Lieutenant-governor is a rotten job, but it’s still sad that Gov. Kathy Hochul opted for former City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams as her latest No. 2.
Of course, Hochul’s first pick had to quit amid a corruption scandal, while her second is now running against her in the coming primary, so maybe her new running mate will be her best choice yet.
Yet Adams has a thin political resumé; a few undistinguished years on the council followed by a speakership where she let the hard left walk all over her.
Then again, several ambitious Gen X politicians rejected Hochul’s entreaties; insiders say that septuagenarian Rep. Nydia Velázquez also turned down the post.
Who can blame them? Unless the gov dies or quits, the LG is a thankless position, typically a political career-ender: Your only duty is to not steal any of the big dog’s limelight, while somehow showing that the governor cares about some community that he or she doesn’t come from.
So perhaps Adrienne Adams is a perfect choice for Hochul — she certainly won’t be overshadowed by a pol who finished fourth in last year’s Democratic mayoral primary.
Some noses are out of joint: Adams’ record has some Jews worried, while Hispanics in New York politics are feeling shut out everywhere (even though Hochul offerd the LG spot to several Latinos), with many still smarting over state Senate Democrats’ shabby rejection of Judge Hector LaSalle, Hochul’s pick for chief judge of the Court of Appeals in 2023.
Hochul’s chief rival in November, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, rightly called Adams “a pro-criminal, anti-business, tax-and-spend” pick, but the gov is mainly worried about the primary, not the general.
And the left is happy: Adams’ elevation brought with Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s endorsement of the ticket ahead of Friday’s Democratic state convention.
As he wrote in the pages of The Nation, he still means to push Hochul for big tax hikes on “the rich”; he presumably knows he mainly just needs to wait for her to get safely re-elected.
Hochul and Adams will be New York’s first all-female statewide ticket, and also the first grandma duo in Empire State history.
That’s something to cheer — even if it does nothing for everyday New Yorkers squeezed by bloated misgovernment that has the Empire State spiraling ever further downward.
