About 1,500 people rallied in Albany to push a so-far-steadfast Gov. Kathy Hochul to support a tax hike on the wealthiest New Yorkers, a marquee campaign push for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and routinely backed by the Democratic majorities in the state Senate and Assembly.
But Mamdani wasn’t there, and attendance fell well short of what organizers had hoped for as the movement finds itself in a tough spot.
Reports surfaced this month that the mayor was sitting out the event out of concern that his appearance could undermine the relatively firm footing he has found in his relationship with Hochul amid threats to hike property taxes in the city if she does not get behind his push for a tax hike.
Mamdani’s progressive allies gave the mayor a pass as they marched with supporters from the Washington Avenue Armory to the State Capitol down the street.
“The mayor supports taxing the rich and he has said that very publicly,” said state Sen. Jabari Brisport.
“I’m sure he had his own calculus that he had to do,” state Assemblymember Emily Gallagher said.
Mamdani said Wednesday at an unrelated event that no one should read into his absence.
“My not attending one event does not change in any way the strength with which I believe, the urgency with which I believe, we have to respond to it,” he said.
But it left some of his strongest legislative supporters — including Gallagher, Brisport and New York City Council member Chi Ossé — to be the government face of the event, which saw banks of empty seats scattered around an otherwise enthusiastic crowd.
“Listen to the people, not your corporate donors. They want a share of New York too, not just the 1%,” Brisport said when asked for his message to Hochul.
But all of the chanting which echoed through the wind tunnel that is Washington Avenue outside the Capitol won’t do much if progressive lawmakers can’t sway a so-far-disinterested governor who has found herself surrounded by relatively good political vibes in February of her second election year.
Hochul’s budget director, Blake Washington, reiterated Wednesday morning in an interview with City & State following a Citizens Budget Commission breakfast that Hochul will only back a tax hike if economic conditions support it. Washington said the state’s fiscal position is “strong.”
“She does not see raising taxes as a box-checking exercise. She sees it as something that must only be done when absolutely necessary,” he said. “There are lots of persuasive people in this dialogue. We get that, too. But the fundamentals have to remain the same: What is our economic climate? Are we still competitive? And that’s the sort of base we start at.”
The enthusiasm from advocates is in part tied to delivering on Mamdani’s push for universal child care. The state Senate and Assembly have signaled they’ll need additional revenue to expand on Hochul’s proposal.
There is concern over the plan’s downstate focus, and members in both houses are backing a pay bump for the child care workforce as the state Senate and Assembly prepare their one-house rebuttals.
“One of the core issues we have is the pay the child care workforce receives,” Gallagher told Spectrum News 1. “It is a minimum-wage job, and many of the people working in child care can’t afford to support their own families.”
Brisport chairs the Children and Families Committee in the state Senate.
“There is a lot we need to do in child care. We should be expanding more parity upstate with additional pilot programs, but workers were completely left out of Hochul’s child care deal,” he said.
As Hochul prepares to play ball with Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie ahead of the April 1 budget deadline — with negotiations typically heating up in the second half of March — Heastie weighed in Wednesday amid Mamdani’s threats over a property tax hike.
“In our one-house, we probably will have revenue raisers, but more importantly — property taxes are a nonstarter,” he said, adding that he is confident an outcome will “help the city.”
Stewart-Cousins told reporters this week that the Senate will again press Hochul on taxes.
“We will continue to push, as we have done before, for progressive taxation,” she said, likewise indicating she believes there is a path forward without “burdening working-class families.”
The Republican minority is unsurprisingly opposed. Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt summed up his argument:
“There will be more New Yorkers in Florida soon than there are in New York, and people are moving to Texas. Maybe we should do what those states are doing,” he said. “We don’t do that. We double down on the very thing that is already chasing people out of this state.”