Politics

Hochul considers Cuomo mayoralty

Published

1 year ago

January 10, 2025

Gov. Kathy Hochul pledged to work with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo if he becomes mayor.

WE’RE ALL FRIENDS NOW: Gov. Kathy Hochul is pledging to work with a future Andrew Cuomo administration — if her former boss’ speculated run for mayor proves successful.

“My nature is to work with whoever is sitting in office, whether it’s the president of the United States, other governors or mayors,” the governor said when she was asked whether she supports Cuomo’s speculated run for mayor.

“I’ll continue on that path,” she added.

Hochul, who was on Long Island to unveil a proposal to provide free lunches for all K-12 students in the state (more on that below), made the comments on the heels of a new POLITICO report that signals Cuomo is continuing to line up the pieces for his run for mayor.

The Thursday report details how Cuomo is expected to hire Charlie King, a partner at the Manhattan-based consulting and lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs.

Hochul has enjoyed a sunny relationship with Mayor Eric Adams, even as he battles federal corruption charges that could turn into even worse charges. She opted not to oust him — a power she holds — after his September indictment, in exchange for him pushing out scandal-scarred top aides.

“My job as governor of this great state is to work with whomever the voters choose to be the Mayor of the City of New York,” Hochul said, still in response to the Cuomo question. “I’ve demonstrated that. I’ve had a better relationship with the mayor of New York than probably any of my predecessors. It has been collaborative, because I recognize one thing — we both represent the same people.”

Cuomo — whose own petty feuds with former Mayor Bill DeBlasio have become the stuff of legend — declined to comment for this story. His team continues to avoid confirming the drips of news about his seemingly embryonic campaign for mayor mean he is actually running.

(Jewish Insider also reported in November that Cuomo’s team is preparing to run, and is setting up an independent expenditure group.)

“This all remains premature, but Andrew Cuomo will always be a Queens boy who loves New York, is deeply concerned about its direction, and will always help any way he can,” Azzopardi told our colleague Nick Reisman in response to the Mercury Public Affairs news. He also insisted that “nothing has changed and neither apparently has the rumor mill in all its glory.”

When asked if she would rank Adams at the ballot box in June, Hochul balked — “I’m not a voter in New York City,” she said, sidestepping the hypothetical.

The governor’s comments, about President-elect Donald Trump, Adams and Cuomo (who Cuomo has insisted are all the same) come as she continues to signal a non-aggression pact with, well, everyone after quickly abandoning a Trump-resistance posture.

If you remember, the day after Election Day, Hochul hosted a Trump-bashing press conference with Attorney General Letitia James, where James said the two are “ready to fight back again.”

But immediately afterward, her stance softened, a prerogative that seems to have been solidified by her “lengthy,” “cordial” and “very productive” phone call with Trump the next day.

Since the pair’s cuddly chat, the governor has pledged to work with — not obstruct — the Trump administration’s efforts, even pledging to be “the first to call up ICE” to deport immigrants who break the law when asked about Trump’s mass deportation plan.

While she plays nice with the three criminally probed men, she still must ward off a challenge from Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres and Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, who are both doing their best to ramp up speculation they will campaign against her for governor in 2026.

“The change of heart about Cuomo is the latest flip-flop from the foremost flip-flopper in New York politics,” Torres texted Playbook. “Just like Kathy Hochul was for congestion pricing before she was against it before she was for it, Hochul was for Cuomo before she was against him before she was for him.”

Lawler also chimed in: “Governor Hochul’s new ‘Kumbaya Kathy’ act is laughable,” he said. “Commonsense people in both parties know that she doesn’t work with, or listen to, anyone who disagrees with her and her bad ideas. If she did, we wouldn’t be dealing with congestion pricing, sanctuary cities, or cashless bail.” — Jason Beeferman

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced free meals for K-12 students in the state.

YOU GET A LUNCH, AND YOU GET A LUNCH … : New York is set to become the ninth state in the nation that provides free lunches and breakfasts to all K-12 school students, regardless of their income.

