Hochul's tightrope walk to reelection started at the State of the State

Ahead of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s fifth State of the State address, her team herded reporters into a pre-spin room full of her surrogates. Among them was Assembly Member Charles Lavine. The Long Island Democrat heaped praise on the governor, including for her support of Jewish New Yorkers, while criticizing the likely GOP nominee for governor Bruce Blakeman for associating with President Donald Trump. 

“I have a pretty good sense of people who hate Jews, and I would never think to support anyone running for office who would support a president of the United States who breaks bread with Jew haters and racists,” Lavine told City & State, asserting “you are who you associate with.”

Would he consider New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whom Hochul is partnering herself with, a Jew hater? A not insignificant number of Jewish New Yorkers would say so. “I have my concerns,” Lavine said. But he insisted that the governor has nothing to explain when it comes to her relationship with the mayor because she has proven herself time and again to the Jewish community. Never mind that Blakeman is actually Jewish.

If this seems like cognitive dissonance, well, welcome to politics. It’s indicative of the balancing act that was Hochul’s speech. Just as Lavine carefully parsed his words to ensure all his potential audiences would come away satisfied, Hochul’s speech was a tightrope walk between challenges from the left and right throwing off her center of gravity ahead of her reelection races. In June, she’s expecting a Democratic primary against her own lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, who’s running to her left and trying to crib from Mamdani’s populist playbook. And she’s looking ahead to November for a likely matchup against the Trump acolyte, Blakeman, who’s hammering her from the right.  

In many ways, she stayed upright without any major slip ups or stumbles while setting her tone for a tricky election year. But it still left some wanting, evidence of the line Hochul must continue to toe if she wants a second full term.

Hochul appeared in her element and squarely in campaign mode on Tuesday as she gave her fifth State of the State address, this one at The Egg performing arts center in Albany. She had jokes. She criticized Trump. She talked about affordability. She got standing ovations when she promised to stand up to immigration agents. And she shouted out the Buffalo Bills.

Hochul flitted between quippy and serious over the course of her 45-minute speech. At times, she made use of visual aids like cellphone-free mascot Frankie Focus memeified in the mold of Dark Brandon and an AI image of herself modeled after Rambo (“Take a look at these guns!” she joked). But Hochul also locked in when it came time to affirm her commitment to being a bulwark against the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. “Protecting New Yorkers also means this: standing up to ICE agents who abuse their power,” she said to a standing ovation.

Ultimately, Hochul offered a speech one could describe as equal parts bold and safe – a classic of the campaign genre that the governor received praise for utilizing well.

“This was a very different, much more confident, Kathy Hochul than the one who slipped into office as ‘an accidental governor’ and won her first election on her own by one of the closest margins in modern times,” Larry Levy, executive dean of the Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, said in a text. He called her decision to mention Trump directly unusual, but one that showed her “lean(ing) into the reality that she is much more popular in New York” than the president.

Attacking an unpopular president from the opposite party: safe.

But Levy also noted Hochul’s apparent lack of concern over appearing too progressive by shouting out and featuring in a video the democratic socialist Mamdani. Happily associating with a polarizing left-wing figure Republicans have already cast as the socialist boogeyman: bold.

Hochul stuck largely to winning issues popular across the board: affordability, child care, protecting kids and not raising taxes. “She’s focused on the right priorities,” Andrew Rein, president of the fiscal watchdog group Citizens Budget Committee told City & State, while acknowledging that details of the budget will determine whether her plans are sound when Hochul releases her spending proposal on Tuesday. Even Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay could admit that the governor’s ideas sounded good in theory. “I certainly agree with a lot of stuff,” he told City & State, mentioning Hochul’s support of building out nuclear energy and speaking about affordability. 

But the Central New York Republican also pointed out the very real flip side that Hochul also made clear appeals to progressives. “She's worried about facing a challenge from the left, and as a result, she’s going to cozy up to (Mamdani),” Barclay said. 

