June 2024 was, in retrospect, the Kathy Hochul nadir.
An offhand comment in May about “young Black kids growing up in the Bronx who don’t even know what the word computer is” was still garnering mockery. Her decision to halt New York City’s congestion pricing program, on the eve of its implementation, set off rage within her party. Polls that month found the New York governor’s approval rating at an all-time low. And she positioned herself as one of Joe Biden’s top defenders after his infamous debate performance, closely tying herself to a president who would end his campaign only weeks later. It was enough for observers to begin speculating if the governor could even make it out of a 2026 primary.
Fast forward two years. Hochul cruised to renomination on Tuesday without even facing a single challenger on the ballot — a performance that looks even more commanding given the rest of the night proved the ascendance of New York Democrats’ left-wing. Polls earlier this year found her approval rating at an all-time high, and she is now almost certain to win re-election, positioning her to lead the country’s fourth-largest state for nearly a decade. Her turnaround is one of the most interesting political stories of the past two years, with three lessons emerging.
1. She was given a fight, leaned into it, and won.
Much of Hochul’s comeback can be traced to the fight over New York’s congestion pricing law, the first such program in the nation. After killing the program in June 2024, Hochul later announced that she was reviving it, surprising even many allies. The announcement notably came just nine days after Election Day 2024, when New York Democrats picked up three House seats, two of which were narrow victories in suburbs whose residents despised the program. It also set in motion a high-stakes showdown with the new Trump administration, which ended up echoing far beyond the Empire State.
Just weeks after Inauguration Day, the Trump administration followed through on a pledge to formally end congestion pricing. That effort involved technical legal avenues from the Transportation Department, but is most memorable for the post from the president, and official White House account, declaring Trump a “king.”
The posts, poetically, later helped defeat the administration in court.
That meme gave name to the No Kings rallies, which have, under the radar, become some of the best-attended protests in U.S. history. The standoff with the administration escalated throughout last spring, with the Trump administration at one point threatening all federal funding for New York state. The governor refused to relent, offering a loud voice of dissent at a time when the president was seemingly steamrolling every democratic institution and Democratic leader.
The state has since won the broader legal battle over the program at every turn, most notably a pivotal decision this past March. On a policy level, independent analyses have given the program high marks. Politically, it encapsulated all that helped change Hochul’s image. Against most observers’ expectations, she executed a cold-blooded political gambit, reaped the political rewards, reversed herself, and then stared down the president at a time many others in her party flinched.
2. She found authenticity.
Hochul is probably not anyone’s definition of “cool.” An upstate, septuagenarian moderate, she lacks a lot of the ingredients of virality that come easily to, say, Zohran Mamdani. But she found a way to make her personality come through — largely by leaning into unfiltered moments. Following the announcement of a Trump DoJ investigation into her personally, she cancelled a coming meeting with the president before memorably declaring, “I don't know what your plan is. Are you going to slap handcuffs on my goddamn hands?”
That came amid a shift towards a generally more confrontational, profane public tone. For example, the governor has used the word “damn” in her Twitter posts three times as much in the seventeen months since Trump’s inauguration as she did in the preceding three and a half years — a concerted change, I’m told by someone involved in her communications.
At a time when Democrats' increased profanity has begun to draw mockery, it’s a shift that has worked in large part because it reflects who Hochul is: she has a penchant for cursing, sometimes in deadpan ways, in private, per several people I’ve talked to who have worked with her.
3. She split the party’s ideological difference.
Over the past year, Hochul emerged as one of the most effective advocates of “Abundance,” pushing sweeping reforms to the state’s environmental and regulatory laws to expedite new construction. She got those over the finish line last month, over the protests of many in the environmental movement.
At the same time, she struck an alliance with Mamdani, backing him last September even as other establishment Democrats, including Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and multiple incumbent congressmembers in and around New York City, declined to do so. She also aligned herself with his proposed universal childcare program, fusing the two together on a mutually beneficial effort that, if implemented successfully, could become a legacy achievement for both politicians.
The benefits for her fusion approach — towards the White House and members of her own party — were best seen in a deal last spring, when Hochul struck a deal with Trump to rescue a landmark offshore wind project in exchange for approving a major pipeline.
Still, warning signs
Of course, Hochul was the beneficiary of good luck, as most successful politicians are. There’s no guarantee that good fortune will continue. Trump, for one, has shown signs of reneging on their fragile working relationship, most recently arguing she has not held up her end of their implicit energy deal. The governor’s opponent in November, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, is also a stronger candidate than the one she initially expected, Rep. Elise Stefanik. Unlike Stefanik, Blakeman is pro-choice, has repeatedly won in swing territory, and does not have the liabilities of a long Washington record. Hochul is absolutely still favored to win, especially in this environment, but the fight could be tougher than once expected.
Moreover, Tuesday’s results, which saw democratic socialists sweep races across New York City, are a clear warning sign. While the congressional races got much of the national attention, left-aligned candidates also made big inroads in the state Assembly, potentially providing a new thorn in Hochul’s side during her second full term. The victories also confirmed Mamdani’s swift ascent to power-broker status in the state, complicating the careful equilibrium Hochul has established so far.
Worthy reads
Rebecca Lewis at City and State dives into Hochul’s stay-the-course strategy in the wake of Tuesday’s socialist surge.
Tom Loftus at the Kentucky Lantern picked through Andy Beshear’s PAC’s SEC report — and found a lot of activity in the early primary states.
Dan Schnur at MSNOW argues that the DoJ investigation into Jennifer Siebel Newsom could be more of a political problem for Gavin Newsom than some expect.
And Adam Wren at Politico runs through the potential 2028 contenders, including Josh Shapiro, Gavin Newsom, and Marco Rubio, who are making splashy appearances at the World Cup.
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