Gov. Hochul’s third state-of-the-state speech was jarring.
In contrast to most such exercises, Hochul kept to a sober — even dark — tone.
She focused not on dozens of micro-initiatives but on the three things that haunt New Yorkers: crime, disorder and costs.
A concluding comment summed up the tone: “I can actually understand why some people feel the sun is setting on the Empire State,” she said.
This attitude is risky.
Conventional wisdom is that people want positivity from their politicians.
But: When polling shows 59% of New Yorkers think quality of life has worsened on her watch, and with Hochul’s once-sunny approval rating negative, why not lean into public negativity?
So though Hochul’s words sounded bleak, she mirrored our own “atmosphere of anxiety,” as she called it.
“Safety at the grocery store, the synagogue, the subway is always top of mind,” she said, about fear of violence as well as frustration at “unfettered theft.”
Almost shouting, she acknowledged that “thieves brazenly tear items off the shelves and menace employees. These attacks are nothing more than a breakdown of the social order.”
Of “baby formula locked behind plastic panels” and “people suffering a mental breakdown or an overdose” on the subway, “I say, no more.”
Of the man who “pulled a knife” and stabbed two teenage tourists at Grand Central Terminal Christmas morning, Hochul said, “episodes like this extract a vast psychological toll on our communities.”
It’s brave for an incumbent to say the Christmas attack was “absolutely inexcusable” as “repeated failures . . . allowed the perpetrator,” with a long history of violence and mental illness, “to slip through the cracks.”
Mayor Adams, by contrast, did everything he could to minimize the Grand Central attack.
On costs, the governor said that “we cannot spend money we do not have,” as federal pandemic funds have “dried up.”
Though she boasted of recent double-digit increases to education and health-care spending, she offered no new multibillion-dollar programs. On education, she even pushed for old-fashioned phonics.
Her proposed funding for an artificial-intelligence research hub — $275 million over a decade — is modest compared with the multibillion-dollar megaprojects New York normally peddles. It comes with philanthropic matches, a way to encourage depressed donors to keep a stake in their state.
(Even this good-news nod came with a dour, Trump-y warning: If we don’t do it, “foreign powers like China” will.)
So what are Hochul’s specific fixes — and will they work?
On shoplifting, she promised a state-police unit and cooperation with federal and local investigators to “crack down” on “repeat offenders,” including organized rings.
Hochul said nothing about reforming the state’s 2019-era discovery laws, which force district attorneys to devote more resources to prosecuting even the most routine crimes.
Without that, more investigative resources may still run into a dead end, with suspects knowing that if they don’t plea to a lesser charge, the DA will drop the case.
And she has yet to catch up with our latest disorder breakout: “Protesters” who keep shutting down key transportation and transit corridors.
Still, though, after an era where the political default was not to talk about punishing anyone short of a triple murderer, her language was striking: The state wants to “punish those who think they can break the rules with impunity.”
On mental health, she was similarly no-nonsense: 1,000 more psychiatric beds and a stop to releasing people prematurely only to see them “commit violent acts.”
Hochul had better hope her ideas work because she didn’t give herself excuses for them not to.
As for legislative cooperation: The left, having spent the past three months cheering on Hamas, is dwindling in power, something she — and they — knows.
A Republican won a City Council seat in The Bronx in the fall.
Even Hochul’s big omission was telling: On the migrant crisis, she promised answers to this “tough fiscal issue” next week, in her budget speech.
She offered none of the usual bromides about New York being built on immigrants, as if that has anything to do with housing tens of thousands of people indefinitely.
Hochul even struck an oblique blow against our regulatory state, observing, unusually for a New York Democrat, “New York has vastly more regulated housing stock than any other state,” but such regulation hasn’t lowered costs.
If Hochul can deliver, a moderate Hochul will have fully replaced the left-of-center Hochul who took office two-and-a-half years ago.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
