A western New Yorker with centrist Democratic roots, she is described as both tough and disarming. She is also relatively untested.
As Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo barreled into the 2018 primary season, buffeted by criticisms from the increasingly powerful left wing of the Democratic Party, his team privately worried that he needed a more progressive running mate or a person of color with deeper ties downstate.
Publicly, he suggested that Kathy Hochul, his moderate lieutenant from Buffalo, might be better suited running for Congress. His camp floated potential replacements, including the current state attorney general, Letitia James.
Those efforts were not lost on Ms. Hochul — indeed, his allies asked her multiple times if she would consider pulling out of the race, an adviser to Ms. Hochul said. But she ran and won re-election anyway, giving no public indication of any daylight with the governor.
Three years later, it is Mr. Cuomo who is being replaced by Ms. Hochul, as she moves to become New York’s first female governor after he resigned in disgrace. But the tensions over the 2018 Democratic ticket remain a revealing episode, illustrating both Ms. Hochul’s strengths and vulnerabilities as she takes on one of the most consequential and challenging jobs in American politics.
Behind her mild-mannered style, zeal for meeting voters and earnest tweets in support of “#BicycleDay” and “#NationalCerealDay,” she is a shrewd politician who has been underestimated at pivotal moments, her allies say.
But when she takes office on Aug. 24, she will also be the first governor in more than a century to have deep roots in western New York, in a state where the political center of gravity is the more liberal environs of New York City. Cognizant of that, Ms. Hochul on Sunday said she wants her lieutenant governor to be from New York City.
And while she championed the Cuomo administration’s record — which included some major progressive achievements despite Mr. Cuomo’s frequent clashes with the left — earlier in her career she was a relatively conservative Democrat.
As the Erie County clerk in 2007, she was a vocal opponent of efforts to offer driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. And, elected as a member of Congress in 2011, she got an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association, and received the organization’s endorsement in 2012 against a Republican opponent for, among other things, supporting policies that made it easier to obtain a gun.
Though Ms. Hochul’s positions on both issues have changed, and though she has championed top Democratic priorities like abortion rights, same-sex marriage and raising the minimum wage, her political record has made some leaders of the party’s left wing wary.
To most New Yorkers, polling suggests, she is an unknown quantity, whose approaches to a range of major policy challenges — from dealing with a resurgent pandemic to reviving the state’s economy to reducing a spike in gun violence — are as yet unclear.
Equally untested is whether her experience — a longtime local politician, she spent less than two years in Congress and never had a close working relationship with Mr. Cuomo — has equipped her to run a government with a budget of $212 billion and about 130,000 employees in the executive branch alone.
Publicly and privately, Ms. Hochul has made clear she started preparing well before Mr. Cuomo announced his resignation. And for now, Democratic lawmakers — aware of the challenges at hand, desperate to move on from the turbulent Cuomo reign and eager to show the state can function without him — appear inclined to give her significant early leeway.
If she succeeds, people who know her say, it will be because of the qualities that make her the un-Cuomo: a disarming personality, skill in cultivating relationships and willingness to seek consensus.
“Probably the best way to describe her, and it means something in today’s climate: She’s normal,” said Peter T. King, a former Republican representative who served with her in Congress.
Ms. Hochul, 62, was raised in the town of Hamburg, outside of Buffalo, one of six children in a civically minded family.
Her parents lived for a time in a trailer while her father worked at Bethlehem Steel at night and attended college by day. He later joined and ultimately ran an information technology company called Computer Task Group, which now operates on several continents. Her mother co-founded a home for victims of domestic abuse named after her own mother, a survivor of abuse.
After graduating from Syracuse University and earning her law degree from Catholic University of America, Ms. Hochul worked on Capitol Hill for Representative John J. LaFalce and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
She married William J. Hochul Jr. — a future U.S. attorney — in 1984, and they had two children. He now works as the general counsel at Delaware North, a hospitality company that has substantial business interests before the state, including a gambling facility and racetrack near the Finger Lakes and retail services at Niagara Falls State Park.
An adviser to Ms. Hochul said Mr. Hochul has removed himself from any of Delaware North’s New York business.
Ms. Hochul said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that she has reached out to outside ethics experts to come up with an “ironclad” policy regarding how she should recuse herself from decisions relating to Delaware North.
But Mr. Hochul’s job has raised concerns among good-government groups. “There’s no independent authority to confirm that it’s being complied with and that it’s being fully reported on,” John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany, said of Ms. Hochul’s recusal policy.
Ms. Hochul’s time in local politics began in 1994: After returning to the Buffalo area, she served more than a decade on the Hamburg Town Board.
