Hochul's luck & good timing
‘The Forrest Gump of NY politics’
It’s been a series of fortunate events for Gov. Hochul.
The 63-year-old upstater rose to the top job in Albany after a career spent falling into ever-greater professional achievements.
“She’s like the Forrest Gump of New York state politics — but without the ping-pong skills,” said one Republican elected official who knows her.
The good news started for Hochul in 1994 when she was appointed to fill a vacant seat on the five-member Hamburg Town Board, which governs a Buffalo suburb of 56,000 people. She filled a seat left open when Patrick H. Hoak resigned to become the town supervisor. She was 35 years old. She already had an active career in Democratic politics and her husband, William Hochul, was a rising Democratic player serving as an assistant US attorney in the Western District of New York.
Thomas Quatroche served with Hochul on the town board during the 1990s and said she was unanimously chosen for the job by other members of the Democratcontrolled board. The appointment allowed her to get the elected job without facing voters — a theme that has emerged again and again throughout her career.
“She was active in the community. She had a background in the job [working previously as an aide to Rep. John J. LaFalce and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan], had a law degree. It was a natural,” Quatroche told The Post. By all accounts she proved popular and was elected to a full term in the seat by voters after her appointment — until fate called again.
In 2003, Erie County Clerk David Swarts plucked Hochul to serve as his deputy, replacing Kenneth Kruly, who left the job to become head of government relations at Canisius College.
Swarts said he first met Hochul in the 1970s when he worked as an assistant to state Assembly Speaker Stanley Steingut and Hochul worked as an intern in the Speaker’s Buffalo office while a student at Syracuse University. They reconnected and became friendly while working in Washington, DC, in the 1980s.
“We interacted on campaigns . . . and we were both strong Democrats,” Swarts said, explaining his decision to appoint her.
Fortune came calling again when Swarts was appointed commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles by then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Hochul moved into his job as Erie County Clerk, bypassing voters again. She later won the position in her own right in a 2010 election.
In 2011 she moved up again, this
time to Congress. But the election was unusual. GOP Rep. Chris Lee
had been forced to resign after soliciting women on Craigslist. A special election was called in the red district. Hochul won it narrowly, but only with a big assist from Jack Davis, a Tea Party spoiler who drew more than 10,000 votes away from Republican Jane Corwin.
Hochul’s time in Congress was short. For the first time, her political career suffered a bout of misfortune after she was redistricted into facing even more right-leaning voters. She failed to win reelection against Chris Collins in 2012.
Hochul’s public career was resurrected after Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy decided to jump ship, and Gov. Cuomo selected Hochul to replace him on the ticket for his 2014 campaign. Though the job is mostly ceremonial, she fought off a bruising primary challenge from then-City Councilman Jumaane Williams in 2018.
Hochul became governor on Aug. 24, after a disgraced Cuomo, facing multiple allegations of sexual harassment, resigned.