Kathy Hochul’s Redistricting Push Gives Her A Needed Boost

ALBANY, New York — The national redistricting war has breathed new life into Gov. Kathy Hochul’s standing with Democrats ahead of a tough reelection battle next year.

She's fundraised off the swirling redistricting controversy, hosted Texas Democrats fleeing Republican gerrymandering and drew kudos from hard-left New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani.

“Battling Donald Trump and a MAGA movement with no regard for the law or working people requires a politics of courage and fight,” Mamdani said in a statement to POLITICO. “Governor Hochul has time and again defended New Yorkers from the Trump administration and she is once again meeting this moment.”

The governor shrugged off complaints from government watchdogs and newspaper editorial boards who scolded her new-found support for partisan gerrymandering. And she’s reveled in Republican attacks from Reps. Elise Stefanik and Mike Lawler ahead of a bruising reelection battle next year.

Unlike fellow blue state governors like California’s Gavin Newsom and Illinois’ JB Pritzker, who have also pushed to maximize Democratic advantages through redistricting as a response to red-state map making, Hochul is not part of the 2028 presidential chatter.

Her political problems hit closer to home.

Hochul’s consistently middling poll numbers have driven private concerns among Democrats that she will be a drag on crucial down-ballot House races. Her relatively modest 6-point victory over Republican Lee Zeldin three years ago has also generated anxiety within the party that the governor isn't strong enough to win, even in Democratic-dominated New York. And a July Siena College poll found a majority of New York voters prefer someone else to lead the deep blue state next year.

The governor faces a Democratic primary challenge from her estranged lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, who has castigated her for failing to show dynamic leadership in the era of Trump 2.0. Stefanik, a prodigious fundraiser and a Trump ally, is weighing a gubernatorial run and has blasted Hochul as “the worst governor in America.”

A full-throated endorsement of gerrymandering stands to be a lifeline for Hochul and an energizing moment for her party’s base, which is eager to wage a redistricting war.

“There's anger among Democrats, and they wonder why their elected leaders aren’t doing everything they can to fight back,” said Morgan Hook, a Democratic consultant and former staffer to ex-Gov. David Paterson. “Kathy Hochul is out there saying, ‘I’ll do everything I can to fight back — including gerrymandering the shit out of New York.’ It’s refreshing to pretend this isn’t a good-government thing. It’s a political process, not good government. There’s an honesty to it, there’s an authenticity to it.”

Hochul’s rhetoric on redistricting belies the reality that New York won’t have an immediate impact on the blue-state-red-state race to redraw House lines. The governor wants to scrap a quasi-independent commission in charge of New York’s redistricting process — erasing a decade-old reform. Disbanding the panel, though, can’t come without altering the state constitution, which also prohibits partisan gerrymandering. The earliest an amendment can be put before voters is in 2027, and there’s no guarantee New Yorkers will approve it.

Some Democrats grumble that Hochul’s redistricting effort hasn’t amounted to tangible, immediate action that would help win back control of the closely divided House in 2026.

“It’s worse than performative, it highlights how ineffectual she is,” said one New York Democratic official, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about the dynamic. “It’s a lot of rhetoric with no plan of action at a time when critical leadership is needed. She’s ready with a press release.”

Hochul’s narrow 2022 victory came with Republican success in crucial House races on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley, prompting former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to blame the governor’s threadbare coattails for Democrats’ poor showing. Since then Hochul has sought to build up the state Democratic Committee in order to boost down-ballot candidates ahead of her own campaign next year.

She has also consulted with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat, on redistricting. Jeffries this week praised blue state governors who have responded forcefully to Texas’ efforts to gerrymander its political map.

“We’re supposed to unilaterally disarm? It’s not going to happen,” he told journalist Jessica Yellin on her podcast.

A former House member who represented a deep red pocket of western New York, Hochul held moderate positions in Congress on gun control and illegal immigration. As governor, she pinned blame on the New York GOP delegation after Trump’s megalaw included deep cuts to health care and social services — widening the state’s budget gap by at least $3 billion in the process.

She responded sarcastically when asked about blue state Republicans — including her nemesis Lawler — endangered by a new redistricting round.

“I feel really sad,” Hochul deadpanned.

Lawler, who bowed out of the governor’s race this year to run for reelection in his swing House district, wrote on X that her “political ineptitude lost so many congressional seats in 2022 it gave Republicans control of the House.”

The governor’s sharp-edged partisanship on redistricting is in contrast to her otherwise moderate positions on taxes and spending. She has resisted calls from left-flank Democrats to raise taxes on rich people. And Hochul is yet to endorse Mamdani, a democratic socialist whose June primary victory over Andrew Cuomo stunned the New York political world.

A push to draw Democratic friendly House seats is an easier way for Hochul to secure support from the political left as she otherwise faces pressure next year to preserve government spending and hike taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers — a move that would alienate many donors.

“What people are looking for is a fight back,” Working Families Party Co-Director Jasmine Gripper said. “Republicans are testing the boundaries and rewriting the norms. There’s a frustration that Democrats are sticking to the status quo and feeling irrelevant. What people are most excited for is signs of a fight back.”

Hochul has also cast the battle as a generational fight for American democracy, an argument that runs counter to the complaints of non-partisan watchdog groups and editorial boards that have long decried partisan redistricting. Many of those organizations and newspapers have seen their clout wane in the years since New York voters approved a constitutional amendment to outlaw gerrymandering and put the process in the hands of a commission, not state lawmakers.

“We’re standing up now because this could have a generational impact on the balance of power in our state and our U.S. Capitol that will unleash incredible harm,” Hochul told reporters this week.

“I’m not going to let them change the rules of the game in the middle of a 10-year cycle just because Donald Trump told them too,” she added. “I encourage everyone who cares about democracy in the long run to stand shoulder to shoulder with us.”

New York was among the Democratic-led states that embraced redistricting reform meant to take the legislative map-making out of the smoke-filled room. The changes were heralded by good-government advocates who prodded then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo to put his political weight behind the amendment.

Trump’s election in 2016 and a perpetually closely divided House has altered the calculus in redistricting. Watchdog groups — who supported prior Democratic efforts for non-partisan map drawing — have condemned the blue state gerrymandering plans, drawing opprobrium from the left.

Reinvent Albany, a government reform organization, is one of them.

“We got lots and lots of social media hate from people who say they’re staunch Democrats,” said John Kaehny, that group’s executive director. “That normally doesn’t happen. The governor may be right that it’s a popular position. People are angry, mad, sad about the mauling of democracy that’s happening under the Trump administration and they want to hear fighting words.”

Hochul’s political allies acknowledge the party’s base wants an aggressive response to red state redistricting. Yet ambivalence over the long-term consequences of carving up states to maximize power in Washington remains.

“I don’t think it enhances peoples’ confidence in democracy,” said New York Democratic Chair Jay Jacobs. “Sometimes you have to do things you’d rather not want to do, but you have to live in the real world, not a fantasy world.”