New York governor Kathy Hochul (D.), who has long insisted that she will not increase taxes, is reportedly moving toward supporting tax hikes following the victory of socialist New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
Hochul is now reconsidering “a position she had treated as nonnegotiable all year,” Politico reported Thursday. While she told Fox 5 on Wednesday that she still opposes raising income taxes, “everything else seems to be on the table,” with state officials “quietly discussing a potential corporate tax rate increase,” according to Politico. Mamdani has proposed raising the state’s corporate tax rate to 11.5 percent, which would make it the highest in the country.
“We have to look at other revenue sources,” Hochul told Fox 5.
The governor took care to note in her September endorsement of Mamdani that she is not “aligned with him on every issue” and told Bloomberg that same month that she is a “staunch capitalist” who would reassure businesses that “the city of New York, as powerful and mighty as it is, is still a subdivision of the state, so any tax increase has to come across my desk first.”
Mamdani supports higher taxes to pay for a variety of programs, including free bus fares, government-run grocery stores, and universal childcare.
Hochul’s potential shift follows months of left-wing pressure to back Mamdani’s agenda. Protesters drowned out her speech at Mamdani’s pre-election rally with tax-the-rich chants, and DSA members threatened that Hochul will lose her reelection bid next year unless she approves tax hikes to fund Mamdani’s agenda.
“Kathy Hochul, if you get a third strike, you’re out!” state senator Jabari Brisport said at a Democratic Socialists of America rally last month. “There’s no way to get universal childcare without raising taxes on the rich. So if [Hochul] does sabotage it and blocks it then I think the plan is that she has to go.”
The governor has said she agrees with Mamdani on universal childcare, “an expensive measure that Hochul’s budget office estimates would likely cost more than $10 billion once fully phased in,” Politico noted.
In addition to Mamdani, Hochul is also facing a challenge from within her own administration, as Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado is primarying her from the left. “Left-leaning activists, including the Working Families Party, have threatened to back Delgado—who supports higher taxes on rich New Yorkers—in the primary,” Politico reported.
Socialist state assemblywoman Jessica González-Rojas welcomed Hochul’s shift toward higher taxes, though she suggested that the move may come out of political expedience.
Hochul “sees the writing on the wall in the way people turned out in droves in supporting Mamdani,” González-Rojas said.
The party infighting could complicate Hochul’s reelection bid even more. Polls have found mixed results on a hypothetical matchup between Hochul and her likely Republican challenger, Rep. Elise Stefanik. A poll last month found Hochul with a double-digit lead, while an October poll found that Hochul was “deeply vulnerable” and had only a 5-point lead. The October poll also found that when likely voters heard of each candidate’s background, including Hochul’s endorsement of Mamdani, Stefanik took the lead.
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