We're back with our weekly politics newsletter—this time, we're focused on our new mayor's first 100 days. To get our weekly First 100 Days newsletters delivered straight to your inbox, sign up here.
Will Mayor Zohran Mamdani's soaring campaign promises to make New York City more affordable get past a state government led by Governor Kathy Hochul?
This has been the most salient question that has dogged the 34-year-old democratic socialist, even after he handily won both the Democratic primary and the November general election.
How would Hochul, who has consistently refused to raise any taxes, react to Mamdani's core campaign promises that require billions of dollars in state funding—making MTA buses fast and free, and providing universal child care for all New Yorkers who want it? Would she attempt to water them down? Would she beg them off and blame a hostile Trump administration?
On Thursday afternoon, we got a partial answer, as Governor Hochul hitched her political future to Mamdani's, announcing that she was fully embracing the mayor's universal child care program. Phase one: $1.7 billion in proposed new funding, including $500 million for the first two years of Mamdani's plan to provide day care for two-year-olds, another $100 million to patch up 3-K enrollment in New York City, and hundreds of millions more to make universal pre-K a reality across the entire state by 2028, all of which would need to be approved as part of the state's budget process.
"This is the day that everything changes," Hochul told the crowd at the Flatbush YMCA, while standing next to the mayor. "Back in November, fresh off the election, we sat down—we had many conversations leading up to this. But we started talking about how we make this vision become reality, no longer a dream. I told him that whatever the City was ready to deliver, I would be his partner 100 percent of the way."
The event felt more like a joint political rally than a policy announcement, with Hochul referring to "us" several times ("The era of empty promises ends with the two of us, right here, right now") and repeatedly praising Mamdani's prescience and his skill. "First week on the job, but you'd never know it," Hochul said.
When Mamdani took the podium, he thanked Hochul for her partnership and her "leadership," and counted her among the wave of forward-thinking, unflinching public servants pushing for systemic change—quite the compliment when you consider Hochul's record as governor, in which she has repeatedly tried to stay the middle, small-c conservative course.
"Let us never forget that victories like these are political choices," Mamdani said. "Governor Hochul and I have made the choice to deliver for working families, we have made the choice to take steps to provide universal child care…And today, day eight, shows exactly what that politics looks like."
Under the governor's proposal, New York City would get $100 million to fill the gaps in the current 3-K program, and $500 million in total to fund the first two years of Mamdani's 2-Care For All initiative. The state would allocate $75 million for the first year of the program, which will serve 2,000 children in lower-income neighborhoods of the city. It would then scale up in its second year, at a cost of $425 million. Hochul said that the rest of the $1.7 billion would go toward expanding child care vouchers across New York state, and making universal free pre-K statewide. Mamdani did not say how many kids would be enrolled in 2-Care in the second year of the program, but said that the entire program would be universal by the final year of his term.
The Hochul/Mamdani alliance is happening much faster than the agreement between Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo, who spent nearly a year fighting over how to implement de Blasio's pre-K program back in 2014. But it appears that Hochul is taking a page from her predecessor when it comes to funding it—she's not raising taxes as Mamdani had proposed, and is instead looking for cash that already exists in the budget.
When the governor was asked about higher taxes, and how she would pay for these programs, she answered with the confidence of someone overseeing a state with more than $30 billion in reserves, and with record-high Wall Street bonus tax revenue coming in.
"We're announcing our budget on the 20th of January, so you'll be able to see the sources of our revenues. I will say this, that we have managed our finances quite well, we have been smart about setting aside money to be able to fund some of my ambitious plans—but within our means," Hochul said. "We feel very confident that we can afford this program." (Notably, the budget hawks from the Citizens Budget Commission seem fine with this plan. CBC President Andrew Rein said in a statement that it was "great to see," and that the "the state should fund this sustainably, within its existing budget plan, to ensure that New Yorkers in need have reliable access into the future.")
And as for the more than $3 billion in federal child care funding that President Trump is attempting to withhold from New York, the governor said she was going to sue over it, and sounded confident she would prevail: "We've been successful in court before."