{"id":483969,"date":"2026-01-01T04:46:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T04:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/483969\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T04:46:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T04:46:19","slug":"kathy-hochuls-suck-up-to-the-left-this-year-could-leave-ny-is-sorry-shape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/483969\/","title":{"rendered":"Kathy Hochul’s suck-up to the left this year could leave NY is sorry shape"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gov. Kathy Hochul heads into her reelection year aiming to make the best of her dismal record \u2014 while simultaneously seeking to placate<\/a> the far left and co-opt Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s backers by caving to his demands, even if hurts New Yorkers.<\/p>\n

Hope for the best, New York \u2014 but brace for the worst.<\/p>\n

Ever since becoming the Empire State\u2019s latest \u201caccidental governor\u201d (not even then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who tapped her as lieutenant gov, ever dreamed she\u2019d wind up in his seat), Hochul has repeatedly proven she\u2019s got less backbone than a jellyfish.<\/p>\n

Over her 4\u00bd years as the state\u2019s chief executive, she\u2019s endlessly kowtowed to the left and shifted with the political winds.<\/p>\n

Even before Mamdani cleared a (razor thin) majority of votes in November, Hochul raced to jump on his bandwagon and endorse him<\/a> \u2014 plainly deciding that her own political future depends on compromise (at least!) with his toxic agenda of de-policing, antisemitism, higher taxes and assorted socialist fancies.<\/p>\n

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That fits her record: The few times she\u2019s dared to confront progressives in the Legislature, she\u2019s done it feebly \u2014 rarely getting more than a few crumbs.<\/p>\n

One of her biggest embarrassments came when she let progressive lawmakers run roughshod<\/a> in torpedoing Hector LaSalle, her nominee to become the state\u2019s chief judge \u2014 the first time a New York governor\u2019s nomination for that job was shot down.<\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t be her only humiliation.<\/p>\n

Hochul was too timid to push hard to fix Albany\u2019s disastrous criminal-justice reforms, which fueled a crime spike (major felonies in the city are still 25% higher than before cashless bail began in 2020) and forced shopkeepers to lock toothpaste behind display windows.<\/p>\n

Eventually, she got only modest changes<\/a> through the Legislature: a few minor tweaks to the no-bail law and the rules for \u201cdiscovery\u201d (which govern prosecutors\u2019 evidence-gathering and -sharing).<\/p>\n

Today, New York still remains the only state that bans judges from considering a defendant\u2019s danger to the community when determining bail.<\/p>\n

The Raise the Age law continues to destroy teen lives in record numbers.<\/p>\n

And defendants are released every day just hours after they\u2019re arrested, in the case of most crimes.<\/p>\n

Hochul also made little headway<\/a> in lifting the cap on public charter schools, even though they consistently blow away traditional schools in the percentage of kids who meet proficiency standards.<\/p>\n

Talk about affordability<\/a>! Charters are the only way many lower-income kids can afford to get a decent education, but Hochul has effectively given up on challenging anti-charter Democrats to lift the cap, let alone scrap it.<\/p>\n

Nor has she said much about the horrific state of New York public schools generally: Nearly half the kids aren\u2019t \u201cproficient\u201d in math and English.<\/p>\n

True, the state\u2019s Constitution oddly assigns most responsibility for schools to the Board of Regents, whose members are chosen by the Democratic-controlled Legislature.<\/p>\n

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But if Hochul truly cared about kids\u2019 education, she\u2019d not only have pressed harder to get the charter cap scrapped, but also made a huge stink about the pathetic state of the regular public-school system.<\/p>\n

But apparently she\u2019s fine with half the state\u2019s kids flunking.<\/p>\n

Her record on that system, in which the only sure way to escape lousy public schools is to pay for better private ones, is just one example of what makes her calls for \u201caffordability\u201d so laughable.<\/p>\n

