Robert Miller
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-Bx.) is on an all-out tear against Gov. Kathy Hochul and the entire state Democratic establishment — and he’s not even the only hope for change to come to state government, as a major Republican challenge to Hochul’s re-election in 2026 is building with Rep. Mike Lawlor (R-Hudson Valley).
For months, Torres has stood out, along with Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), as a true progressive who’ll also speak the truth about Israel and its wars of defense against Iran and its proxies.
But he’s been firing on multiple fronts of late.
At a Citizen Budget Commission breakfast last month, Torres ripped New York’s “misgovernance” and insane anti-business climate.
“There are regulations in place that make it impossible to do business . . . and have made it impossible to build,” Torres thundered.
And he went on to slam the Cuomo-Hochul energy policies that are sending electricity costs soaring while leaving state short of the power needed for economic growth.
More, he admitted that Prez-elect Donald Trump achieved what the smug Democratic Socialists only dream of doing — “uniting the white working class in rural America with the black and brown working class in urban America.”
A week later, he turned to crime and public safety, slamming the gov, Mayor Adams and Dem lawmakers as “complicit” in the Ramon Rivera’s alleged “murder of three New Yorkers, who were savagely stabbed to death in a homicidal rampage that took hold in broad daylight.”
“These tragedies are preventable but neither the City nor the State seem to possess the political will to prevent them, despite having the tools to do so,” he wrote in an open letter to Hochul and Adams.
Mind you, the gov and even more so the mayor have called for changes to undo the damage done by “criminal justice reform” and the state’s prolonged refusal to confront the challenge of the dangerously mentally ill roaming free without treatment — but neither has crusaded for real change.
And Hochul keeps claiming to have fixed everything by getting the Legislature to make minor fixes, while Adams touts gains on crime that still don’t have the city back to 2019 levels of safety.
Torres has also lambasted President Biden’s “incompetent” handling of the migrant crisis and dinged Hochul as “the new Joe Biden,” warning on X: “She may be in denial about the depth of her vulnerabilities as a Democratic nominee” given that she polls as less popular in New York than Trump.
Despite some mentioning him as a mayoral candidate next year, Torres has long plainly eyed a run for gov — potentially against Dem-Socialist darling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes (D-Bx.-Queens).
And no matter that AOC’s rote far-leftism would fit perfectly with the Legislature’s lunacy: She’d draw money from across the nation as the new Great Left Hope in the second Trump term.
Nor are those two the only major political talents threatening humdrum Hochul.
Lawler, just re-elected resoundingly, is also gunning hard.
He’s leading the effort to quash Hochul’s “congestion pricing” scheme, and as one of the most bipartisan members of Congress teaming up with Jersey Dem Rep. Josh Gottheimer to block it while also joining GOP reps to bring Trump on board the opposition.
And that’s after he led the Empire State braintrust that got Trump to rethink his support for limits on the SALT deduction.
He’s also called out the madness of the Cuomo-Hochul climate policies far more forthrightly than any Democrat dares.
Hochul by some accounts was hoping for a promotion out of New York had Kamala Harris won; we suppose Trump might yet show some bipartisanship by asking her to serve as, say, ambassador to Ireland.
Either way, it sure seems her days in Albany are numbered: Too many impressive, energetic, young politicians have their eyes on her office — and too many New York voters are sick of her evasive approach to . . . well, to everything.
The 2025 mayoral election will consume the most local political attention in coming months, but don’t take your eyes off the maneuvering for the 2026 gov race.
It’s shaping up to be quite the barn-burner.