Churchill: Stumbling Hochul gives Suozzi hope

ALBANY — Tom Suozzi’s late November announcement that he would run for governor was mostly met with confusion and indifference, in part because it was difficult to think of a rationale for the Democrat’s campaign. 

At the time, Gov. Kathy Hochul was riding high in polls and raising piles of money. The notion that Suozzi — or any other challenger not named Tish James — would poise a threat seemed farfetched. Why was the congressman from Long Island wasting his time and ours?

Five months later, the landscape has changed. Hochul no longer looks so formidable.

In a Siena College Research Institute poll released last week, only 36 percent of voters approved of Hochul’s performance, and the governor scored especially poorly on the two issues — crime and the economy — that voters identified as their top concern.

Meanwhile, just 40 percent of voters said they would vote for Hochul if she’s the Democratic nominee. Forty-five percent preferred “someone else.”

Those poll numbers are the political equivalent of the warning signs that try to prevent trucks from crashing into the Glenridge Road rail bridge. At the moment, Hochul looks like she’s driving an 18-wheeler right at it.

That gives Suozzi’s challenge the rationale it once lacked.

“If the Democrats want to win in November, Kathy Hochul should not be the nominee, and I should,” Suozzi, 59, told me. “They (the Republicans) are not going to beat me on Long Island. They’re not going to beat me in the suburbs.”

I imagine that if we gave Republican candidates such as Lee Zeldin and Harry Wilson doses of truth serum, they’d admit Suozzi isn’t the candidate they want to face. After all, the issues he’s emphasizing, including cutting crime and taxes, are the very same ones they’d like to highlight.

“Those are the issues people are concerned about, and we’re in trouble as a party if we don’t start talking about them,” Suozzi said. “And I don’t talk about these issues like I’m Fox News. I talk about them like a lifelong, common-sense Democrat.”

Suozzi has pushed Hochul to more aggressively tackle concerns about bail reform, and says she treats rising crime like an afterthought. He wants to cut state income taxes by 10 percent “so people can afford to live here,” and says Hochul’s recently passed budget doesn’t do nearly enough to prepare for looming fiscal crises.

And the congressman is another voice in the chorus singing against the governor’s stadium giveaway to the Buffalo Bills.

“We’re giving a billion dollars to her friends in Buffalo so that they wouldn’t leave,” Suozzi said. “What are we doing to keep people from leaving?”

Not enough, surely.

Since all readers of this column are astute observers of the political landscape, you’ve probably noticed that Suozzi is challenging Hochul from the right. Which raises a question: Is that what voters in the upcoming primary will want?

Progressives have a candidate in New York Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, which suggests that Suozzi and Hochul will be fighting for more moderate voters.

A problem for Suozzi is that Hochul remains popular among Democrats, who gave her 55 percent job approval in that Siena poll. It doesn’t seem likely that primary voters would turn away from her, even if Suozzi could convince them that he offers the best protection against those dastardly Republicans.

Of course, every Democrat in deep-blue New York enters a general election as the heavy favorite. So you can understand if Democrats aren’t particularly concerned about the threat.

The party would be wise, though, to avoid overconfidence, especially amid growing evidence of a gathering red tsunami that could wash away even blue-state Democrats this fall. Hochul, meanwhile, would be wise to stop shooting herself in the foot.

The indictment of the governor’s handpicked lieutenant, the tossing of gerrymandered maps by the state’s highest court and the Bills giveaway are together contributing to a narrative that makes the Hochul administration seem guilty of bad judgment, if not worse. Her poll numbers aren’t sinking without reason.

In Suozzi’s view, New Yorkers are responding to a pattern of incompetence.

“She just isn’t doing the job,” he said. “This is her mess. She has to take responsibility for it.”

It’s unlikely Suozzi will produce a shock upset. Hochul still has the power of incumbency and massive financial advantages. And with the primary scheduled for late June — assuming legal challenges related to the gerrymandering fiasco don’t delay it — Suozzi has a dwindling number of days to make his case.

But that case is stronger than it once seemed.

cchurchill@timesunion.com ■ 518-454-5442 ■ @chris_churchill