Hochul defends Bills deal, gun positions

The two Democrats challenging Gov. Kathy Hochul’s bid to keep her job criticized her Tuesday for her past backing from the National Rifle Association and the deal she reached to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer money on a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills.

Hochul, appearing in her first gubernatorial debate Tuesday night, defended the stadium deal and said her positions on guns had evolved in the 10 years since she got a favorable rating from the NRA while running for reelection in a Republican-heavy New York district.

“That was a decade ago. Judge me by what I’ve done because a lot of people have evolved since I took that position,” she said. “You know what we need? More people to evolve.”

Hochul became governor in August when then- Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned amid allegations he sexually harassed several women, which he denied. She is seeking to become the first woman elected to New York’s highest office, but first she has to win her party’s June 28 primary contest against U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi of Long Island and New York City’s elected Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.

Hochul is considered the frontrunner in the race, not only because she can claim incumbency but also because she has dominated campaign fundraising and has stacked up endorsements, including the backing of the state Democratic party.

Suozzi, like Hochul, has stuck to mostly centrist positions. Williams is a progressive who in 2018 mounted a strong challenge against Hochul in the lieutenant governor’s race.

Williams, a former city councilman who serves as a public ombudsman, said he had been working to stop gun violence 10 years ago and said he wished Hochul had been supportive then.

“We are 10 years behind because people in Congress were doing the bidding of the NRA,” he said.

Hochul, trying to show she acted quickly amid rising gun violence and a mass shooting in Buffalo last month, highlighted a package of gun bills she signed this week that prohibited anyone under 21 from buying a semiautomatic rifle and required microstamping on new firearms, which would leave individual identifiers on bullet casings fired by those guns.

“I’ve been the governor for nine months. I got it done in record time,” she said.

Suozzi boasted of having an “F” rating from the NRA and said that while all the candidates on the stage supported the state’s new gun laws, “only one of us standing up here has ever been endorsed by the NRA, taken money from the NRA.”