The week before Tuesday’s State of the State address, Gov. Kathy Hochul told reporters she tore a muscle while lifting weights.
She said her New Year’s resolution was to push her usual routine from 70 pounds to 80 pounds. But the sling she wore during a series of policy announcements leading into Tuesday’s annual speech at the New York State Capitol indicated how poorly the heavier lifting had gone. The governor was left with a torn pectoral muscle and a reminder not to exert herself too much too quickly.
New Yorkers could say that the torn muscle and resulting sling exemplifies how Hochul’s governorship has transpired ahead of Tuesday’s speech, in which she had arguably her best chance to define herself as a leader.
Facing resistance
In one light, the job has always seemed a stretch for Hochul, who came to it unexpectedly. An Erie County clerk, who ran an opportune special election Congressional campaign in 2011, parlayed two years in Washington into a lieutenant governorship that improbably ascended her to New York’s highest office after the state’s bombastic former governor’s alleged behavior brought down his political career in 2021.
In Hochul’s first two years in office, she’s faced resistance far heavier than 80 pounds.
After successfully establishing herself as the sincere and thoughtful antidote to Andrew Cuomo’s brash leadership, Hochul has watched her popularity flag. In poll after poll, her favorability has fallen, including in a Siena College poll released in August that found her job-approval ratings had hit a new low after “slow, persistent decline.”
New Yorkers’ dipping satisfaction coupled with strong messaging on crime and affordability by her 2022 Republican opponent Lee Zeldin led to New York’s closest gubernatorial race since the reliably blue state elected Republican Gov. George Pataki in 1994.
In response, Hochul’s 2023 State of the State last year emphasized Republican talking points about public safety and cost of living. She then faced a difficult year in which her signature proposal to build 800,000 new housing units in the state over the course of a decade crumbled. Republicans salivated over her perceived political weaknesses, and progressives often chose to rebuff rather than rally behind the efforts of New York’s first-elected woman governor.
In fact, in what’s purported to be unified Democratic leadership, Hochul vetoed 115 bills last year – not all that far shy of the some 140 vetoes issued by Arizona’s Democratic governor on bills passed by that state’s Republican-led legislature.
But even in a hard-fought 2023, Hochul, 65, performed well on issues such as abortion, and she took an appropriately firm stance on antisemitism after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, which contributed to xenophobia and violence in several New York communities, including a December shooting outside Temple Israel in Albany. As I wrote in October, Hochul’s trip to Israel in the aftermath of the attacks, as she was coping with the personal grief of suddenly losing her father, seemed to demonstrate her resolve.
Setting the agenda
And so we arrived at Hochul’s 2024 State of the State Tuesday.
This is the time in her governorship when she can afford to flex the most political muscle. She’s not coming off an election year, nor is she going into one. So more than any other State of the State she will deliver this term, even as she navigates a looming budget shortfall that curtails financial flexibility, Hochul had the chance to set the agenda and pronounce what kind of governor she intends to be.
In Tuesday’s roughly one-hour-long remarks, Hochul made it clear she’s not an idealistic progressive nor a government-shrinking conservative.
She is very much at home in the middle.
“The strategy is probably having a more centrist approach, which she seems to have carved out for herself. I think that's authentic for her,” said Skidmore College political science professor Ronald Seyb. “I think she's somebody who really sees herself as pragmatic, somebody who can work across the aisle, somebody who is a bridge builder — not at all an idealogue or somebody who's partisan.”
Hochul's appeals
But, “the pushback against that is to say that she doesn't really have any conviction,” Seyb added.
As an indication, dissatisfaction on the left seemed to be just as deep as disappointment on the right following Tuesday’s speech.
“Despite the misleading claims in the opening video of the governor’s State of the State, New York’s parents, renters and working families continue to feel the crunch of a worsening affordability crisis,” Ana María Archila and Jasmine Gripper, co-directors of the New York Working Families Party, spouted in a joint statement released following the speech.
Hochul’s address included olive branches to both sides. There was a promise of prenatal leave and criminal justice offerings, such as a commitment to mental health courts, that prompted applause from the progressive Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins. And then there was a call for a crackdown on retail crime and investment in family-owned farms that should appeal to conservatives.
As I wrote after Hochul’s 2023 address, it’s fair to wonder whether the governor's middle-of-the road approach may be too middling for many New Yorkers.
Still, it’s clear that this is the governor Hochul wants to be. It’s the governor she is.
The risk is that, as Republicans continue to exploit Democrats’ political vulnerabilities over issues like affordability and the influx of migrants — an issue that Hochul barely touched on in Tuesday’s speech – the governor faces the prospect of watching survey numbers drop as she heads toward a 2026 campaign that could be even more of a dogfight than 2022.
Incremental pace
But the moderate Hochul seems to be betting her political future on taking things at a moderate, incremental pace.
The overarching themes in this year’s speech, when she was able to set the agenda, were nearly identical to the safety and affordability she prioritized in 2023, when she was still reeling from an uncomfortably close victory.
And perhaps most importantly, returned for 2024 is her signature housing proposal.
Only this time around, Hochul’s proposal is not quite as sweeping. Instead of a statewide call for 800,000 new housing units over the next decade, with unpopular mandated development levels, Hochul has made adjustments. The housing proposal announced Tuesday focused on 500,000 new units in New York City. It’s a promise Hochul said she could keep by restoring tax incentives, eliminating density restrictions and supporting commercial property conversion, among other strategies. What the plan lacks in last year’s scope, the still-ambitious effort makes up for in its better likelihood of passing.
Hochul is in need of a big win at some point over the next two years, or else she’ll be susceptible to Republican campaign ads that question what exactly she’s done for New York.
“She doesn't really have anything that is a signature legislative accomplishment,” professor Seyb told me. “And when you're governing in a unified government, particularly when you have supermajorities in both the Assembly and the Senate, I think the expectation is she has to be able to pass something. You have to get points on the board, and I'm not sure that [smaller] policies, such as eliminating copays for insulin or maternity leave for pregnant women, have the kind of stature and the kind of oomph that are really going to help you in the election campaign.”
The retooled housing plan may be Hochul’s chance at a landmark accomplishment.
Time will tell, of course, but Hochul’s approach to that plan could — surprisingly — represent what just might turn out to be her strength. As she stretches her capacity a few more weight plates at a time, there are likely to be setbacks and torn-up agreements.
Her reputation is likely to spend some time in a sling.
But as she warms up for the forthcoming budgeting process, during which the heavy lifting for all the 200-plus proposals she outlined Tuesday will take place, Hochul’s speech seemed to tell New Yorkers her plan. She'll stick to her core routine, adjusting as she sees fit, believing she’s becoming a stronger, more effective leader with every rep.
The veracity of that belief could ultimately determine how history casts Hochul’s legacy.