Opinion: Kathy Hochul has always been a tireless worker

Kathy Hochul is one of New York’s 20 most influential politicians of the past 20 years. See the full list.

I first learned of Kathy Hochul from a newspaper article in 2011, when she was first running for Congress in a district everyone said a Democrat couldn’t win. What really caught my attention was how quickly people decided she couldn’t do it. She was a woman. She was a Democrat running in a Republican district. The experts called her “unelectable.”

I knew that word pretty well.

People said the same thing about me when I first ran for Congress. So I called her up and told her she was going to win.

And that’s exactly what she did.

After Hochul pulled off one of the biggest upsets of the cycle, she moved in with me, becoming my roommate in Washington, D.C. That’s when I really got to know her.

We’re both former staffers. We had both been community organizers and local elected officials. We were both mothers trying to balance public service with everything waiting for us at home. And I got a front-row seat to her work ethic. Some mornings, the two of us would be brushing our teeth at an hour when most people were still asleep, already getting ready for a long day. That part of her has never changed.

Since 2011, the “unelectable” Kathy Hochul has also been called a member of Congress, lieutenant governor and now governor of the great state of New York. And through it all, she has shown that same sense of grit, determination and brilliance that caught my attention 15 years ago.

I could spend hours talking about her accomplishments – cutting taxes for middle-class New Yorkers, putting New York on a real path to universal childcare, creating more than 800,000 private sector jobs, standing up to the disastrous and cruel policies from Washington. But behind those successes is something far more special: her hard work, her dedication to her constituents, and her remarkable ability to build bridges and create powerful coalitions.

Far too often our politics are marked by petty fighting and big egos. Believe me, we had seen plenty of that in Albany for decades. But Hochul has shown what it looks like when our leaders work together, and deliver real results.

And here’s the other thing about the “real” Kathy Hochul: The woman behind the titles and the elections always put her family first. No matter how busy she was, she would call her family every night. She always found time to help her children with their homework. Her friends know her as a kind, thoughtful and supportive friend. She treats everyone with the same respect. In an age when some in Washington, D.C., treat hard-working Americans with contempt and disrespect, Hochul isn’t just providing the leadership and moral clarity we deserve from elected officials, she’s doing it with a sense of grace and compassion that we should all strive to emulate in our own lives.

So to the people who don’t know Hochul or are just getting to know her, let me tell you this: She also grew up understanding what it meant for a family to work hard and stretch what they had. Her parents started their married life in a trailer near the Bethlehem Steel plant, and they never let their children forget where they came from. They worked hard, expected the same from their kids, and taught them to care about people who were struggling.

Those values are still very much a part of who she is.

Right now for too many families, the future feels harder and more uncertain than ever. But I’ve never felt more confident than I do with Hochul leading the charge. Because, like she always says: your family, and your future, is her fight.

I’m so proud to call Kathy Hochul my dear friend. And I’m even more proud to call her my governor.