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How a fearful, feckless Democrat became America’s worst* governor

A stunning reversal by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on a radical antipollution plan becomes Exhibit A of Democratic Party cowardice.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks before President Joe Biden arrives to deliver remarks on the CHIPS and Science Act at the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum in Syracuse, N.Y., in April.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks before President Joe Biden arrives to deliver remarks on the CHIPS and Science Act at the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum in Syracuse, N.Y., in April.Read moreAdrian Kraus / AP

One word stood out when New York Gov. Kathy Hochul stood up last December to address a political pep rally for a radical antipollution program called congestion pricing that’s cut traffic and carbon emissions in large European cities but has never been attempted in the United States.

That word was courage.

“From time to time, leaders are called upon to envision a better future, be bold in the implementation and execution, and be undaunted by the opposition,” the Democratic governor of the nation’s second-largest blue state declared. “That’s how you secure progress. That’s what today is all about.” Hochul heaped praise on the transit leaders behind her who pushed through the plan to toll motorists who insist on driving into midtown and lower Manhattan, adding, “That’s courage, that’s courage.”

If only Hochul had reserved even a teaspoon of courage for herself.

Last week, the Buffalo-area former less-than-one-term congresswoman who became governor in 2021 after her predecessor Andrew Cuomo’s sexual harassment scandal shocked New Yorkers by placing “an indefinite pause” on congestion pricing, in which cars entering the lower half of Manhattan would have been charged $15, with trucks paying more. Hochul insisted she was concerned about the city’s and state’s economic recovery from the pandemic, that “hardworking New Yorkers are getting hammered on costs.”

But critics of Hochul’s craven flip-flop, and there are many, say everyday New York City residents are the ones getting pounded with a blunt object here. They are the ones who’ll be breathing the dirty air from the cars that now won’t be taken off the road. Other cities such as London, Stockholm, and Singapore that have tried congestion pricing have seen particulates and other hazardous forms of air pollution drop by 10% or more. A lot of that pollution comes from the estimated 117 hours every year that Manhattan drivers idle in stalled traffic, a gob-smacking waste of time.

But the other side of the equation may prove even more devastating to Hochul’s lower-income residents who depend on buses and subways. That is the loss of the funding source for an ambitious $15 billion program to radically upgrade New York’s almost comically outdated mass transit system. The last-minute, half-baked nature of the governor’s announcement suggested replacing the $1 billion in lost revenue with a tax on business that seems not only ill-advised but politically impossible, with a state legislature in Albany preparing to go home for the summer. This likely fiscal meltdown means no money for a slew of worthy projects like extending a subway line into upper Manhattan, buying electric buses, and fixing ancient rail and subway lines that have been prone to commuter-stranding breakdowns.

So what really happened here? Most watchers of New York politics agree that when Hochul spoke of bad timing for the program, the timing on her mind was November, when the success or failure of Democratic candidates in suburban swing districts on Long Island, north of the city, and in New Jersey and Connecticut are critical to the party’s plans to win back the House. Indeed, New York City’s House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, who would become speaker in January if Dems win back a few seats, may have been Hochul’s car-whisperer on the delay. Never mind that it’s Jefferies’ district constituents in Brooklyn getting screwed over here.

Hochul’s cowardly reversal matters for a lot of reasons that go beyond New Yorkers’ ability to breathe and get from place to place. For one thing, this fiasco might scare off other U.S. cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco that have also studied congestion pricing, as America runs out of time to meet the ambitious carbon-reduction goals necessary for beating back climate change. But even worse, as we rush headlong into an election when the fate of democracy is on the ballot, what voter can be inspired by the deer-in-headlights terrified look of Democrats in a bellwether state? Hochul’s three years of panicked, walk-it-back non-leadership make her the avatar of a broken party.

That’s a shame. Hochul is a trailblazer — the only woman among New York’s 57 governors — but only on paper. Her mediocrity is a sad contrast to the state’s many actual pioneering female political leaders, from Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Shirley Chisholm and Elizabeth Holtzman. Her accidental rise to prominence was really more a tribute to geography — a ticket balancer, an upstater from Buffalo perhaps a tad to the right of the not-really-that-liberal Cuomo.

History has repeatedly shown that the problem with ticket balancers is the candidate never imagines they might actually leave office early. Thus, JFK bequeathed us LBJ and a protracted war in Vietnam, while Abraham Lincoln’s choice of Andrew Johnson put a white supremacist Democrat in charge of Reconstruction. Indeed, Hochul comes off as a modern update on Johnson, as her GOP-lite politics are often at odds with liberal New Yorkers.

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Before the congestion pricing flip-flop, Hochul’s fear-driven, anti-progressive moves have included a (thankfully failed) push to name a center-right justice to New York’s highest court and a lucrative new stadium deal for her hometown Buffalo Bills that even voters in die-hard Bills Country didn’t support. She won passage of a state budget by agreeing to undo New York’s innovative bail reforms that were working well despite squawking from police unions and right-wing media. Despite falling crime rates, both across New York City and in its subway system, Hochul was panicked enough by a couple of headline-grabbing incidents to send hundreds of National Guard members down into the stations — initially with long guns before even the governor realized what a bad look that was.

Even after her 2022 election to a full term in a year when blue-state voters rallied behind abortion rights, Hochul has largely moved in two gears: directionless, or in reverse whenever the New York Post or the local if-it-bleeds-it-leads TV stations highlight a negative story for their audience who wouldn’t vote Democratic if you handed them a $100 bill entering the voting booth. Sitting in the Albany office that was home during the Great Depression to the great Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only thing Hochul has to fear is seemingly everything.

You may have noticed the asterisk in the headline describing Hochul as the nation’s worst governor. That’s because we live in a moment when red state voters have elected like-minded leaders with hatred in their veins such as Greg Abbott of Texas — who just declared open killing season on liberal protesters, and whose razor wire slashes little kids and pregnant moms — or Louisiana’s Jeff Landry, who is filling the prisons while imposing abortion policies that Margaret Atwood would have rejected as too crazy when she was writing The Handmaid’s Tale.

Men like Abbott, Landry, and Florida’s Ron DeSantis are the most evil and openly fascist governors America has seen since the segregationist 1960s, but they are doing the warped will of their citizens. Hochul, on the other hand, is blowing a chance to work with New York’s forward-thinking legislators and voters to make bold moves to improve people’s lives. The only thing missing is courage. That seems even worse.

At the same time Hochul was flip-flopping on congestion pricing, the GOP’s standard-bearer was delivering a speech at a megachurch in a broiling Phoenix, where 11 people waiting in a long line to see Donald Trump were rushed to a hospital for heat stroke. Even with the evidence literally dropping on the sizzling asphalt right in front of him, Trump continues to deny that man-made climate change is a problem, as he dangles his pro-pollution policies in front of Big Oil and hopes for a $1 billion payday. Trump’s cynicism might kill the planet, but is Hochul’s fecklessness that much better?

You can’t beat something — even something horrific — with nothing. Young voters forming their opinions about the American system mostly don’t like Trump’s authoritarianism, but some may favor an outrageous dark vision over no vision at all. Today’s electorate wants leaders who can envision a better future, undaunted by the opposition. If only Kathy Hochul had listened to Kathy Hochul.

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