Who Is Kathy Hochul? NY governor first woman to win full term

Gov. Kathy Hochul nailed down a historic full term as New York's first elected female governor Tuesday, beating out Rep. Lee Zeldin in what was a more decisive Democratic win than some expected.

Political experts would tell you Hochul is not one to back away from a challenge.

And she got one in Zeldin, a Long Island congressman who made crime and economy pillars of his campaign strategy, which resonated with residents and delivered Zeldin a late surge in polling in the weeks leading up the election.

But Hochul prevailed in the end with a message combining concerns on the democratic process and national fears about waning abortion rights. In the last weeks before the election, she pivoted toward crime, vowing to keep New Yorkers safe.

With 94% of districts reporting Wednesday, Hochul defeated Zeldin with just over 52% of the vote.

Her win was likely bolstered by New York’s 2-to-1 voter enrollment ratio in favor of Democrats.

“I’m not here to make history,” she said in her victory speech from Manhattan Tuesday. “I’m here to make a difference.”

Here’s what to know about Hochul, who came by her role unexpectedly in 2021 but will now serve her first full term as New York’s first female governor.

She’s a Buffalo native

Hochul, 64, often notes her working class upbringing at press events.

She was raised in the Buffalo area as one of six children born to an Irish Catholic family. Her father was a steel worker who took college classes at night and started his married life living in a trailer, according to a Father’s Day note Hochul posted on Facebook in 2019.

Hochul wins first elected term:Hochul holds off Zeldin to become NY's first woman elected governor

While attending Syracuse University, where she led a boycott against the college bookstore because of its high prices and campaigned for the university to name a new arena after Ernie Davis, the renowned Syracuse football player who died of leukemia. The arena eventually became the Carrier Dome, and then the JMA Wireless Dome.

Hochul went on to law school and then Capitol Hill, working for former U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who represented New York in the Senate for over two decades.

In the early 1990s, she and her husband, William Hochul, a lawyer who eventually served as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York, returned to the Buffalo area to raise their children.

She weathered tough political odds

After serving on her local town board in Hamburg, a suburb of Buffalo, and as Erie County Clerk, Hochul took on a high-profile political challenge that many saw as impossible.

In 2011, she ran in a special election for a congressional seat in a Republican-leaning district encompassing much of the area between Buffalo and Rochester following the abrupt resignation of Republican Rep. Chris Lee.

Republican Jane Corwin was initially heavily favored to win the seat, but Hochul pulled off an upset victory, winning 47% of the vote to Corwin’s 43% (with third party candidates taking a total of 10% of the vote.)

Hochul served in the seat until 2012, when she lost to Republican Chris Collins after the district was redrawn and renamed the 27th congressional District.

She’s a champion for women’s rights, abortion

Hochul has spoken out about her grandmother being a domestic violence survivor and partnered with her mother and aunt in establishing the Kathleen Mary House, a transitional home for victims of domestic violence.

As lieutenant governor under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2015 − a role she held for seven years − Hochul touted the “Enough is Enough” sexual assault prevention program on college campuses, which required schools to provide amnesty to students if they reported sexual assault on campus and expanded student access to law enforcement.

Hochul's first year, campaign:Abortion rights champion as concern over crime is growing: What to know about Kathy Hochul

When Cuomo was embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal of his own in early 2021, Hochul initially said little to address the accusations. She spoke on the issue in August 2021, when Cuomo resigned following the publication of a report on the allegations against him from the Attorney General’s office.

“The AG’s investigation has documented repulsive & unlawful behavior by the Governor towards multiple women,” Hochul said at the time. “Sexual harassment is unacceptable in any workplace.”

As governor, she emerged as a protector and standard-bearer for women’s rights this summer, when a landmark Supreme Court ruling struck down the 1973 Roe. v. Wade decision, which had established a Constitutional right to abortion.

“As a woman, this is personal,” she said in May, when a draft decision on Roe was leaked. “This is something that we have fought against for my entire life."

Guns a major piece of her crime agenda

As governor, Hochul has focused crime fighting efforts on cracking down on firearms.

Police agencies have seized hundreds of ghost guns, or privately manufactured firearms, in the past year, with Hochul signing legislation in Oct. 2021 that criminalized the possession of unfinished parts that could be fashioned into a functional weapon.

In May of this year, a gunman opened fire on a Buffalo supermarket, killing 10 shoppers. The following month, the Supreme Court struck down a portion of New York’s gun law that allowed the state to determine whether an individual had “proper cause” to carry a concealed gun in public.

In response to these events, Hochul signed a series of executive orders and bills that, among other measures, increased the use of New York’s red flag laws, raised the legal age to buy a semiautomatic rifle from 18 to 21 and made it illegal to carry a firearm in an array of public spaces.

While parts of these laws are embroiled in court challenges, Hochul has pointed to her work combating gun violence as a major cornerstone of her administration’s crime agenda.

“There is no crime-fighting plan if it doesn’t include guns, illegal guns,” she said in a gubernatorial debate against Zeldin on Oct. 25. “(I’m) very much focused on public safety and getting more and more illegal guns off the streets.”

This article originally appeared on New York State Team: Who Is Kathy Hochul? NY governor first woman to win full term