Kathy Hochul Is Spending Political Capital In Her Affordability Fight

ALBANY, New York — Gov. Kathy Hochul has a multipronged plan to fix voters’ affordability woes. Her fellow Democrats fret it’s the wrong prescription.

The moderate governor is at odds with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Albany’s Democratic-dominated state Legislature and a host of left-leaning advocates — splitting with them over issues like her opposition to boosting taxes and her push to weaken the state’s landmark climate change law in a bid to lower future utility costs.

The fight is opening national left-flank wounds, with Sen. Bernie Sanders, an avatar of the progressive left, ratcheting up pressure Sunday over Mamdani’s push to raise taxes and Hochul’s opposition to it.

“Is what the mayor is proposing popular?” Sanders said at a rally in the Bronx. “You’re damn right. … Today, I would ask Gov. Hochul: Listen to where the people are at.”

Hochul isn’t budging and is placing a bet that her consumer friendly proposals — which include car insurance reforms, making it easier to build housing by overhauling land-use regulations and watering down the climate law — will be rewarded by voters even if the left is temporarily angered. Addressing pocketbook anxiety has been a paramount issue, intertwined with her campaign for a second full term and set against the backdrop of increasingly perilous global uncertainty. The month-old Iran war has spiked gasoline prices around the country and upended the financial markets, a crucial revenue generator for New York.

She’s not the only state chief executive approaching these affordability challenges with cost-reduction measures. In New Jersey, Gov. Mikie Sherrill declared a state of emergency meant to freeze utility rates. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger proposed measures to combat the high cost of prescription drugs. And in Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker, a potential 2028 White House contender, has called to significantly boost spending for affordable housing construction.

Hochul’s push is taking a far broader approach — providing fellow Democratic governors with a national blueprint for how to translate wonkish, abundance-style policies like reforming environmental regulations to encourage home construction into palatable, easy-to-digest policies with a positive impact. After Democrats failed to grasp voters’ lasting concerns over inflation two years ago, Hochul’s slate of policies stand to be a template for how her party refines its approach to the cost of living.

Yet her affordability proposals and her no-tax-hike position are hitting a wall in Albany with fellow Democrats, setting up a showdown that stands to determine how the party will address voters’ financial angst.

“The way she’s thinking about affordability is not the way the majority of the Legislature is thinking about affordability,” said JC Polanco, a business law professor at the University of Mount St. Vincent. “How can I reduce energy costs? How can I reduce insurance costs? She understands it from a different approach. She’s going about it as a centrist. The problem is the Legislature is not centrist.”

Hochul is approaching the measures with an eye toward a regular person’s bottom line.

She’s pressing for climate law changes by arguing the law, as it now stands, will make utility bills more expensive in the coming years. And she’s even battling trial lawyers over seemingly mundane issues like the cost of car insurance by pushing changes meant to reduce premiums.

Hochul, though, is happy to pick a fight that she expects to win. The affordability battle playing out in the statehouse is delaying passage of the state budget, which is due Tuesday, and the governor expects New Yorkers will forgive a little Albany dysfunction if the final product helps their pocketbook.

“Delivering on affordability often means taking on entrenched interests and tough fights — which is exactly what Gov. Hochul is doing,” said Hochul spokesperson Jen Goodman. “New Yorkers need relief and the Governor won't back down until they get it.”

At the same time, she is leaving little to chance in her reelection bid, as her likely Republican opponent, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, hammers her over skyrocketing utility bills and links her to Mamdani's far-left policies.

The governor is mindful of her reelection, even as she leads Blakeman in polling and has vastly outfundraised him. Still lingering are sour memories of her 2022 performance against Republican Lee Zeldin, who came within 6 points of unseating the incumbent Democrat. His bid is credited with helping carry GOP swing seat congressional candidates into office. More recently, Hochul has acknowledged publicly that she needs to “overperform” at the top of the party’s ticket to help down-ballot Democrats in crucial House races. Her comments were first reported by City & State.

To boost that second term bid, Hochul is willing to expend some political capital.

She’s making an unusually aggressive use of her bully pulpit, traveling around the state to drum up support for her proposals and urging voters to call their lawmakers. She has railed against special interests holding up her agenda. And in a flash of humor, Hochul even cast herself as a fast-talking used car salesperson to push her insurance changes.

“You know who your legislators are. You know how to mobilize because I know when you're not happy. I know how to hear from you, too,” she said last week at a Long Island rally pushing reforms meant to make it easier to build more housing. “So I know you have the power and the ability to do this, and I'm calling on all of you — labor, businesses, individuals, elected officials. I need your help because this is not an easy fight.”

The feisty push by Hochul is a contrast from the usually low-key governor who in prior years tried to play down differences within her party and smooth over Albany fights. It also underscores her biggest hurdle: selling these policies as cures to restive voters who are frustrated by high costs and ready to blame anyone in elected office.

“The challenge Hochul faces on affordability is that there is not a single New Yorker who believes they live in an affordable state or that the government is not in large part responsible for that,” said Joe Borelli, a Republican and former New York City councilmember. “The edge she may have, though, is that many of the angriest people have already fled the state, as she has correctly identified.”

New York’s opaque state budget is the staging ground for Hochul’s affordability platform, and the chronically late tax-and-spend package is the first one being negotiated after Mamdani’s surprise election victory last year.

The mayor, elected on a costly populist platform, is grappling with a $5.4 billion city budget. He’s pressed Hochul and state lawmakers to raise taxes on the city’s wealthiest residents to help address his budget woes. But he has also shied away from publicly pressuring Hochul to do so. He was not present for a lightly attended tax-the-rich rally in Albany last month, nor did he appear at the Bronx event Sunday with his mentor Sanders.

The mayor’s low-profile has been taken as an indication by the governor’s team that any lefty fallout from Hochul’s no-tax-hike stance will be minimal.

And she has remarkably free rein to pursue policies that discomfit the left, including her push to revise the state’s climate law and her opposition to broad-based tax increases. Her only primary opponent, Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, dropped his campaign in February soon after Mamdani endorsed the governor’s re-election.

Hochul has warned that further tax increases on rich people would hollow out the state’s millionaire and billionaire class — the people who provide nearly half of New York’s income tax revenue.

Her stance has been applauded by the city’s business elite, who were aghast by Mamdani’s City Hall victory last year and are bracing for all manner of tax hikes. Private sector boosters have come to view Hochul as a necessary bulwark against Mamdani’s policies — a reputation that gives her a form of immunity from Republican attacks that attempt to link the governor and mayor together.

“We want to be clear there is a counterweight to the socialist message of taxing everybody,” said Partnership for New York City President Steve Fulop. “New York needs to be competitive and by raising taxes you’re only going to exacerbate the affordability crisis.”

Democratic state lawmakers, though, believe their approach — generating more revenue through taxes that would be used to strengthen the state’s social services following deep spending reductions in Washington — is a fairer and more politically popular move. At the same time, the governor has far more leverage over the state budget. And her advantage mounts everyday the spending plan is late, given that, by law, legislators are not paid until a budget is finalized.

“We all agree on what we’re trying to do,” said Queens Democratic state Sen. Mike Gianaris. “We’re trying to make New York more affordable. Now we have to figure out how to do it.”