Hochul's going into overdrive to avoid another down-ballot disaster in New York

ALBANY, New York — Two years ago, Gov. Kathy Hochul won her own race by a surprisingly narrow margin, and New York Republicans flipped three House seats. Now the New York governor is aiming to avoid another down-ballot disaster for Democrats in her home state.

Hochul, who struggled with early tactical fights in the state capital, is putting money and her own political clout on the line as she seeks to become a national surrogate for President Joe Biden and Democratic House candidates and ensure New York is a bulwark against another red wave.

She is reviving New York’s moribund Democratic Party infrastructure and carefully laying the groundwork to build out the organization by infusing it with staff, money and updated technology to aid down-ballot House candidates. Her effort also comes as Mayor Eric Adams remains on the outs with Biden and faces scandals back home, allowing Hochul to join Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as New York’s top party champions.

“It’s a sign of leadership,” Matthew Hiltzik, a former deputy executive director and press secretary for the state Democratic Committee, said of Hochul’s party building. “The governor is aware that if it’s done right this is beneficial to everybody.”

New York Democrats two years ago failed to take concerns over crime seriously until it was too late.

Control of the House fell to the Republicans after the GOP gains in the blue state. Democrats across the country, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, blamed Hochul for the party's debacle.

Now as a migrant crisis threatens to upend Democratic chances much like the crime debate, Hochul has seized main-character energy in New York’s sharp-elbowed political world. Her twin goals: help reelect Biden and boost the chances of Democrats trying to flip the House.

The role is a new one for Hochul after she defeated her Republican opponent in 2022 by only 6 points, and House candidates in New York failed to block a red wave. And if successful, it will provide a mantle her allies hope will solidify her national standing, following a shaky governing start when she succeeded the well-known Gov. Andrew Cuomo who resigned in scandal in 2021.

Hochul’s aggressive political posture comes as her former rival and fellow Democrat Tom Suozzi returns to the House after successfully embracing calls for tougher border security in a nationally watched special election.

The governor’s role with Democrats nationally is also playing out at home.

She’s raised $2.5 million for the state party since last summer. She recently hired Jen Goodman, a Democratic consultant who worked on Hochul’s 2022 bid, to handle communications for the party and to advise her politically. More hires at the state party are expected.

The money is also being used to expand the party’s data capabilities. New York Democrats have tapped the consulting firm TargetSmart with the goal of updating the party’s voter file and data infrastructure to aid House candidates this year.

The state committee, meanwhile, is coordinating with both House and Senate campaigns, a move meant to leverage the party’s strength statewide.

Aiding Democrats in down-ballot races refocuses a state party that has long revolved around the political needs of the incumbent governor. New York has among the most battleground House races in the nation.

Politically, it’s a strategy that involves a full-throated support for abortion rights, a tougher line on immigration and withering attacks on Republicans.

Hochul’s line of attacks on former President Donald Trump and Republicans is one that Democrats want to emulate nationally after Suozzi's victory last month.

“Joe Biden has taken the lead,” Hochul told CNN in February as Biden and Trump made competing visits to the southern border. “Republicans had in their hands the ability to get this done and prove that no, Washington is not as dysfunctional as it seems. We actually can solve this.”

She has also faced setbacks of her own, with a mixed track record of legislative wins in Albany and embarrassing local-level losses for the party.

The efforts of the state’s first woman governor come as Adams alienated the president’s reelection campaign because of his stinging criticism of Biden’s handling of the migrant crisis. Adams’ campaign is also engulfed in a federal campaign-finance investigation, though the mayor himself has not been accused of wrongdoing.

The mayor sought to be a prominent national voice for Democrats as a Black leader with a working class base in the nation’s largest city. It’s now Hochul, a former House member from western New York, who is taking on that part.

Republicans scoff at the idea of Hochul, a moderate in the middle of her four-year term,, becoming a central figure for Democrats in New York and a reliable Biden booster.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, the House GOP conference chair and a potential Trump running mate, signaled Hochul will be featured prominently in Republican attack ads this year and will make her just as big a liability for swing district Democrats as Biden.

“The only better foil than Joe Biden in New York is Kathy Hochul — and expect to see Kathy Hochul starring in Republican ads across the state because she is under water in every poll in every swing district in New York due to her failed leadership,” Stefanik senior adviser Alex DeGrasse said.

But Biden’s team sees her as an effective surrogate on the campaign trail — making her an almost daily guest on national TV news shows in recent weeks.

Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodriguez, called Hochul “a great leader and ally.”

“She's been a strong voice in holding Republicans accountable for their failures at the border and a tireless defender of reproductive freedom in an election that will determine whether women have more rights or fewer,” Rodriguez said.

And more broadly, Democratic officials and consultants are emphasizing the need for their fractious party to unify amid Republican attacks over crime, border security and inflation. Last week, Hochul sent 1,000 members of the National Guard and state police to patrol the subways to improve safety.

It’s an ironic position for Hochul.

While she’s proving to be a reliable voice for Biden, she was blasted by Republicans in local elections last year. Democrats running in local elections last year did not campaign with her.

