Kathy Hochul, for any reader who might not know, is the governor of New York, having taken on the role after Andrew Cuomo resigned in 2021. Hochul barely won the governor’s seat in a hotly contested race with Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin in 2022, despite the overwhelming advantage Democrats have on the Empire State’s voter rolls. Hochul, often labelled as dull, frequently states the obvious. She has also delivered a few gaffes. Speaking at the Milken Institute Global Conference in May 2024, she stated, “Right now, we have young Black kids growing up in the Bronx who don’t even know what the word ‘computer’ is”. She attempted to clean it up, suggesting she meant to draw attention to inner-city kids’ reduced access to technology. Regardless, it sounded clunky and bigoted. She has repeatedly called Trump voters “anti-American” and “anti-woman,” using leftist standards to make the appraisal. But her most trivial comments occur when she finds herself out of her depth (think of a wading pool), having to take back statements or soften demands.
During her 2022 campaign against Zeldin, she declared her opponent, Donald Trump, and Marc Molinaro, the Dutchess County Executive, unrepresentative of New York values, telling them to “–just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong. OK? Get out of town.” What Hochul forgot to include was that wealthy New Yorkers, those in the top one per cent, pay over 46 per cent of the total state taxes. In a delicious and ironic turn, Hochul recently urged former residents to return to New York and pay their taxes. Shamelessly, Hochul believed voters would overlook her change of stance. People who left New York because of punishing tax rates are free to do so under the Constitution. Yes, they fled to red states where taxes are lower, and the services are better. It may come as a shock to Hochul and the progressive left, but Americans of all stripes in all states are free to move, establish residency, or set up business wherever they like. If they judge the government’s use of taxes as incompetent, wasteful, or extravagant, they can move to any other state in the union. Instead of blaming the citizens for accepting her dare to leave New York, she should consider ways to ensure fewer New Yorkers take a pass on more blue-state policies and find reasons to stay. Her latest effort to resolve the state’s growing budget crisis includes asking New Yorkers vacationing in Florida to convince their wealthy friends to move back north to their former jurisdiction. But the state has a bigger problem developing in the city that never sleeps. Its mayor, Zohran Mamdani, not only endorses the 2026 Hochul campaign, but he also wants her to allow him to go much further.
In a twist only a far-left mayor could conjure up, Mamdani wants to close the gap on the city’s deficit by placing a surcharge on the wealthiest citizens as they pack their belongings, sell their homes, and leave the city and state faster than a New York minute. How New Yorkers, businesses, and potential investors respond to these shenanigans will give political observers a clue about the mood of the nation as midterms creep closer and the presidential sweepstakes begin at the end of the year.
NEW YORK CITIZENS
Confusing the political philosophy of those living in New York City (NYC) with people calling New York State home lacks understanding or nuance. The Big Apple has long been a Democratic fiefdom. However, the best-governed years in the state’s history may have been under Republican Rudy Giuliani or former liberal Republican Michael Bloomberg. With Bill de Blasio’s election in 2013, the city veered left. In an effort to self-correct, New York elected Eric Adams as mayor. Unfortunately, Adams offended nearly every voting bloc in the Democratic Party during his brief tenure. With its most famous native son in the White House, embarrassed New Yorkers, in a rebuke to President Donald Trump, pulled a fast one and chose the photogenic, suit-wearing progressive, Zohran Momdani, in the Democratic primary last fall. If the state did not have enough trouble in Albany with Hochul’s antics, now the financial capital of the Western World had basically handed Gracie Mansion to someone promising to implement free city bus service, eliminating fares at a cost of around $800 million annually; freeze rent for nearly a million residents while promising to tell the Rent Guidelines Board to reject rent increases; deliver universal child care for all families with children aged 6 weeks to 5 years; triple the production of “permanently affordable” housing, targeting the construction of 200,000 new, union-built and rent-controlled homes over the next decade; increasing taxes on the wealthy (those making over a 1 million dollars per annum) and raising the corporate tax rate; finally, in the biggest boondoggle of all, creating a network of city-owned, non-profit grocery stores to reduce food costs in concentrated areas of food insecurity. New Yorkers seem gullible to whoever makes the grandest promises, proposes the most ardent anti-Trump program, and vows to make the rich pay.
With an estimated loss of over a million residents by 2050, the state remains an example of people leaving a blue-governed area for lower taxes and better, or at least equal, basic services in a red jurisdiction. If New Yorkers continue to support politicians committed to increasing the footprint of government in people’s everyday lives, chances are that the state will continue to repeat the same errors of the past, suffer through poor economic growth, and move further left, thinking that just one more program will fix the problems.
BUSINESSES & INVESTORS
Verizon, a major telecommunications company in New York State, recently announced plans to cut several thousand jobs. In what has become known as the shift from Wall Street to Y’all Street, many companies have left New York due to higher taxes, higher costs, and a political climate more focused on redistributing wealth than on creating it. Some financial services companies that have departed include: Icahn Capital Management: moved from Manhattan to Miami, Florida, in 2020 to reduce costs; ARK Investment Management: relocated its headquarters and $24.7 billion in assets to St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2021; Elliott Management: Paul Singer’s hedge fund moved its headquarters from Midtown Manhattan to West Palm Beach, Florida; AllianceBernstein: moved its headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee, in 2022, a move expected to save the firm $80 million annually; Goldman Sachs: While still headquartered in NYC, the firm is building a massive $500-million campus in Dallas, Texas, set to open in 2028 as it shifts more high-paying roles away from New York.
Technology and other sectors have also lost confidence in both levels of government. Meta (Facebook) reduced leases for two large offices in the city, and in the second quarter of 2025 alone, New York City experienced about 8,400 business closures or departures, leading to the largest net decline in business activity since the pandemic. And the cancellation of Amazon’s second headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, because a coalition of the city’s politicians (including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), activists, and political unions opposed the tax incentives and community impact, gives further credence to the fact that the state and city both seem to have forgotten the basis of their prosperity.
PROGNOSIS
New Yorkers appear to like Trump and his policies about as much as Canadians do. Hochul holds a substantial lead over her prospective Republican opponent, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman. Unless the political winds change drastically, Hochul will win re-election and continue to spread her redistributionist cheer on New York voters for some time to come. Regardless of what the progressive intelligentsia says, the evidence points to further trouble for the state’s economy, more New York businesses heading for the exits, and less money to redistribute to New York’s underclass. The city appears to be the best socialist laboratory outside of Wab Kinew’s Manitoba. Mamdani will proceed with his agenda, and any failures that occur will probably be ignored because he attempted to tackle issues that the public considers important, and they are. The problem lay in his prescriptions. Once again, long-term economic growth does not rely on punishing job creators. The effort to level the playing field, assure equal outcomes, or social engineer incomes leads to impoverishment. When competing with states that are prepared to welcome new companies, provide incentives, and negotiate tax breaks, your locale had better warm up to the idea that taxing the wealthy sounds out of date and one-dimensional. Until New York leaders wake up to the reality of shrinking wealth, they will continue to offer the hollow promises of government-orchestrated prosperity, an Orwellian term if ever there was one. But in a one-party state like New York, as long as Democrats keep elevating the Hochuls and the Mamdanis, nothing will change.
Dave Redekop is a retired elementary resource teacher who worked part-time at the St. Catharines Courthouse as a Registrar until being appointed Executive Director at Redeemer Bible Church in October 2023. He has worked on political campaigns since high school and attended university in South Carolina for five years, earning a Master’s in American History with a specialization in Civil Rights. Dave loves reading biographies.