“I’m proposing free school meals for every student in New York — giving kids the sustenance they need and putting more money back in parents’ pockets,” the governor said today.

The announcement is the final in a trifecta of affordability proposals Hochul is unveiling ahead of her State of the State.

Hochul has long centered affordability from her perch in Albany, but the recent emphasis on “putting money back in your pockets” comes after Trump’s decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris revealed losses of Democratic support from working class voters across most demographic groups.

“It’s just a statement of our values,” Hochul said. “Helping put more money in the pockets of parents, families in countless ways. This is just one of the other initiatives we’ll be announcing in my State of the State on Tuesday.”

The governor’s new initiative, known as Universal Free School Meals, would eliminate any income requirements, expanding eligibility to nearly 300,000 additional pupils.

The investment into the state’s free student meals program, which Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas and state Sen. Michelle Hinchey had fought to expand over the last two years, means around 2.7 million students will be entitled to free meals.

“Reducing the stigma is so important,” Rojas said. “We’ve heard about so many children who are teased, families who are embarrassed to do all this work and get that attention, because they just want their kids to learn and not be focused on the challenges they’re facing,” Rojas said.

“These arbitrary cutoffs that we have for things, just because you may not qualify doesn’t mean your family is not right on the brink and struggling,” Hinchey said.

The initiative is expected to cost $340 million and would go into effect in the 2025-26 school year, according to the governor’s office. — Jason Beeferman and Madina Touré

Mayor Eric Adams hasn't ruled out attending President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration.

TO BE (THERE) OR NOT TO BE: Adams is open to attending Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, but his Albany ally is staying put.

Hochul campaign spokesperson Jen Goodman today confirmed the governor will not attend Trump’s swearing-in ceremony in Washington.

Adams and Hochul are moderate Democrats who have worked well together. But Adams, who is fighting a five-count federal felony indictment, has trod lightly in Trump world.

Unlike the governor, Adams was not a vocal surrogate for President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris when she replaced him at the top of the ticket. Adams also met with incoming Trump border czar Tom Homan and has been critical of how Biden has handled immigration policy. (Hochul has been in virtual alignment with the Biden administration on the issue and has blamed Republicans for a scuttled border security bill last year.)

The inauguration will coincide with Martin Luther King Jr. Day and prominent New York officials typically unite at the Rev. Al Sharpton’s celebration of the civil rights leader at the National Action Network in Harlem.

Hochul has not disclosed her plans for Jan. 20, but she is also expected to deliver her state budget presentation in Albany the following day. — Nick Reisman

Senate Minority Chuck Schumer wants the SALT cap repealed.

BITTER TAX FIGHT: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is drawing a line in the sand in the heated battle to lift the cap on the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, as House Republicans meet Saturday with Trump to argue for an increase.

Schumer wants a full repeal, full stop.

Reps. Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota, Nicole Malliotakis, Andrew Garbarino and their colleagues from New Jersey and California view a substantial hike in the current $10,000-per-household cap as a realistic opening bid in the light of the contention to come over renewing the broader tax cuts package.

But Schumer and other Democrats, including Hochul, are staking out total restoration as their position. The senior senator previewed the Dems’ strategy Friday in remarks to the pro-business Long Island Association.

“President-elect Trump and many southern and midwestern Congress members who pushed the unfair SALT cap in their 2017 tax bill are now having second thoughts, and we have to take advantage of that,” he told the business community in a suburban stretch where SALT is a very big deal. “There’s been a lot of chatter this week about various potential increases to Trump’s SALT limits, but remember: If we don’t renew them, then the Trump SALT cap will expire … and this attack on New York taxpayers ends for good.”

