Will Buffalo Bills Fan Kathy Hochul Body-slam A Folding Table?

ALBANY, New York — The Buffalo Bills are characterizing the playoff run that starts Sunday as the close of an era. It’s the team’s last season in the stadium it’s called home since 1973 — a new $2.2 billion facility is due to open in September.

The opening guarantees that some of the most-watched TV broadcasts in the weeks before November’s election will feature national commentators fawning over the project that has often been at the center of New York politics in recent years. And few people are more excited for the opening than the state’s most prominent Bills fan.

“It’s actually popular across the state now,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said while watching Buffalo’s matchup with the Cleveland Browns at Albany’s McGeary’s the Sunday before Christmas.

“It’s gorgeous. People are so excited about — oh come on, come on stop this, goddamnit,” she said as Cleveland broke off a 40-yard run. “It’s about 75 percent there; there’s some talk about it being done a little bit early even. Most of the seats are in, they’re working on the technology now. So we’re really moving along.”

No New York elected official has been more closely associated with a sports franchise than Hochul since the days when Rudy Giuliani was a fixture at Yankee Stadium. Hochul has placed her Bills fandom at the center of her public personality, and even brought downstaters including Zohran Mamdani and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams to a Bills-backers bar in Queens the Sunday before Mamdani was elected mayor.

Yet there’s nothing she has taken more heat over during her tenure than the stadium. She negotiated a deal that involved $600 million of state funding and $250 million from Erie County, leaving anybody with $850 million budget requests to ask why an NFL franchise should get money but they can’t.

“The owner has told me that if I had not stepped in — the Bills were very much being wooed by other cities,” she said in defense of the deal. “And that’s why I knew I had to do whatever it took to get a good deal for New York, but also make sure we kept the Bills here, which we did with a 30-year commitment.”

“This was a tough negotiation,” she said, pointing to language that ensured taxpayers wouldn’t pay for cost overruns. And those overruns have neared $1 billion due to inflation since 2021.

The deal was assailed at the time as the largest-ever taxpayer contribution to the NFL. But the $600 million in state funding looks like a bit of a discount compared to deals since then. Tennessee announced a new stadium deal in 2023 that would have taxpayers cover $1.3 billion of a $2.1 billion project and an additional $1.1 billion in interest payments. District of Columbia residents are paying $1 billion for the Commanders’ new stadium. And Kansas announced a plan last month to pay $2.4 billion of a new $3 billion stadium to woo the Chiefs from Missouri.

“We’ll recover our cost,” Hochul said.

The initial estimate was that income tax from players’ salaries would cover the state contribution within 17 years, but salary cap increases mean that’ll now happen quicker. “Now that’s a damn good deal,” she said.

Hochul’s opponents on the left and right also attacked the deal as evidence of possible graft. Her husband, former U.S. Attorney Bill Hochul, worked for concessionaire Delaware North at the time it was announced. The company had the existing stadium’s food contract, and there were accusations that the move to a smaller but nicer facility across the street would enrich his employers.

But it turned out the deal actually resulted in Delaware North losing the contract it’s had for decades, and those attacks quietly went away.

She’s far from the first governor to tie herself to the team. Queens native Mario Cuomo embraced the team as New York’s only NFL franchise after the Jets abandoned Shea Stadium for New Jersey, and he even stood with Buffalo's Scott Norwood at the city’s consolation rally held after Norwood’s infamous kick.

A couple of decades later, supporters of Cuomo’s son ran ads in Buffalo blasting his Republican opponent Rob Astorino for the irredeemable sin of being a Miami Dolphins fan. This year’s likely GOP nominee, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, isn’t opening himself up to the same attacks — one of his first upstate trips as a candidate was a visit to the stadium’s tailgate parties last week.

Hochul, however, unquestionably has deeper ties to the team thanks to her status as the first governor from Western New York since the Rochester Jeffersons were the region’s most prominent pro football team.

Her initial foray into politics was driven by development issues in Hamburg, where she grew up near the homes of players such as O.J. Simpson and Jack Kemp.

Now, she’s throwing her weight behind development and zoning questions in Orchard Park, the next town over.

“There’s an opportunity for building out more around the stadium this time,” she said. “Building out more hotels and restaurants, like they do in other communities where you have a stadium that’s not in downtown — the region it’s in should be prospering and developing.”

There’s a scenario where the AFC Championship game could be played in Buffalo, but the odds are fairly long there will ever be another game in the current stadium. Of course Bills fans — famed nationwide for their willingness to pile-drive folding tables in moments of celebration — would be ecstatic over a win in the Super Bowl even if the path is entirely on the road.

Should that happen, would Hochul join the Western New York masses in a celebratory jump through a table?

“Yeah,” she said. “I don’t know if I’d have one that’s flaming. I’d have to rethink that one, but I’ll do my best. If they win the Super Bowl, I’ll do anything.”