Andrew Cuomo’s announcement that he will step down in two weeks turns attention to his immediate successor, Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul. Hochul may or may not be the Democrats’ nominee in 2022, as the Democrats’ progressive wing may take another crack at a primary fight. But if you want to learn more about Hochul, I wrote up a profile in March. A sample:
Nobody should mistake Kathy Hochul for a conservative or even a moderate. She is very much a Cuomo- or Schumer-style liberal, who — like Kirsten Gillibrand — found it necessary to pose as a moderate while running in a culturally conservative upstate House district. Like Schumer, Hochul is a tireless traveler, who has kept her face in the local news by trekking around the state while Cuomo ignores her. Like Cuomo, she has enough of a pragmatic streak to remain a target of progressive ire. She got her start as an aide to Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Congressman John LaFalce, and between stints in office served as vice president of government affairs at the Buffalo-based M&T Bank. Before she went statewide, Hochul took some steps that would get her run out of the party today, but has shifted without even the pretense of a principled change of heart…