Make New York Post a Preferred Source Gov. Kathy Hochul holds a press conference in New York City on Nov. 11, 2026. Erik Pendzich/Shutterstock Rosie O’Donnell says last week’s Election Day lurch to the left could prompt her to return to New York from her self-imposed political exile in Ireland.
Meanwhile, billionaire business leader, jobs producer and philanthropist John Catsimatidis says that if New York politics gets any crazier, he’s pulling out of the state entirely.
Getting O’Donnell while losing Catsimatidis — that’s a lousy trade.
But it could happen, because New York’s newly elected Legislature, along with a governor emboldened by her 20-point trouncing of her Republican rival, is set to pursue a slew of far-left initiatives that will leave voters poorer, less safe and less free.
As Catsimatidis said last week at a Gatestone Institute lunch, the left is replacing common sense with nonsense.
Say goodbye to any semblance of a two-party system in Albany: Democrats will have veto-proof majorities in both houses of the Legislature, holding 111 out of the 150 seats in the Assembly and the largest majority in the Senate since 1846.
The Working Families Party, usually a mere ballot-line vehicle for left-wing candidates to grow their vote, has pulled ahead of the expiring Republican Party — with 34 endorsed candidates in the Senate and 65 in the Assembly, the WFP will outnumber the GOP in both chambers come January.
Voices advocating small government, fiscal restraint, self-reliance and pro-growth business policies will be few and faint in Albany.
Meanwhile, the most radical force for change, the Democratic Socialists of America, nearly doubled its legislative ranks, going from nine to 16 members — and they punch way above their weight class.
“You’re going to have the DSA tail wagging the Democratic dog,” says John Faso, a former Republican Assembly minority leader.
And raising taxes, he warns, will be the DSA’s No. 1 priority.
After all, DSA darling Mayor Zohran Mamdani holds his tax-the-rich mantra as an article of faith — and he needs the cash to fund his promised giveaways.
“Foot on the gas, this is the moment,” he urged his DSA comrades post-Election Day.
Don’t count on Gov. Kathy Hochul to slam the brakes.
The outlines of what will happen this coming spring, when each house of the Legislature will propose a state budget, were drawn months ago.
Last year both chambers pressed for boosting state personal income-tax rates for the highest earners, and raising corporate tax rates to 9% or more from the current 7.25%.
On Friday, basking in her blowout victory, the governor made it clear that her tax-hike opposition is a faint memory.
She teased new taxes to support Mamdani’s free-child-care boondoggle — a marked shift from what she told voters before Election Day.
“We have a severe need for something extraordinary,” she said, with Mamdani grinning at her side.
There’s nothing “extraordinary” about the need for child care.
What’s extraordinary is Hochul’s lack of honesty.
Raising taxes is economic suicide for a state that ranks dead last in economic competitiveness, per the Tax Foundation.
A Legislature in touch with reality would be phasing out the income tax to make New York competitive, not hiking it.
Count, too, on powerful support for a favorite of the tax-the-rich crowd, an heir’s tax on inheritances over $250,000.
Even the tiniest bungalow left to the kids will be taxed — on top of the current estate tax, meaning the same money will be taxed twice.
Last spring, 21 state senators and 31 Assembly members lined up as co-sponsors of the heir’s tax bill; soon more will join them.
Higher taxes are hardly the only item on the left’s wish list.
DSA-aligned state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, who chairs the Health Committee, will push for the New York Health Act, a statewide single-payer health care scheme that’s co-sponsored by a majority of the Legislature (even if public-employee unions are sure to resist).
State Sen. Julia Salazar, a DSA member who currently chairs the Crime Victims, Crime & Correction Committee, is a champion of decarceration who will do her utmost to put more criminals on the streets.
She’s sponsored measures that would reduce drug-crime sentences, expand temporary-release programs and drastically extend parole.
She’s also co-sponsoring a bill allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in state elections, under the aegis of their (highly politicized) high school teachers.
It’s an outrage that Salazar, among other leftists, ran unopposed in last week’s elections.
Republicans had a duty to argue against her soft-on-crime foolishness and offer voters an alternative.
They gave it a pass — and now Albany is headed to la-la land.
Business owners, moderates and the few Republicans who remain, you need to mobilize now — and claim the commonsense center.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.
