The state’s first female governor has been quietly “hard at work” in Albany, but the Democrat is in a surprisingly tight race in a reliably blue state in an era that rewards big political figures
November 6, 2022 at 7:03 pm EST New York Governor Kathy Hochul faces a surprisingly close election race against Republican challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin. (Anna Watts for The Washington Post) Comment on this story Comment NEW YORK – Through the crowd of a Brooklyn farmers’ market, below the heads of shoppers, past a tent selling lavender sprigs, a young mother spotted Kathy Hochul’s small, trim frame. The woman bowed to her two sons. “Say hello! Say hello!” told them. The boys looked up, distracted by the noises of a New York Saturday, not knowing where to turn their attention. “She’ll be our next…” Their mother paused. She corrected herself. “She’s our captain! And he will win. And he will be a ruler… again!” The boys smiled. The captain smiled. “Thank you,” Hotchul said politely. Kathleen C. Hochul, who began her career in Democratic politics 30 years ago with a city council seat in Hamburg, N.Y., 370 miles northwest of New York City, has been its governor for the past 14 months, was sworn in stroke at midnight on August 24, 2021, away from the public, one minute after the resignation of Andrew M. Cuomo, who left office amid allegations of bullying and repeated sexual harassment. At the Brooklyn farmers market, two young women sipping iced coffee saw campaign staff and cameras and flyers — and the woman at the center of the crash. “Oh,” said one to the other. “He’s, like, a famous person.” They continued walking. Hochul is the first woman to serve as governor of New York. On Tuesday, as she tries to keep the job she inherited, she hopes to become the first woman elected governor of New York. It should be a historic moment by any measure. But selling out to elect Hochul, to make her “governor … again,” did not inspire the urgency from voters he needs now in the final days of midterm elections. Suddenly, her Republican opponent, Rep. Lee Zeldin, who represents the eastern sweep of Long Island, had a possible, if not quite possible, path to victory. He surged in the polls by a few percentage points over Hochul, thanks to his near-total focus on crime as a campaign issue. Republican governors. Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin recently flew in from Florida and Virginia, respectively, to help push him higher. Upstate, Rep. Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking Republican in the House, drew a crowd of more than 3,000 people to rally for him. Suddenly, anxious Democrats turned to New York — blue New York — to help Hoechul get over the line. Suddenly, Vice President Harris was here. Suddenly, Bill and Hillary Clinton are back on the campaign trail. Suddenly, President Biden was spending Sunday night — his precious last weekend before the election Day, when races in states like Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona will decide control of the Senate — in a rally in Westchester County. On stage at those events, Democrats praised Hoechul as a governor who “gets things done,” signing more than 400 bills into law, tightening gun laws and pushing for new investments in climate, child care and affordable housing. But Democratic stars descended on New York and appeared unprepared, not only to counter Republican gains in a reliably blue state, but also to speak with one voice to defend their party. At a rally Thursday night at Barnard College in Manhattan, Hochul and an all-female lineup of speakers, with the exception of Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (DN.Y.), sought to rally the women’s college crowd around history Hochul would make with her election. When Harris took the stage in one of the vice president’s few appearances as a campaign surrogate this fall, she spoke at length about her own experiences meeting with world leaders and the “nature of democracy.” She he mentioned Hochul by name just four times, confusing Democratic campaign aides behind the scenes, one said. Three days later, at a rally in Brooklyn, former President Bill Clinton used some of his remarks to defend the 1994 crime bill — which is unpopular with today’s progressives, many of whom live in Brooklyn and many of whose votes Hotchul needs on Tuesday — before turning back to the subject under consideration. “But the thing is,” he said of Republican efforts to highlight concern about crime, “Kathy Hotchul tried to do something about it.” In brutal machine condition politics and big, weird, beguiling personalities, Kathy Hochul keeps a low profile, making the governor an unlikely fit for 2022. Across the country this year, candidates have risen to the top of the ticket with a