POLITICS: Gov. Hochul flip-flops her governing principles to accommodate Mayor-elect Mamdani’s agenda

The news was shocking, yet also so familiar that I’ve adopted a rote reaction.

It goes like this: Does Gov. Hochul actually have any governing principles, or is she just making it up as she goes along?

That was my thought Friday when reports emerged that Hochul is suddenly, as The Post put it, “open to raising taxes on NY corporations to fund socialist Zohran Mamdani’s freebies.”

Holy flip-flop!

Wait, is this really the same Hochul who said absolutely no to those same tax hikes in June?

“I’m not raising taxes at a time where affordability is the big issue,” she said back then, on television no less.

That was a week before the Democratic Party’s mayoral primary, and Mamdani looked like a sure loser to Andrew Cuomo.

Sensing as much, Hochul shot down Mamdani’s plan to raise income taxes on wealthy city residents by 2 percentage points and hike the corporate rate from 7.25% to 11.5%.

She also refused to endorse him or anyone else in the big field.

Her stance seemingly reflected the hard lessons she and others in Albany had learned.

When your state is a leader in population out-migration to other states because of sky-high taxes, rampant crime and excessive government spending, anyone with half a brain could see there was no future in following the same course.

Hochul’s response to the Mamdani plan got right to those points.

“I don’t want to lose any more people to Palm Beach,” she said without apparent hesitation.

“We’ve lost enough. Let’s be smart about this.”

That’s a straightforward stance, and she left herself no wiggle room.

‘Back of the napkin’

The wiggle has suddenly emerged now that Mamdani is mayor-elect.

The timing is a reminder that pols often see Friday as the best time to leak news they hope few people will notice.

The use of aides who speak anonymously is another way to downplay a bad news dump, which this clearly was.

“There have been back of the napkin style discussions about how to increase the corporate tax rate,” Politico reporters wrote Friday.

They cited anonymous sources in saying that Hochul is facing left-flank pressure to raise taxes next year as a way to help pay for Mandani’s raft of free this and free that.

In effect, the sources are admitting that the governor is caving in to that pressure, which probably means it’s coming from the Legislature and the radical leftists who make up the core Mamdani voters.

The eat-the-rich, anti-business crowd will be delighted that the governor has caved.

But to those New Yorkers who foolishly believed her no-new-taxes vow, she’s broken yet another pledge on a fundamental issue, and that’s hardly admirable.

Indeed, she can’t seriously claim she’s concerned about the exorbitant cost of living in New York while also raising broad-based taxes that will ultimately filter through the entire economy.

That’s how New York got in the mess in the first place.

Yet Hochul has obviously changed her mind since June, and no doubt the switch is based on a political calculation she has made.

She saw how Mamdani won both the primary and the general election by boosting turnout in the five boroughs with his tax-and-spend agenda.

She seems to believe it will work for her, too.

The catch is that state-wide voters are far more moderate than those in the five boroughs, and she might have forgotten that Mamdani won just over 50 percent of the voters in a multi-candidate field, and that more than 1 million New Yorkers backed someone else.

US’ ‘worst governor’

And when it comes to campaign charisma, Hochul is no Mamdani.

Is she also planning to follow him and betray Israel?

Already her tax gamble seems questionable given that she faces a tough re-election campaign.

Her pact with Mamdani offers a big fat target for Republicans planning to run against her next year.

Upstate Rep. Elise Stefanik announced her candidacy and came out of the gate swinging, calling Hochul “America’s worst governor.”

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman is also testing the waters.

New York’s exorbitantly high taxes are certain to be a target no matter which of the two secures the GOP nomination.

To see how out-of-control New York government is, consider that the current state budget is a gargantuan $254 billion, which is $100 billion higher than just a decade ago.

Florida, which has more people than New York, manages to get by on $117 billion.

State spending was a focus in Hochul’s 2022 campaign, where GOP challenger Lee Zeldin ran heavily on soaring crime and New York’s reputation for being among the nation’s top tax states.

Zeldin almost pulled off an upset, but even though he lost by 5 points, the GOP flipped three House seats, which helped the party seize control from Democrats.

That led then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi to blast Hochul’s campaign as inept, with the governor blaming an out-of-state consultant.

This time, Hochul’s opponent will be able to show a clear pattern of her making no-tax pledges, and then doing a 180-reversal.

Recall that before last year’s general election, she paused her plan for Manhattan congestion pricing to help protect suburban House Democrats in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, because the tax on drivers was extremely unpopular.

Yet as soon as the votes were counted, Hochul ended her “pause” and imposed a $9-a-day tax on cars entering Midtown, the cost-of-living concern be damned.

Hidden in plain sight

She’s doing something similar now with a ban on gas stove hookups in new homes.

It was supposed to start in January for new buildings up to seven stories, and then for all buildings in 2029, but state lawyers agreed to a delay during a court challenge to the expensive ban.

Stefanik smells a rat and insisted that the voluntary delay “is a cynical political ‘pause’ so she can screw New Yorkers with higher prices after the election.”

Something of an affirmation comes from an unlikely source —environmentalists.

They are furious at Hochul, saying what she used to say: that the ban was necessary to reduce deadly emissions.

The pattern is so obvious that New Yorkers would be wise to assume that additional taxes, fees and far-left measures are waiting in the wings and would be unveiled if Hochul wins again.

Her penchant for trying to hide the ball is a very odd strategy in an era when most voters prize authenticity above all else.

Across the spectrum, from Donald Trump to Mamdani, a common thread of the victors is their ability to persuade voters that what you see is what you get.

No one can seriously argue that is true of Hochul.

The one consistency in her elective career is that what you see today won’t be what you’ll get tomorrow.

Like a weather vane, her positions tell you only which way the wind is blowing now.

It’s the business she’s chosen.