This is newsworthy on several levels: New York governor Kathy Hochul has announced that upstate congressman Antonio Delgado will be the state’s third lieutenant governor in less than a year, after Andrew Cuomo’s resignation amidst scandal elevated Hochul from the job and Hochul’s first choice, Brian Benjamin, resigned less than eight months into the job after a federal indictment.
For Hochul, Delgado adds diversity and, she must hope, a vetted progressive to the ticket. Hochul had a 40-point lead over Congressman and former Nassau County executive Tom Suozzi in late March for the June 28 primary, but the latest April 18–21 Siena poll, which did not test the primary head-to-head, had grimmer tidings for the governor:
Governor Kathy Hochul’s favorability rating, 44-34%, is virtually unchanged from 45-35% last month. Her overall job performance rating is negative 36-57%, down from 43-53% last month. On five specific job performance ratings, between 54% and 69% give her a negative rating, including 69% on crime and 63% on economic issues. Crime and economic issues (jobs, inflation, taxes, etc.) were by far the top issues mentioned by voters as the most important to them in deciding which gubernatorial candidate to support in November.
Pollster Stan Greenberg notes that “Hochul’s overall job performance rating [is] the worst it’s ever been” and “the last time voters were more pessimistic about the direction of the state than they are today was in David Paterson’s last month as governor, December 2010,” with even 42 percent of Democrats giving Hochul’s performance a negative rating. And Hochul’s not being helped by the top of the ticket: “President Joe Biden’s . . . job performance rating . . . took a major hit and is now negative 36-62%.” In New York.
For Delgado, who had $5.8 million in the bank for his re-election race, this move looks like an escape hatch from Congress after the state’s highest court struck down the Democratic gerrymander that turned his district, New York’s 19th, from narrowly Democratic (D+1 compared with the national average) to safely Democratic (D+10). That decision darkened the Democrats’ already-slim hopes of holding the House and was a blow to their morale, but more immediately, some of the new maps submitted to the court would make Delgado’s district more Republican-friendly. The Democrats’ proposal makes Delgado’s district R+1, and even extends the same partisan balance to the neighboring district of Sean Patrick Maloney (who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee). Both of the new maps submitted by an amicus would redraw Delgado’s district into a safe Republican (R+8) district, while shoring up Maloney. On Monday, Democrats filed a lawsuit in federal court to require the primary election to go forward with the gerrymandered maps even though they were illegal under state law, but Delgado could read the writing on the wall. His immediate departure gives running room to carve up his district to salvage other Democratic incumbents and will also, yet again, reduce the narrow margin the Democrats have available in the House between now and November.