modern set of political qualities: legendary faith, polarizing rhetoric, the skills to command a TV camera and command a room. Hochul is a politician carved from a bygone era. At the farmers market he moved with the crowd but didn’t take it over. He has risen through the ranks of local, state and federal government and, in turn, hoped to be rewarded for skill and diligence. In her television ads in these final days of the race, Hochul presents New Yorkers with the image of the governor’s mansion in Albany lit up in the wee hours of the morning: “It’s late at night and the light is on in the governor’s office. says a male voice. “Kathy Hochul works hard and it shows.” Hochul, 64, arrived in Albany through the back roads of regional politics. Lawyer and ex A legislative aide to state legislators, she moved to her home in the Buffalo area when she had children and began attending local civic meetings. When a seat opened up on Hamburg’s city council in 1994, Hochul was appointed to fill the position. He was 35 years old. Hochul served on the board for another 13 years, winning re-election three times and using the small perch to immerse herself in district concerns. In 2007, Governor Eliot Spitzer appointed her to the vacant Erie County Clerk position. Four years later, in 2011, he ran in a special election to fill an open congressional seat in a Republican-leaning district, New York’s 26th. No one thought he could win. She did, by a margin of five percentage points, and served in Washington for 19 months before losing her re-election bid. A few years later, in 2014, Cuomo selected Hochul as his lieutenant governor. For seven years, as Cuomo bent the state to his will with brute force and a penchant for the spotlight, Hochul assumed the relatively invisible role of his No. 2, working long days in the background of his administration. It was only through his alleged harassment and subsequent resignation that Hochul ended up at the top of the ticket. She had 14 months to govern and convince voters to let her stay on the job. It wasn’t Hotchul’s first time she asked to prove and maintain her position in politics. “The memory is that I’m always underestimated,” Hochul told reporters outside the farmers’ market, reflecting her tenure in elected office. “True story. Always.” Those voices, the governor said, have been rattling around her head for 30 years: “Well, she’s going to lose the primary. … “He won’t do that.” … “He’s not going to win this.” They don’t understand me.” “I think a lot of women feel that,” she added. Just in recent weeks, Hochul began adding more retail stops to her schedule — events that brought her face-to-face with voters, asking for their support. For months, her race was considered a lock. New York has not elected a Republican governor since 2002, when, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, voters kept moderate George E. Patakis in office. As she took office, Hochul also began running an establishment-style campaign: she raised $45 million. He was running TV commercials. He kept a light campaign schedule, preferring to hold official functions in her capacity as ruler — even as Zeldin was closing in on the polls and Republicans, eager for a national shock victory, were sounding the alarm about inflation and several high-profile crimes, including the shooting of Q train traveling between Brooklyn and Manhattan that left a subway passenger dead in the spring. “In New York, you have to be mean. You have to be ruthless,” said Garrett Ventry, a Republican consultant who advises Stefanik. “She is not a strong, strong candidate. He just started campaigning.” Democrats in the state viewed Hochul and her operation with concern and confusion, wondering why she wasn’t a more visible presence in neighborhoods not yet familiar with the new governor, particularly in New York, which has about 2 in 5 registered voters in the state. condition. “They were running the ‘Rose Garden’ strategy of an establishment, except he was never elected governor,” said Melissa DeRosa, a Democratic strategist and longtime Cuomo aide who left Albany embroiled in the of management scandals. “After the Dobbs decision came out, it followed the path of many Democratic campaigns and bowed to the abortion race and Trump and ignored the real problems on the ground.” New York has not elected a governor from Upstate New York since Nathan Miller, of Cortland County, in 1920. When Hotchul is in town, she stays at a hotel in midtown Manhattan. It is not unusual to meet people in the city who mispronounce its name. (The correct pronunciation is HO-kul.) “The model that people are used to is male, it’s New York — which I’m not from either,” Hochul said in an interview over the weekend. “So those are just some of the inherent challenges. But I have…
