In case you didn’t know, Kathy Hochul really loves the Bills

For any elected official, leaning into something that’s authentic to them is smart politics. So for Gov. Kathy Hochul, resting on the Buffalo Bills came naturally.

Born and raised in Hamburg, Hochul first attended a Bills game in 1973 during the team’s first season in the original Rich Stadium when she was a teenager. And growing up in a rowdy, football-loving family with four brothers and six uncles, knowing everything there was to know about the Bills was a must to participate in Sunday dinners, she told The Athletic in September.

She’s the first governor from Buffalo in over 100 years, making her the biggest Bills fan to ever grace Albany’s Executive Mansion. She consistently injects her love for the team into official state business, and ended this year’s State of the State address donning a Bills baseball cap and swaying to the team’s fight song, or “Shout” remix. And it helps that the Bills have soared into popularity as they’ve become regular Super Bowl contenders since drafting quarterback Josh Allen in 2018.

“The Buffalo Bills are a religious calling,” said Buffalo native John Maggiore, a former Cuomo administration official who also worked as then-Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy’s chief of staff. “Politically, it’s good to be true to your team.”

The governor has made her favorite team her identity – relying on them to make her relatable to New Yorkers when she sometimes struggles to do so.

“George W. Bush was famous for this – he was ‘the guy you’d like to get a beer with,’” said Jacob Neiheisel, an associate political science professor at the University at Buffalo. “It says nothing about policy, but there’s a human quality that appeals to some people.”

And because the state’s political power is heavily concentrated downstate, it has also made sense for Hochul to strategically use her love of the Bills as a nod to her Western New York roots while appealing to other people around the state. The governor is known to visit local Bills bars in New York City and in Albany several times each year, cheering with fans and taking selfies while sporting her favorite Bills letterman jacket and sneakers with the team’s logo. And it’s a strategy she’s sticking to.

At times, Hochul has leaned into the fandom a bit too hard. When caught off-guard with a pause during a press conference on Nov. 17, or speaking off-the-cuff under pressure from protesters, “Go Bills” is Hochul's go-to buffer to buy a few seconds of thinking time. She invoked the team when asked about demonstrators who shouted “tax the rich” at her at a rally with Mayor Zohran Mamdani in October – joking, “I thought they were saying, ‘Let’s go Bills!’”

“The play brings to mind the ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ moment, and I don’t think that those are images that people want to conjure up,” Neiheisel said. “I can’t have been the only one to say that’s not where you want to go with that.”

But Democratic strategist Trip Yang said it’s a harmless political filler phrase. “The main thing here is authenticity,” Yang told City and State. “It’s less about the literal ‘Go Bills’ or ‘Go Knicks.’ It doesn’t give you automatically a 5-point bump in the polls. It shows that you’re a sports fanatic and that you can connect with people, and shows voters you are who you say you are.”

Hochul’s love for the team represents a unifying force at a divided time. And Yang said Hochul’s been smart to lean into it. “The only way it’s not smart is if you’re fabricating your love for a particular team, and clearly that’s not Kathy Hochul,” he said.

Hochul’s lifelong admiration for the Bills gave her the foundation to be the driving force in cementing the Bills’ legacy in the state for future generations – securing a controversial heavily state-subsidized new stadium deal in 2022 to keep the team in Western New York another 30 years. In 2013, Hochul was part of the Erie County delegation involved in negotiations that then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration brokered, resulting in a $130 million lease and renovation deal to keep the Buffalo Bills at Ralph Wilson Stadium for another 10 years. Hochul led talks when that deal expired a decade later. The Bills’ new stadium, which broke ground in 2023, is projected to cost over $2 billion, including $850 million from state and Erie County taxpayers; it will host the Bills’ season opener Sept. 17.

“If the Bills left the state, whoever the governor would be would get the blame,” Maggiore told City & State. “The fact that they’re staying there is absolutely a plus.”

But Hochul also faced criticism for the new stadium deal, which many called a “boondoggle” because of the amount of public investment and lack of transparency around the talks. And the governor’s husband, Bill Hochul, was a high-ranking executive with Delaware North, a Buffalo-based concessions company that held the vending contract for the old stadium at the time. Even so, the deal will forever be a fixture of Hochul’s political career – and Hochul’s proud to let New Yorkers know it.

Asked for comment on the governor’s Bills fandom, Hochul’s office referred City & State to some of her previous comments – including from the topping-off ceremony for the new stadium. Not only does she want everyone to know she’s a Bills fan, but she wants everyone to be a Bills fan. “Whether I’m at my sports bar in New York City, where I tell you I have converted more fans to this team than anybody in history,” she said at the April 2025 ceremony. “And I tell them, and I know I get in trouble for this. It’s the only team that plays in New York, right? The only team that plays no – Jet and Giants fans, love you. But when your team is not playing the Bills, I know you are a Buffalo Bills convert because I can feel it throughout this state. And all I want to do is unify this state. And we did it around this amazing team and all the amazing people made this happen. I’m so proud.”