Strategically, Hochul’s alliance with Mamdani could give her cred among her party’s left wing needed to win the primary, especially in New York City where he won decisively. But Jasmine Gripper, co-director of the New York Working Families Party, warned that Hochul can’t treat the mayor like her golden goose. “I think she’s over-relying on Zohran to save her, and I think that only stands if she doesn’t screw over New York City,” she told City & State. Gripper had critiques of Hochul’s speech, especially the governor’s continued resistance to raising taxes to bring in revenue for shared initiatives like universal child care. Mamdani, too, said he still thinks taxing the rich is the best way to pay for his big plans.  

Where Hochul’s tightrope act was most apparent were her proposals around public safety. Some of her loudest applause came when she spoke about standing up to ICE by enabling New Yorkers to sue federal agents who violate their rights, prohibit any state fiscal support in cooperating with ICE and designating schools, hospitals and houses of worship as “sensitive locations,” where immigration agents cannot enter without a signed judicial warrant 

Hochul did not go so far as to announce support for a package of bills that’s been championed by progressive legislators to expand protections for immigrants, limiting how much she’s willing to move to the left on the issue. But the governor’s strong rhetoric around what she did announce got her some thumbs up from progressives. “I think the sentiment that we're not going to allow ICE to bring terror in our community is a bold one from our governor,” Assembly Member Jessica González-Rojas told City & State, calling Hochul’s speech “a wonderful step in a very important direction” on protecting immigrant New Yorkers. 

Hochul’s other major safety pitch to create protest buffer zones around houses of worship to tamp down on disruptive and at times antisemitic protests outside synagogues ostensibly against Israel came as a clear overture to Jewish New Yorkers perhaps wary of Mamdani (though he also has expressed a degree of support for the idea). She strongly condemned the pro-Hamas chants at a recent protest in Kew Gardens, Queens. “That's not free expression, that's harassment,” Hochul affirmed. “And targeting a Jewish community in this way is antisemitism.” It’s the kind of language and proposal that Lavine could reference as an assurance that the governor’s relationship with Mamdani does not extend to any real or perceived anti-Jewish bias associated with the mayor.

But for all the tightrope walking, Hochul could not appease everyone, still receiving expected criticism from both the left and right. “It was the most unbelievable speech I’ve ever heard – and I mean unbelievable,” Blakeman said to reporters on Long Island shortly after Hochul finished speaking. “I thought I was watching a Saturday Night Live skit. It wasn’t serious, it wasn’t sincere.” The state GOP similarly in a prebuttal called Hochul’s State of the State “a wishlist of radical left-wing proposals from a Governor terrified of Zohran Mamdani and her party's extremist base.”

At the same time, Delgado and left-wing allies who support his bid for governor criticized Hochul for failing to meet the moment with a bolder progressive agenda. “You don’t fix an affordability crisis with pilot programs, tax breaks, and empty promises,” he said in a statement, calling the governor’s proposals “half measures” that fail to do what’s necessary. “You fix it by taking on the powerful interests that have rigged the system and by providing a true support system for working people and families.” Delgado didn’t attend the State of the State, instead engaging in his own “State of the People” with a stop in Syracuse.

But more troubling for the governor are criticisms from influential political entities that haven’t aligned themselves with a candidate yet, particularly in the primary. Leaders of the powerful 1199SEIU health care workers union weren’t impressed with the speech. “Health care was missing out,” said Dell Smitherman, the union’s downstate political director. “Big time,” President Yvonne Armstrong piped in. And Gripper expressed real doubt that Hochul’s address would inspire WFP members to allow her onto their line. “I don’t know that I have enough votes in our process to get to a Kathy Hochul endorsement,” she said. Gripper continued to say that Mamdani’s victory in the city has energized and emboldened the left, so Hochul has reason to worry that she may not get the progressive third party’s backing that her speech did not adequately address.

Perhaps nowhere was the precarity of Hochul’s balancing act more apparent than at a press availability she didn’t even attend. Facing a crowd of reporters, Mamdani sung the praises of the governor with his trademark smile. While he did that, two of his closest allies in Albany stood nearby, quietly. Why? Because state Sen. Jabari Brisport and Assembly Member Emily Gallagher had endorsed Delgado.