(November 5, 2025)
The Working Families Party is open to backing a challenger to Hochul in the 2026 Democratic primary, including Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado, who is running a longshot campaign to Hochul’s left.
“We will make that decision, likely in late January or early February, shortly after we see the governor’s executive budget proposal,” Gripper said. “She’s going to have to prove to her own party why she shouldn’t be primaried.”
(June 18, 2025)
Earlier Wednesday, Gov. Hochul told Pix 11, “I don’t want to lose more people to Palm Beach“ when asked about New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s plan to raise taxes. Delgado referenced the governor’s comment when explaining his own position on taxes.
“All options should be on the table, and the notion that we wouldn’t contemplate raising taxes on the super wealthy, or that we wouldn’t contemplate making sure that larger corporations pay more into the system, to me, is the exact type of ‘maintain the status quo, do what you need to do just to maintain power’ as opposed to actually thinking about what is required,” he stated.
Hochul has raised corporate taxes, but has held the line on raising new income taxes.
(June 2, 2025)
After months of open political warfare with Ms. Hochul, Mr. Delgado said Monday he would challenge her in next year’s Democratic primary.
“People are hurting and New York deserves better leadership,” Mr. Delgado said in an interview. “There’s an absence of bold, decisive, transformational leadership.”
That phrase has become the theme for Mr. Delgado’s campaign, the first official challenge to Ms. Hochul, and a message he repeats in a video announcing his candidacy.
He never mentions Ms. Hochul by name in the video, but he suggests that everyday New Yorkers deserve a governor with a vision to fight for them as they face unaffordable housing, child care and health care costs.
(January 3, 2025)
In her first three full years in office, she axed an average of roughly one in seven bills that went to her desk, a higher rate than her recent predecessors. And she has continued to negotiate so-called chapter amendments to dozens of other bills, signing less legislation as the legislature passed it than any governor since at least George Pataki — a Republican who presided over a divided legislature for his entire tenure. (Hochul, by contrast, has only ever worked with a legislature led by her fellow Democrats.)
This year, she vetoed 124 standalone bills as well as 15 line items in the state budget.
Mamdani gehört zum linken Flügel der Demokratischen Partei. Er bezeichnet sich selbst als Sozialist und will seine Wahlversprechen am liebsten durch Steuererhöhungen für Reiche und Unternehmen umsetzen. Dafür bräuchte er allerdings die Unterstützung der Gouverneurin des Bundesstaates New York.
(August 14, 2025)
The governor is not alone in her hesitancy. Prominent Democrats from New York — including the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer; Senator Kirsten Gillibrand; and the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries — have not made an endorsement in the race. Of the 10 House Democrats in New York City, only four have endorsed Mr. Mamdani.
Like House Democrats, Ms. Hochul is facing re-election next year, potentially against Representative Elise Stefanik, a top Republican supporter of President Trump. Some political observers think that an enthusiastic endorsement of Mr. Mamdani could hurt the governor in more conservative areas of the state.
Lander was later released after New York Governor Kathy Hochul condemned the arrest and visited New York City to lobby for his release. Five other mayoral candidates also condemned Lander’s arrest, although current Mayor Eric Adams has stayed silent. Adams “has sold this city out to Donald Trump to try to get his own pardon,” says Lander. “Let’s be clear: It’s only himself he cares about, and he is putting New York’s immigrants in harm’s way.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul had renewed a rule requiring masks or proof of vaccination at all indoor public places throughout the state in December, amid a winter virus surge, and said it would last a month. The state Health Department then extended the mandate an additional two weeks, to expire on Feb. 1.
In his six-page decision, State Supreme Court Justice Thomas Rademaker wrote that Ms. Hochul and state health officials lacked the authority to enact the mask mandate without the approval of state lawmakers, and that it violated the state constitution. Regardless of the “well aimed” intentions of state officials, such authority is “entrusted solely to the State Legislature,” Justice Rademaker wrote.
Hochul vertritt den eher konservativen Flügel der Demokraten in New York und war seit 2015 Stellvertreterin von Cuomo, der sich in seiner dritten Amtszeit befand.