At an Election Day eve party at a bowling alley in Williamsburg on Monday night, Gov. Kathy Hochul laid out her dream scenario for the midterms.
The event, headlined by the statewide Democratic ticket, predicted a blue wave of voter unrest that would catapult two New Yorkers to the top of the House and the Senate and provide a check on the second administration of President Donald Trump.
“I cannot wait when I call up Hakeem Jeffries and say, ‘Mr. Speaker, I kind of need a few more billions of dollars for New York,’” Hochul said. “Then I call Chuck Schumer: ‘Mr. Majority Leader, I need a few more billions of dollars for New York State.’”
“Get used to it, America,” added Hochul. “Because we’re in charge.”
Hochul got her wish. Democrats captured Congress in a seismic realignment of the electoral map, gaining at least seven Senate seats and more than two dozen House seats, including a crucial pickup in the New York suburbs, with critical funding for the five boroughs on the line.
Now, there is renewed hope that federal dollars will flow for infrastructure projects like the $16 billion Gateway Program, the Penn Station overhaul and the Second Avenue Subway, and that Republican cuts to health care and food stamps might be softened.
Meanwhile, a new crop of state legislators on the left flank of the party — the Democratic Socialists of America doubled its representation in Albany — is eager to hold the governor’s feet to the fire on signature issues like taxing the rich, expanding childcare and raising the minimum wage.
Grace Mauser, the DSA’s local co-chair, said its contingent in the Legislature and its base will push the governor harder for a progressive income tax and higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy. Hochul thanked Mamdani Tuesday night for his support — and now the democratic socialists want to see her deliver.
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“I’m hopeful that Hochul has seen the energy, the excitement that can come from the masses of people who want and deserve a better government, and she takes those lessons and brings them to Albany, and is braver than she has been in past years in terms of standing up for working class New Yorkers,” Mauser said.
Other leaders of the Democratic party’s left echoed DSA’s demands.
“As soon as we’re done here we’re going right back into the state budget fight,” Jasmine Gripper, the co-executive director of the Working Families Party, told The City Reporter. “We will only accept a budget that is equitable and taxes the ultra-rich so that working families can thrive and children have what they need.”
As voters delivered strong results for Democrats in New York and elsewhere, politicos gathered at the Midtown Hilton for Hochul’s election night party were positively giddy at the prospect of two of their own leading both chambers of Congress.
“Before this night is over, we are going to say the words out loud ‘Speaker Jeffries takes the gavel,’” Sen. Kristen Gillibrand said Tuesday.
The previous night, at the Democratic unity event, Jeffries vowed to use his perch as Speaker to tackle Americans’ high cost of living and hold members of Trump’s cabinet accountable, name-checking Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and vowing to “stop this reckless and costly war of choice over in Iran.”
“Here in New York, and all across the country, we’re gonna run these MAGA extremists out of town,” he said.
House Democrats are musing over how they will use their majority to grill key members of the Trump administration under oath and slash Immigration Customs and Enforcement funding.
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“Everything” is on the table, U.S. Rep. Grace Meng of Queens told The City Reporter. “We have to act fast. This is a mandate, not just a promotion or a change in title, but people want to see Democrats move fast and to hold the administration accountable.”
U.S. Rep.-elect Micah Lasher of Manhattan said that he talks to his predecessor Jerrold Nadler, the top Democrat on the powerful judiciary committee, “every day” about how to use the levers of Congress to reverse the worst of the Trump administration’s impacts on New Yorkers.
“We’re going to have robust oversight powers, and we need to use them, to shine a white hot light on the grift and the graft of this administration.”
For Hochul, Tuesday night was an opportunity to vindicate herself after she was partly blamed for Democrats’ poor showing in the 2022 midterms — the first time she ran at the top of the Democratic ticket — a year that cost state Democrats five House seats and the party its slim House majority.
Hochul spent the last few weeks of the race criss-crossing the state and in New York City touting her record, palling around with left-wing standard-bearers Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and boosting Hudson Valley House candidate Cait Conley.
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