KATHY HOCHUL, lieutenant governor of the New York State of the United States, was catapulted into the national spotlight Tuesday when Governor Andrew Cuomo abruptly announced his resignation amid a growing sexual harassment scandal. In two weeks, Hochul will become the first woman ever to lead the state, when Cuomo’s resignation takes effect and she assumes the office. Under New York state law, in the event of a governor’s resignation, the lieutenant governor becomes the person in charge. Hochul, 62, is relatively unknown outside of New York political circles and she is certainly not a household name like her predecessor. But people who know Hochul say the former congresswoman is ready for the job. Hochul said Tuesday that she is ready to lead New York, which is still battling the COVID pandemic and is in the midst of a fragile economic recovery. “I agree with Governor Cuomo’s decision to step down. It is the right thing to do and in the best interest of New Yorkers,” she said in a Twitter post. “As someone who has served at all levels of government and is next in the line of succession, I am prepared to lead as New York State’s 57th governor,” she said. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday said he spoke to Hochul and has “full confidence” that she will create a “professional and capable administration.” New York’s junior U.S. senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, said Hochul will be an “extraordinary governor.” “She understands the complexities and needs of our state having been both a congresswoman, and having been lieutenant governor for the last several years,” Gillibrand said. “She is ready and able and capable of being an extraordinary governor, and I look forward to supporting her and helping her as she turns towards governing our state, in a very difficult and challenging time,” the senator said. Since first joining the Cuomo team in 2014, Hochul has carved out a role for herself as a sort of counterweight to Cuomo. While he prefers to work out of his office in New York City, Hochul has kept up a frenetic travel schedule across the state for years as the friendly face of the administration, visiting the far-flung coffee shops and factory floors of each of the state’s 62 counties for countless ribbon-cutting ceremonies and civic cheerleading events, sometimes making five stops a day, according to a recent profile in The New York Times. Hochul and Cuomo have hardly any personal or professional relationship and she has not spoken to him since February, the Times profile said. She called the allegations against him by 11 women “repulsive and unlawful.” “Sexual harassment is unacceptable in any workplace, and certainly not in public service,” Hochul said in a Twitter post. To many New Yorkers, Hochul is an unknown quantity, serving since 2015 in a job that is mostly ceremonial. A typical afternoon in late July had her announcing job training funding in Utica, discussing manufacturing in Rome and touring downtown Cazenovia with the small town’s mayor. That has been nothing like the attention-demanding appearances of the determinedly high-profile Cuomo, who does most of his business in Albany and New York City and whose daily coronavirus briefings were national events at the height of the coronavirus. Hochul has not been part of Cuomo’s inner circle of aides and allies. Her name wasn’t mentioned in the investigative report, released by Attorney General Letitia James, that detailed not only the harassment allegations against Cuomo but also efforts by his staff to discredit some of his accusers. But Hochul, who turns 63 this month, is an experienced politician, a veteran of 11 campaigns that have taken her from town board to Congress, the latter representing a conservative western New York district after a surprising 2011 win in a special election to fill a vacancy in the U.S. House. The lieutenant governor comes from a family of steelworkers. When her grandparents fled poverty in Ireland, they eventually settled in western New York, where her grandfather, dad and uncles worked in the steel industry. She graduated from Syracuse University and earned her law degree from Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., in 1983. A year later, she married William Hochul, a practicing attorney, with whom she has two children. Early in her career, she worked in Washington as an aide to former U.S. Representative John LaFalce and later, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, both from New York, before holding her first public office on the town board in Hamburg in the western part of New York. From there, she became Erie County Clerk, where she made some news in 2007 for resistance to a plan by then-Governor Eliot Spitzer to allow unauthorized immigrants get driver’s licenses. Hochul and another western New York clerk explored a plan to have police arrest immigrants who tried to apply. “It will be a deterrent, and that’s what I’m looking for,” Hochul told The Buffalo News at the time. Her next move was to Congress, where in 2011 she had a surprising win in a special election in a district that had been in Republican hands for decades. Hochul became the first Democrat to represent the district in 40 years, and her victory was viewed as a referendum on Republican plans led by Paul Ryan, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, to bankrupt Medicare, according to her campaign website. She lost a bid for re-election a year later to Chris Collins, despite an endorsement by the National Rifle Association. Collins later resigned from the U.S. House and pleaded guilty to insider trading. Hochul moved to the left, politically, when Cuomo tapped her as his running mate in 2014 after his first lieutenant governor, former Rochester Mayor Robert Duffy, decided not to run for re-election. Hochul has underscored several policy priorities as lieutenant governor, including the issues of gender and economic inequality. She is also known for her struggle around issues such as women’s rights and the protection of mistreated women. She serves as the chair of the state’s regional economic development council and the Women’s Suffrage Commission, and has led some of the governor’s advocacy campaigns, such as the “Enough is Enough” sexual assault prevention program. In 2006 she founded, along with other women in her family, the Kathleen Mary House, a foster home for children and women victims of domestic violence. She backed New York’s SAFE Act, one of the nation’s toughest gun control laws, as well as the state’s Green Light Law, which let unauthorized immigrants get driver’s licenses. Hochul has not publicly expressed whether she would pursue a full term as governor in 2022. An upstate candidate running for any statewide office in New York faces a daunting challenge, but even more so for the governor’s office, which has historically drawn from New York City. LaFalce, whom Hochul considers a mentor, said in her frequent travels and while presiding over the Senate as lieutenant governor, Hochul has gotten to know the state’s party chairs and elected officials from both parties. “She will have a tremendous army for the spring primary in 2022,” he said. LaFalce noted that she won against strong opponents in her two Democratic primaries for lieutenant governor, Columbia University law professor Timothy Wu and Jumaane Williams, now the New York City public advocate. “No one should dismiss Kathy as a weak candidate. She’s proven her mettle in statewide races,” LaFalce said. “And she now has a war chest of about US$1.7 million, which as the governor … she will be able to amass millions more. She will be formidable in any Democratic primary and I think she will prevail.” Jacob Neiheisel, an associate professor of political science at University of Buffalo, said given her record, it is difficult to predict what a “distinctly Hochul agenda” might look like, especially when faced with the state’s still-active pandemic response and a recovery that will involve billions of dollars in federal aid. “Given how little she’s historically been in the news cycle, I really don’t think she has the kind of name recognition that you would expect of somebody who is suddenly being thrust into a position of maybe being governor,” Neiheisel said “She’s going to have to do an awful lot, really fast, in order for there to be a serious conversation for keeping that job.” (SD-Agencies) | 