As House Republicans from high-tax states make their SALT case, they’ve also made sure to blame the Democratic leaders of those states, including Hochul, for hefty taxes that make the deduction so crucial in the first place. — Emily Ngo

— GUILTY PLEA: Turkish-American construction executive Erden Arkan pleaded guilty Friday to making straw donations to Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign. (POLITICO)

— LESS TERRIBLE TWOS: City parents are starting a campaign to push City Hall to fund free universal child care for 2-year-olds. (Daily News)

— DON’T GIMME SHELTER: The city is shuttering 10 migrant shelters as the rate of arrivals for asylum seekers continues to hit new lows. (New York Post)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.

Politics

Rick Jackson cannonballed into the governor race. It’s having ripple effects across Georgia.

Published

33 minutes ago

April 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

HOMER, Georgia — The last few players of the day were finishing their rounds at the Chimney Oaks Golf Club when a steady wind picked up by the practice putting green. Pin flags bent to a near snap. A sleek helicopter slowly descended onto the manicured lawn.

Rick Jackson had arrived.

The billionaire health care executive turned GOP gubernatorial candidate was making his grand entrance as a headliner for a recent event hosted by the Banks County Republican Party. In many ways, it mimicked the same disruptive force with which he entered the race two months earlier: loud, ostentatious and out of nowhere.

He rose from being a virtually unknown contender to a frontrunner in the polls by spending $50 million of his own money to flood the airwaves, social media and mailboxes with ads — nearly double the amount of all the candidates in both primaries for governor combined, according to an AdImpact analysis. He’s cutting into Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones’ margins with ultra-conservative voters and he’s complicating Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger’s path to making the June run-off.

Jackson arrived by private helicopter at the Chimney Oaks Golf Club in Homer for a campaign event on April 8.

An already crowded race has become all about Jackson.

“Anytime you’ve got somebody spending $100 million on TV and mailers and everything else, obviously you’re forced to talk about him,” Jones said in an interview with Blue Light News.

As Jackson has upended the governor’s race, he’s also taking up so much of voters’ attention that Georgia Republicans in other races are worried about their own chances of breaking through.

Voters and strategists alike say they just can’t avoid Jackson’s presence anywhere, not even at home. His media blitz is alarming fellow Republicans, half a dozen of whom told Blue Light News that Jackson is endangering Republicans in down ballot races — and a critical Senate contest — that will likely be decided by razor-thin margins.

“Down the ballot, it’s going to be extremely difficult for candidates for the other constitutional offices to get any kind of media attention, which creates a scenario where many of these races are essentially crapshoots,” said Spiro Amburn, a longtime Georgia Republican strategist and statehouse official who is neutral in the race.

Jackson’s campaign tour bus is seen alongside yard signs in the parking lot outside the Chimney Oaks Golf Club.

A Georgia-based Republican operative involved with the governor’s race suggested that Jackson is partly the reason for the GOP’s messy Senate primary because the candidates are struggling to “get traction” and make headway with paid media. Another GOP strategist said Jackson’s spending, particularly in a primary, has far surpassed any precedent: “I watched 30 minutes of TV the other day and had six Rick Jackson ads. It’s just on a different level.”

“He’s sucked up so much oxygen that it’s really hard for any other Republican to operate right now,” said a third GOP strategist involved in races up and down the ballot in the state.

Jackson, in an interview, said he had not considered how his spending might be affecting other races and said he’d ultimately help them across the finish line when he’s the GOP nominee.

“Anytime you have a lot of money on TV, it’s going to raise the bar for everybody. Unfortunately, it’s just a necessity,” he said unapologetically. Speaking with Blue Light News after the Banks County event last week, Jackson shrugged off any concerns about his money and said he will do “whatever it takes” to win.

“When I win, that’s when I’m done,” he added.

Rick Jackson’s money vs. Burt Jones’ Trump endorsement

Perhaps the biggest target in the face of Jackson’s onslaught is Jones, who used to lead the governor’s race by most standards. He now finds himself neck and neck with the billionaire in recent polling, as Jackson sells himself as another Trump-aligned candidate — even though he and the president don’t have much of a close, personal relationship.

