A chance to forge a legacy

Kathy Hochul is no longer just a parting gift from Andrew Cuomo. In November we picked her on purpose, so how that works out now for the state of New York will be as much on us as on her.

Not that I am suggesting we picked the wrong candidate. Not at all. But I was struck yet again watching her inauguration speech last week how well she does lightweight. She has a real talent for smiling earnestly and saying nothing of consequence for great gobs of time, and I mean that as a sort of compliment. I suspect her political past is strewn with opponents who mistook lightweight for all she has. The speech was essentially a laundry list of our afflictions as a state, as if we didn’t know them already. But not a word really about what she plans to do about any of them.

Granted, an inauguration is not the right occasion for substance. It is about ceremony. Neither is the coming week’s State of the State address, which will present a pie in the sky wish list of aspirational answers not necessarily rooted in the doable. Her plan, or at least her positions on dealing with our myriad difficulties, will await the somewhat realistic budget message later in the month, and more so on the daily storm and stress slugging it out thereafter, issue after issue. This is going to be a bruising session. Kathy Hochul has much to prove to us, and to herself. She says she’s as tough as her steel worker family background. We’ll see.

Hochul’s place in history is already assured. Come what may, she will go down as the first woman to be governor of New York. An oddity considering that for a state as liberal as ours, home of the women’s suffrage movement, it has taken us this long, and that the opportunity was afforded by Cuomo’s resignation. What does that really say about us?

But whether Kathy Hochul will, or can, rise to the occasion and be remembered as more, and even much more, than a historical asterisk is the great unknown, and that is what this coming legislative session will begin to show us. The past year and a half in office has been mostly getting through COVID, treading water and cleansing state government of Cuomo toxicity. Her legacy starts now.

First up is appointing a chief justice to our highest court, the state Court of Appeals. Hochul’s nominee is Hector LaSalle, a conservative Latino with a voting record that has raised liberal eyebrows aplenty. Apparently there are enough progressive Democrats in the state Senate, the entity that must confirm him, to block his appointment. Pundits are saying that Hochul has boxed herself into a lose-lose situation over LaSalle. If she sticks with him, and he goes down, that is seen as a loss, and so is withdrawing his nomina

tion. Well, not necessarily. It depends on what the governor is looking for out of this nomination and what message she wants to send.

Most certainly it is to advance a Latino jurist on the court as a nod to a voting bloc of growing importance. If she maintains vocal support, even through a hearing that Judiciary Committee chair state Sen. Brad Hoylman has said will happen unless Hochul withdraws his name, the spotlight shifts to the hearing and vote. If and when he goes down, it will be on the Senate and not on her. Now, it might not please the Senate to be put in such a bind — normally when the votes aren’t there, a nomination is withdrawn to save embarrassment all around — but maybe the governor is finally showing a little hardball. Logically, LaSalle might not feel any too happy about being a piece on the board, and ask to have his nomination withdrawn. The governor can still claim she tried and it was out of her hands. Bottom line, this seems to be a little nose to nose between the Democratic Senate and Democratic governor heading into budget world. Not such a bad move on Hochul’s part.

Notably, it seems Hochul has not expended any real political capital on getting LaSalle confirmed, just a lot of talk. There was ample opportunity to hold up legislative pay raises, for example, but those raises mystifyingly sailed through without a stutter.

Choosing a new chief justice — or any member of the high court — is complicated and limited by a nominating process that is, in Hoylman’s word, “clunky” and needs to be revisited. In 1977, we passed a constitutional amendment creating a 12-member committee that vets and picks seven candidates from among the applicants, and forwards that list to the sitting governor. He or she must pick from that list exclusively. Their choices should be advisory only. In this case, there were 41 applicants.

The nominating committee was largely handpicked by Andrew Cuomo and Janet DiFiore, who resigned as chief justice in July under a heavy cloud of investigations, and who herself was put in the job by Cuomo. Two peas in a pod.

And yet another parting gift from Cuomo.