Thomas Quatroche Jr., who served with Ms. Hochul, recalled her helping to defeat Walmart’s plans for a store near a residential area of the village. Several years later, he said, Walmart returned with new plans for a store miles away from the village center, which Ms. Hochul supported — signs of both her interest in political compromise and pro-business instincts.
“She was good at listening to residents’ concerns and fighting for them, but also working with developers, because we needed the development,” Mr. Quatroche said.
Ms. Hochul later became Erie County clerk, initially appointed by Gov. Eliot Spitzer and then winning election outright — a now-controversial chapter in her career.
In discussing her views on gun control in 2012, she said she was a “staunch advocate for sportsmen.” And she sharply criticized Mr. Spitzer’s plan to make driver’s licenses available to undocumented immigrants in 2007, a view she has attributed to terrorism concerns. That was a position held by many officials in the state and some Democrats around the country, but it was to the right of the Democratic governor.
She wrote a 2019 op-ed explaining why she changed her mind on the matter, but those issues have been political liabilities in both of her runs for lieutenant governor.
After Representative Christopher Lee resigned from Congress in a 2011 scandal, Ms. Hochul made a long-shot bid for the conservative seat.
“Nobody believed that a Democrat could win that district, except for one person,” said former Representative Steve Israel of New York, who then chaired the House Democratic campaign arm. “That was Kathy Hochul.”
Ms. Hochul successfully made the race a referendum on a Republican plan to control Medicare spending. She narrowly won and momentarily rocketed to Democratic stardom.
In Washington, she lived with several lawmakers including Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat who remains a friend. Ms. Maloney said Ms. Hochul has built strong ties to party officials and community leaders downstate.
“You will see less of commands and more of a collaborative effort,” Ms. Maloney said, when asked about Ms. Hochul’s governing style. “Also, she’s tough as nails.”
Ms. Hochul served on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Committee on Homeland Security, striking up a collegial relationship with Mr. King, then the brash Republican chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. Mr. King recalled her as thoughtful and friendly but not an overly familiar backslapper.
“She didn’t have a quick partisan view,” he said.
But Ms. Hochul’s ability to connect with Republicans — indeed, she took a number of more conservative votes in Congress — highlights why many on the left have long been skeptical of her.
Though she received the backing of the N.R.A. during her time in Congress, as a candidate for lieutenant governor, Ms. Hochul was critical of the organization, blasting its response to the Sandy Hook massacre. She supported Mr. Cuomo’s major gun control initiative, and as both the party and the Cuomo administration moved left, she did too. Allies today liken her politics to that of President Biden, who has embraced big-ticket progressive priorities but has many centrist instincts.
Meredith Kelly, a Hochul adviser, said that the incoming governor had a long track record on issues designed to help working people and families. Ms. Hochul has indicated she intends to lay out a more detailed agenda in the coming few weeks, and is already focusing on the pandemic and its educational and economic fallout. On Sunday, she said that she would prioritize releasing pandemic-related relief funds to renters, landlords and undocumented immigrants.
“Voters from every part of New York have already put their faith in Kathy Hochul by electing her — twice — and it’s clear that she shares New Yorkers’ values on a vast range of issues,” Ms. Kelly said, citing Ms. Hochul’s support for paid family leave and backing of “one of the strictest gun violence prevention laws in the country.”
Sochie Nnaemeka, the director of the New York Working Families Party, said that many progressives are thrilled at the prospect of the state’s first female governor. But she noted that Ms. Hochul “has not lived out her life in government as a progressive champion.”
“We would encourage or support her in finishing out Cuomo’s term with her eyes fully focused on those most impacted by the crisis we’re still living,” she said.
In 2014, Mr. Cuomo was looking for geographic diversity, and he named Ms. Hochul — who, after Congress, served briefly as vice president of government relations at M&T Bank Corporation — as his running mate.
As lieutenant governor, Ms. Hochul was iced out of the insular Mr. Cuomo’s inner circle, and she spent much of her time on the road, promoting economic development, championing other Democratic candidates and building her own statewide network.
She had serious roles, including chairing the task force on heroin and opioid addiction, which constructed a framework for how the state could battle the opioid crisis.
Many other responsibilities were ceremonial, in a job that historically has limited power.
“She’s not the one to make the decision,” said Assemblywoman Catalina Cruz of Queens. “She just has to sell it once it’s done.”
But Ms. Cruz also made a point of speaking warmly about Ms. Hochul, like seemingly every other New York Democrat these days, along with many Republicans. It’s a reflection of both the relationships she has cultivated and the sense that she will be a more constructive governing partner than the domineering Mr. Cuomo was.
“They need Kathy Hochul to succeed,” Mr. Israel said. “It’s in their own interests.”
Dan Higgins in Buffalo and Jill Terreri Ramos in New York contributed reporting.