“He’s not portraying himself as what he really is,” Jones told Blue Light News. “He’s not this hard-nosed conservative guy. He is somebody who’s dependent on state and federal contracts to make his living, and he’s trying to make himself out to be some outsider and doesn’t know how the political process works.”

President Donald Trump and Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones visit The Varsity in Rome, Georgia, on Feb. 19.

Other Jones allies have been leaning hard into attacking Jackson as a big-spending outsider. At a fish fry last week in rural Atkinson County, state Rep. James Burchette encouraged voters to question why a candidate would spend so much money to “take control of the state of Georgia.” Sen. Russ Goodman warned that “all this stuff that you see in the mailbox — it’s nothing but a bunch of lies.”

But even with Jackson’s big-spending approach, Trump’s stamp of approval still holds immeasurable power with the MAGA base.

The president has reaffirmed his support for Jones: “All these guys are coming in now loaded up with some money. Who the hell knows how much money he’s got? But Burt Jones has been here and been with you and been with me right from the beginning,” the president said at an event in Rome, Georgia in February.

Parked outside the fish fry, Jones’ campaign bus was emblazoned with that reminder: “Trump Endorsed.”

A sign for Jones towers over others on a roadside in Butts County, Georgia, on April 6.

Jackson is betting on voters like Bruce Brooker, a 72-year-old farmer from Atkinson County: intrigued by Jackson, but ultimately sticking with the lieutenant governor out of loyalty to the president.

“I would probably vote for [Jackson] if Trump had not endorsed Burt,” he said. “I like the fact that he started with nothing and crawled and climbed through like any. He knows what hard work is. I’m not being critical of him. I admire him.”

Jackson, meanwhile, is trying to prove his MAGA credentials to Georgia Republicans to siphon off enough of Jones’ voters to win. Over in Homer, where Jackson was addressing a crowd of about 200 voters at the country club, attendees peppered him with questions about his relationship with Trump.

At the Jackson event in Homer, Norine Cantor, a resident of Flowery Branch (left), wore a bedazzled Trump hat. Debbie Loveless (right) donned a pair of MAGA shoes. Jackson speaks with constituents at the Chimney Oaks Golf Club in Homer.

One man in the crowd asked Jackson to explain why he had donated to former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) — a longtime Trump critic who voted to impeach the president during his first term. Another questioned why he had only donated to the president after the 2024 election.

“Just like JD Vance and Marco Rubio, I will admit I was late to the Trump Train. There’s no question about it,” Jackson responded. “But I gave a million dollars to him. That’s not an insignificant concept of supporting somebody.”

The non-MAGA candidates say they have an opening

Others in the governor’s race who are less interested in wooing the MAGA masses — including Raffensperger, who has rebuked efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and Attorney General Chris Carr — are not as concerned about Jackson undercutting their campaigns.

Carr campaign spokesperson Julia Mazzone said in a statement that Jackson’s entry into the race “devastates Burt Jones’ campaign, but it does not change the fundamentals for us.” The attorney general has a long-shot chance of advancing out of the primary, however, as polls show him in a single-digit fourth place.

A March 30 memo penned by Raffensberger’s campaign manager and obtained by Blue Light News claimed that the Jackson-Jones cagefight has created an opening for other candidates to lead on policy substance. The secretary has avoided injecting himself into the MAGA mêlée, instead keeping his profile comparatively low as he travels the state to speak with voters.

Georgia gubernatorial candidate Brad Raffensperger looks on at a campaign event with the Vinings Rotary Club at a Copeland’s of New Orleans in Atlanta, on April 8.

“I have my own lane, and I feel good where we are,” Raffensberger said in an interview. “We travel all over the state, reaching voters, talking to people, making sure that people understand my message is about making sure we keep Georgia affordable and safe, and I’m best positioned to do that at the end of the day.”

After all, Raffensperger has a history of overcoming Trump-backed challengers and cruising to a general election victory.

“I’m going to be in the runoff,” he added, deflecting any and all concerns with finality.