When David Paterson took over for Gov. Eliot Spitzer in 2008 after the latter’s human-trafficking scandal, people called Paterson “the accidental governor.” Kathy Hochul is the unicorn governor, in that there is no conceivable way someone like her could have been elected in her own right. Ironically, she could be exactly what New York City needs — if she stops heeding the temptation to become a left-wing New York City Democrat.
Paterson wasn’t really an accident: He was a Gotham Democrat, and it’s pretty easy for a Gotham Democrat to be elected governor.
By contrast, nobody alive remembers the last Democrat from outside of the New York City commuting region to be elected governor (Nathan Miller, elected 101 years ago).
Hochul really is a wrinkle in reality. Buffalo, her home region, is seven hours from us by car, and far closer to Canada.
It’s easier for a Republican to get elected governor than an upstate Democrat like Hochul. Though only 45 percent of the state’s population lives in New York City, 54 percent of its 6.2 million Democratic voters are here, meaning a native upstater would never win a primary against a city candidate (or, at least, one never has).
Yet here she is — and someone outside then city’s increasingly far-left orbit is good for us.
For instance, Hochul, through her experience in living in economically depressed upstate, knows personally — not just from a slideshow that some upstate tutor gave her during an airplane ride — that tax rates matter to job creation.
That’s why a slew of tax-credit programs offer big tax discounts to companies that locate research and manufacturing jobs in the state.
Yet they’re not enough to offset our high costs: Texas lost just 3 percent of its manufacturing jobs over the past 30 years, whereas the Buffalo region lost 43 percent.
Gotham-based state lawmakers have never worried about such things: When raising taxes, they mainly think about New York City, and figure that rich people will pay high taxes to live here.
That’s just what they — and Gov. Andrew Cuomo — figured this year when they created new top tax rates of between 10 and 11 percent, up from just below 9 percent, for seven- and eight-figure earners.
But Albany is not done. Progressives left a lot of unfinished “progress” behind this spring, including desired taxes on assets, like stocks and bonds, as opposed to income, and a tax on financial transactions, such as stock trades.
City-based state lawmakers will be even more emboldened next year. If President Joe Biden fails to pass his $3.5 trillion “safety net” bill, replete with tax hikes, they’ll want to prove they can achieve, on a local level, what a moderate Democrat didn’t do on the national level.
In putting together her first budget next year, Gov. Hochul will be in the middle of her own bid for election. Her primary challengers from the city will be left-wing: Jumaane Williams, the city’s elected public advocate, has expressed interest in running, and he has called for taxes far higher than what the Legislature passed this year.
To rebuild its economy after COVID, Hochul needs to remain a unicorn, not morph into the city’s usual one-trick pony.
But she already shows signs of veering to the left. She named a prominent police “defunder,” Amit Bagga, to a top post last week, after Bagga lost a bid to be councilman for Long Island City. She also named Brian Benjamin, another defunder, lieutenant governor.
Hochul may know what she’s doing. It’s not dumb to try to co-opt opposition voting blocs rather than fight them. Benjamin, a former state senator from Harlem, can help with the downstate political machine.
But she should remember: The left-wing candidates for mayor this year lost, and lost pretty big. Eric Adams won, and he won without embracing the easy tax-the-rich and defund-the-police slogans of some of his opponents.
Hochul, now the incumbent, has an opportunity to do what no upstate Democrat ever has an opportunity to do: build name recognition within New York City. She has to decide now whether she wants to be a moderate, a left-winger or someone who seems to be all over the place. Unicorns, after all, bring peace and prosperity — exactly what New York needs.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
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