Kathy Hochul is kind.
She is also broadly experienced and wildly qualified and knows the state and its people better than anyone to serve in Albany in years.
But she is first and foremost kind.
She can be pleasant in disagreement and cordial in the face of difference. She is not prone to payback and she does not need to be worshipped. She treats people like people, like she would want to be treated, and she tends to tell them the truth.
And that’s what New York needs.
That’s what New York has lacked for a decade and more. That’s what New York cries out for as it shakes off the chains of a fallen governor’s dark rule.
New York needs Kathy Hochul.
To understand its heart, to bind its soul, to unite its people and to direct its focus. Born in Buffalo, educated in Syracuse, seasoned in Albany, she has visited every New York county and traipsed across the farms and the neighborhoods, with cameras and without, hearing and listening and understanding. She fits in New York City and she fits in Johnson City, she’s hobnobbed in the skyscrapers and lived in a trailer, known the shadows of the Adirondacks and the bright lights of the evening news.
She has organized her classmates, represented her neighbors, stood for her county and earned a seat in Congress. She has made a career for herself and helped her husband as he made a career for himself, while they together raised a family. She can stare down the big wigs and sip coffee with the factory workers.
She can also be nice to Republicans and country people and she once, as a lifelong liberal, had the backing of the NRA.
Granted, she has spent a long run in the shadow of Cuomo, swimming in the filth that he brought to governance. The question she will have to answer is: Did any of it rub off on her? She will need to tell people, soon, what she did or did not know about his misconduct – with women, and everything else. She will need to show that, though she was in his administration, she was not in his pocket. She must demonstrate that she was not his property or protégé. She will need to bring the reform that makes sure another Cuomo never arises.
And she may need to remind us that she also served with Senator Moynihan, a giant of intellect, independence and integrity, and that it is he who made the lasting impression on her, not Cuomo and his cutthroats.
Governor Hochul will need our support, because the effort to supplant her, to nullify her tenure and destroy her prospects, is no doubt already afoot. Ambition is not a pretty thing, and it is not given to decency, and those who crave the seat she will soon occupy will do everything they can to make sure her tenure is short and unremarkable.
Governor Paterson was also a first, and also a kind person, and they did everything they could to make sure his time in office was brief and inconsequential.
The smoke-filled rooms of Albany and Gotham will see Kathy Hochul as a place filler, as a ceremonial pawn to be celebrated but ignored, and pushed aside as soon as possible as the grown-ups fight over who will own New York next.
She will also be dealing with a powerful legislature which has just taken down her predecessor, and which is dominated by people whose geographic and philosophic center is distant from her own. A moderate, she will be partnered with a progressive, activist legislature that may, after years of suppression by Andrew Cuomo, want to stretch its legs and flex its muscles.
She will be in for a hell of a fight, mostly from her supposed partners in the Democratic Party.
But maybe that fight is where seasoning comes in, and where strength is demonstrated, and where Kathy Hochul will show the steel behind the velvet.
Or maybe she will give New York a reason to reset, to redefine the way we do things, and to bring decency and kindness and nobility back to governance. Maybe she can remind New York that it is a large and varied state, and that it extends beyond the Hudson and the Mohawk, and that there are people in barrios and in villages whose interests and hearts are ultimately the same. Maybe this daughter of Western New York can move us toward becoming one New York again, and show that upstate and downstate can sometimes be one state.
And that leaders, even strong leaders, can be kind.