Only 41 percent of voters held a favorable view of Hochul, and her job approval rating with voters stood at 48 percent, a Siena College poll conducted in February found. Biden led Trump by 12 percentage points in the Democratic-dominated state, but 52 percent of voters in the state disapproved of the job he was doing, the same poll found.

Still, New York is not expected to be in play for the presidential campaign. The Democratic-dominated state’s electoral votes haven’t gone to a Republican since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 victory.

But the House-level races are a different matter. At least six seats across the state are considered to be in play this year, and both parties expect the balance of power in the House will be decided in New York.

Hochul wasn’t dispatched to help Suozzi last month, though she boosted his candidacy outside the district. Hochul held a previously unreported fundraiser for Suozzi in February, which netted six figures for his campaign.

The lessons learned from Suozzi’s win are now being seen as a roadmap for how the party can win in a politically tough environment by leaning into voters’ concerns over immigration and border security.

“You need the national, state and local Democratic apparatus to work together,” Suozzi said in an interview. “You need everyone from the progressives to the moderates to work together.”

Still, Hochul is one of several governors who the Biden campaign has turned to. Those surrogates include California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. Both are considered to have presidential ambitions of their own.

Hochul, who lives in Buffalo, is also competing for attention in New York, a crowded political marketplace where brash personalities are rewarded. Adams, along with Schumer, Jeffries and state Attorney General Tish James have all had moments in the country’s spotlight. All of these Democrats are from Brooklyn, a politically vital borough that has become the center of political gravity in New York.

But Hochul has the advantage of being the chief executive of the nation’s media capital with cable news green rooms a short ride away from her Manhattan office in Midtown.

“If you’re the governor of New York, you’re not just a national figure, you’re an international figure,” Manhattan Democratic Party Chair Keith Wright said.

And she has recognized the migrant crisis has created an acute political vulnerability for Democrats across the country. More than 175,000 migrants over the last two years have arrived in New York.

But it has also drawn Hochul closer to Biden. The governor has hammered House Republicans after a Senate immigration package was blown up, framing them as being too beholden to Trump.

“I miss the tea party. I miss John Boehner,” Hochul said last month at POLITICO’s Governors Summit in the nation’s capital. “I miss people you could actually work with and get things done. So, I have to step up.”

New York, meanwhile, has some of the strongest abortion rights laws in the nation, and she’s knocked Republicans from stripping them elsewhere. In the wake of Alabama’s IVF ruling, she is considering state-level measures to support access to the procedure.

“If we have a Republican House and a Republican Senate, our lives are in jeopardy, our rights are in jeopardy,” she said at a hastily called news conference last month, flanked by Democratic officials, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, in rapid response to Trump considering a national abortion ban after 16 weeks.

Trump’s campaign did not return messages seeking comment.

Democrats in New York acknowledge Hochul’s national profile has expanded over the last six months as the November elections approach.

“The governor has really maintained a good relationship with President Biden,” former Gov. David Paterson said. “She wants to really be there for him in this election and really run up the score in 2024. I think her way of dealing with things has been appreciated.”

The mayor’s mistake, Paterson added, “was making these demands of the federal government.”

Adams’ office in a statement called the mayor a steadfast supporter for Biden and credited the president with rebuilding the economy following the Covid-19 pandemic. His office also blamed Republicans for inaction on immigration policy.

“Mayor Adams’ priority is always going to be New York City and that means calling balls and strikes where he sees them, regardless of politics,” spokesperson Kayla Mamelak said.

Still, neither Hochul’s good-cop approach with Biden over Adams’ firmer line with the White House has resulted in much traction to fix the problem.

The advocacy did help land approval to use a federal site at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn to shelter migrants and get an expansion of temporary protected status to include people arriving from Venezuela. But the congressional gridlock over immigration reform hasn’t made the road any easier for New York’s services and finances.

“The mayor has made a political decision that he’s going to be at odds with the president,” Chris Coffey, a former aide to ex-mayor Michael Bloomberg, said. “The governor has made a different decision.”

Hochul wants to spend $2.4 billion over the next 12 months on migrant support programs, including shelters, legal services and health care, which would be a $500 million increase from last year. It’s a rate of spending the governor’s top budget official has called unsustainable.

The governor’s support for border security and push for the deportation of migrants who have broken the law has put her at odds with left-leaning advocates in New York.

For the political left, her record on immigration issues has been mixed. Hochul has always prided herself on being a moderate as a local official in the Buffalo area: more than a decade ago she opposed allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, a position she reversed as lieutenant governor when she needed support statewide.

Ana Maria Archila, the co-director of the left-leaning Working Families Party, wants the governor to focus even more on providing services to the thousands of migrants who have arrived in New York.

“Instead, she’s using the lowest form of immigration politics to raise her profile,” Archila said. “Her instinct is to lean to the right.”

CLARIFICATION: This report has been updated to note that Jen Goodman is a former staffer to Gov. Kathy Hochul and that Hochul raised money for Rep. Tom Suozzi’s campaign, not held a fundraiser for him.