Analysis: In race for New York governor, it's been a good week for Hochul

In the race for governor, Kathy Hochul is having a good week.

Four years ago around this time, she faced a very different environment. Only six months on the job and still relatively unknown to many New Yorkers, Hochul had not one but two Democratic primary opponents. She was facing a Republican opponent who had already been campaigning for nearly a year. Her government and party were saddled by polls showing voters seriously concerned about issues like inflation and bail laws, all while the national Democratic Party faced possible political headwinds of a looming midterm election with Joe Biden in the White House.

Now, as she seeks her second full term in the Albany executive mansion, Hochul experienced quite a reverse of fortune.

She was renominated with ease at the state Democratic convention in Syracuse last week. She’s been endorsed by every Democratic member of New York’s delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives. She quickly got the backing of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the newest and one of the loudest voices of the party’s progressive wing. She quickly quashed a brief rebellion by the Brooklyn Democrats over her pick of former New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams as her running mate. A Siena University poll last week found registered voters gave her their highest-ever favorability rating yet. And just Tuesday, her sole primary challenger, Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, suspended his campaign against her.

Then there’s the recent elimination of a likely formidable Republican opponent in U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik — a young Republican star, strong supporter of President Donald Trump and a prolific fundraiser. State Republicans are poised to nominate Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman at their state convention on Tuesday. He comes with his own record and accolades, but remains largely unknown to three in five New York voters, according to last week’s Siena poll, with only nine months until Election Day. In the same poll, Hochul leads Blakeman by 26 points, a bigger lead than she had against any poll when matched against Stefanik.

All of this is helpful to Hochul in a campaign that never seemed like it would be easy. Republicans have been bullish since Lee Zeldin’s impressive performance in 2022 when he came within six points of unseating Hochul. Even 2024 results were encouraging, as Donald Trump vastly improved on his electoral performance in the Empire State, only losing the presidential race by 11.6 points and becoming the first Republican nominee since George W. Bush in 2004 to garner more than 40% of the vote in the blue state. Be that as it may, Trump and his policies remain steadily unpopular in New York — the president garnering only a 33% approval rating. Shut out of statewide power in New York for 20 years now, the GOP was hoping 2026 could be their year, though that remains a daunting uphill task.

That’s not to say Hochul doesn’t still have her challenges. She is still viewed unfavorably by a majority of independents, the recent Siena poll found, and has another state budget fight ahead of her. She faces harsh criticism from the left on her recent positions on nuclear and climate policy and from the right on her resistance to cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), among other things. There’s an affordability factor, a taxes factor, a Mamdani factor and others. She’ll still have to thread a lot of needles but is in a better position for reelection right now than she probably ever has been.