ICYMI: Newsday Editorial Board Endorses Governor Kathy Hochul
NEW YORK – Yesterday, Newsday’s editorial board announced their endorsement of Governor Kathy Hochul, citing her proven ability to manage the state budget, plans to invest in Long Island’s economic development and housing supply, and decisive actions to keep our communities safe.
The editorial also highlighted Zeldin’s implausible plans to rollback the progress Governor Hochul has made on clean energy, COVID-19 relief and economic development and cited Zeldin’s refusal to support the much-needed bipartisan infrastructure bill as further indication that Governor Hochul is the right choice this November.
Shortly after Kathy C. Hochul took office 14 months ago, it became clear that New York’s first woman governor would have to face multiple state crises in short order. […]
She quickly moved to meet several political and governmental challenges in a credible way.
Now Hochul seeks a first elected term, and has moderate and pragmatic plans at the ready that encourage us to support her bid. […]
Beyond symbolism, such as vowing to remove Manhattan’s elected district attorney and reduce the number of people eligible for parole, Zeldin’s crime-fighting strategy doesn’t seem detailed or substantive or one that would have an immediate effect even assuming he could get the likely Democratic-controlled legislature to make changes. The executive orders he said he would sign on “Day One” to do so are implausible.
Given the shocking stabbing death in Queens of Lt. Alison Russo, an FDNY paramedic from Huntington, and other horrid irrational acts, Hochul rightly cites mental illness as a major factor in public safety and homelessness. […]
Hochul arrived in the job rightly aware that it’s the role of a governor to brake excessive spending plans. She successfully held out in the last budget for keeping a conservative 15% reserve despite shortsighted pressure to reduce that margin. With a blast of federal support due to the pandemic winding down, and signs of fiscal and economic stress and possibly more COVID challenges ahead, that decision looks all the wiser now. She can and must keep up such discipline. […]
But Hochul understands the current acute housing shortage and is more wisely exploring other options to expand housing availability in partnership with local governments and looking to new private incentives to build what’s needed.
She also has a good grasp of Long Island’s economic development needs and seems ready to apply the pressure needed to make the state’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative effective. […]
The thrust of [Zeldin’s] campaign is that the state is going in the wrong direction, but rolling back the clock to another era is not workable. He supports fracking for natural gas in the Southern Tier, but has offered little in the way of proposals for moving the state toward greener energy generation. He called for restoring jobs and pay for government workers let go for refusing to be vaccinated, which raises the question of how firmly he might deal with a public health crisis.
On abortion, a recent Zeldin television ad said that despite his anti-abortion stance he would not change New York’s very permissive state law. However, Zeldin could use his budgetary powers to stop funding for clinics, including their expansion and protection, and rescind regulatory guidelines that allow telehealth services as well as Department of Health programs to give guidance to abortion providers.
It must be noted that hours after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of Joe Biden as president, Zeldin voted against certifying the 2020 election results, choosing instead to link himself to a shameful episode. What’s more, several months later, he acted directly against his own state’s interests by opposing a bipartisan infrastructure bill that’s financing billions of dollars in needed state projects, especially for his home district. […]
Newsday endorses Hochul.