Consider, too: She\u2019s suddenly stepping back<\/a> (a bit) from her budget-busting green agenda, now that the costs are starting to take a major bite out of voters\u2019 pocketbooks.<\/p>\n

But make no mistake: The added dollars are largely her fault; she could\u2019ve retreated years ago, and moved to scrap the whole \u201czero emissions\u201d plan rather than merely delay it.<\/p>\n

Instead, it took the coming election, and warnings of possible blackouts this summer, to get her just to lift a finger.<\/p>\n

So now she\u2019s putting off a program that slaps companies that exceed emissions limits, and suspending the state\u2019s all-electric buildings law as well. \u00a0<\/p>\n

She also OK\u2019d a key gas pipeline and claims she\u2019s now for an \u201call-of-the-above\u201d strategy \u2014 yet she leaves out several energy sources and won\u2019t even mention the word \u201cfracking,\u201d though allowing that perfectly safe drilling method would be a real economic boon to the gas-rich Southern Tier and a boost (via cheaper energy) to the whole state.<\/p>\n

Nor is she scrapping her Sustainable Future Program, a boondoggle burning $1 billion on \u201calternative energy.\u201d <\/p>\n

As for New York\u2019s fanciful zero-emission goals, she admits the state won\u2019t meet imminent deadlines but remains in denial about the impossibility of meeting them any decade soon without tanking local economies. <\/p>\n

Once the election is over, count on Hochul to pivot back to her costly climate agenda, just as she similarly \u201cpaused\u201d hefty congestion tolls in Manhattan as the 2024 election approached \u2014 only to restore them<\/a> once voting finished.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s flip-flopping on taxes<\/a>, too: After repeatedly vowing not to raise them, Hochul has now hinted about socking corporations again to pay for yet a new entitlement<\/a>: government-paid child care.<\/p>\n

That would be a sop to Mamdani and his \u201ctax the rich\u201d voters.<\/p>\n

But companies (those that don\u2019t flee the state altogether, taking jobs and tax revenue with them) will only raise their prices to cover the cost of those taxes.<\/p>\n

How does that promote \u201caffordability\u201d?<\/p>\n

Indeed, it\u2019s downright scary to wonder how far the gov will go to pander to Gotham\u2019s new socialist, antisemitic mayor and his fans.<\/p>\n

Then again, such a strategy could well backfire<\/a>: Again, nearly half (49.2%) of New York City\u2019s voters refused to back Mamdani last year; the far less left-leaning statewide electorate would never get behind someone who follows a radical, Mamdani-backed course. <\/p>\n

Yet Hochul plainly figures she needs to shift left to avoid falling prey to a lefty primary challenger, or seeing a progressive third-party candidate doom her fall campaign. <\/p>\n

Thanks to decades of misguided leadership in Albany, New York\u2019s share of the US population has been plunging for decades \u2014 which is why the state now gets only 26 seats in the House, down from 45 as recently as the 1940s.<\/p>\n

If Hochul sticks to her spineless, suck-up style of governing, it\u2019ll only get worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Kathy Hochul heads into her reelection year aiming to make the best of her dismal record \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":483970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[8161,5229,285,4219,50145,7033,4691,90,57313,3153,5371,3272,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,1269,40852,618,71679,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5301],"class_list":{"0":"post-483969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-affordability","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-climate-change","11":"tag-crime","12":"tag-criminal-justice-reforms","13":"tag-democrats","14":"tag-editorial","15":"tag-elections","16":"tag-fracking","17":"tag-governor","18":"tag-kathy-hochul","19":"tag-legislature","20":"tag-new-york","21":"tag-new-york-city","22":"tag-newyork","23":"tag-newyorkcity","24":"tag-ny","25":"tag-nyc","26":"tag-opinion","27":"tag-public-schools","28":"tag-taxes","29":"tag-the-left","30":"tag-united-states","31":"tag-united-states-of-america","32":"tag-unitedstates","33":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","34":"tag-us","35":"tag-usa","36":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115818029668332962","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}