OPINION:
In 2022, my wife and I were in New York City for an event celebrating women in radio. She had won an award for her work in Washington, and we made a weekend of it.
At our midtown hotel, I had stepped outside to get some air as she was getting ready, and I noticed a woman, thin and seemingly frail, about 10 feet from me, talking on her phone. She looked familiar, so I looked again. It was the then-newish governor of New York, Kathy Hochul.
What struck me then (and to this day) was how no one noticed her — or at least they didn’t care that their governor was chatting away on her cellphone in the loading zone of this busy hotel. Were I not in the news business, I doubt I would have recognized her either. She was tiny and unassuming; there was nothing about her to catch attention (she had a security detail, but they were farther away than I was as she talked on the phone).
Ms. Hochul’s lack of impressiveness has only grown as she has governed New York. Were it not such a heavily Democratic state, she likely would have lost her reelection bid later that year. She won with only 53% after Andrew Cuomo, who had resigned in disgrace, won his 2018 reelection bid with nearly 60%.
The voters of New York noticed, as I did that day, just how unimpressive she is. Her term has been one disaster after another. What are Ms. Hochul’s accomplishments? She put taxpayers on the hook for about half a billion dollars to build a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills. (The move just so happened to benefit her husband’s employer at the time, netting Mr. Hochul $1.5 million in his last year with the company, more than twice the salary of his previous two years. That’s a pretty good deal.)
Ms. Hochul is pushing to block local police from cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in any way possible, because who wants criminals off the streets and out of the country, right? Having mandated the COVID-19 vaccine for health care workers before repealing it in 2023, Ms. Hochul’s government covers health care for illegal aliens, transgender care and near-unlimited resources for abortion.
What it won’t cover is the latest breakthrough for children suffering from muscular dystrophy. The governor’s Medicaid Drug Utilization Review Board, which is supposed to evaluate and recommend how to handle high-cost breakthrough medicines, voted to pause coverage of Elevidys, the first gene therapy for Duchenne, Real Clear Health reported in November.
Ms. Hochul is in favor of hormone therapy for sexually confused children, but she blocks gene therapy for children suffering from degenerative muscle disorders? Even New Jersey doesn’t do that, which means New York is in the humiliating position of looking less humane and less medically forward-thinking than the state it most loves to mock.
During the COVID-19 crisis, when thousands of seniors died thanks to an incompetent decision by Mr. Cuomo, Ms. Hochul was nowhere to be found. The New York Post put it best: “While thousands of senior citizens died in nursing homes, the now-governor was not to be found, playing no role in mitigating pain and saving the lives of New Yorkers when it counted. The same question applies now: What does Kathy Hochul do all day?”
Top Hochul aide Linda Sun has been charged with working for the Chinese government. Prosecutors allege that, “at the request of Chinese officials, [Ms. Sun] blocked representatives of the Taiwanese government from having access to the governor’s office, shaped New York governmental messaging to align with the priorities of the Chinese government and attempted to facilitate a trip to China for a high-level politician in New York.”
A mistrial was declared in December; prosecutors intend to retry Ms. Sun.
Kathy Hochul is the accidental governor, an understudy without the skills or character to carry the show. Whether it’s incompetence or corruption in scandals, indifference or politics when it comes to the health of children, the Hochul years will be measured in failures and disappointment.
The woman I saw outside that hotel has not grown into her role as governor; she has shrunk. A state with 20 million residents has leadership with all the political skills of someone who thought it would be a good idea to put out a video trying to teach people how to shovel snow. New Yorkers should be thankful there wasn’t an outbreak of food poisoning; one can only imagine that video.
• Derek Hunter is the host of “The Derek Hunter Show” on WMAL in Washington and author of “Outrage, INC: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism and Hollywood.”
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