaders at the Association for a Better New York.
When the highly contagious omicron variant emerged on November 26, Hochul took swift and decisive action. She declared a state of emergency, making sure that hospitals had enough staffing and beds. She urged constituents to vax, mask up, and stay calm but also carry on with their lives (ie, get out of the house and back to spending money). She white-knuckled a declaration that schools would stay open and businesses would reopen in January despite the rampaging omicron and thus far she has stuck to it. Omicron seems to have peaked in New York State.
