The buses started arriving at the State Capitol by late morning on Wednesday, from scattered locations mostly across New York City, carrying people of different ages and circumstances, all driven by the same impulse: to tell Gov. Kathy Hochul to tax the rich.
There were Eric Mersmann, 47, and his three children, making their first venture into direct advocacy. There was Dave Stess, 34, who internalized the “tax the rich” mantra as he campaigned for Zohran Mamdani last year. And Micah, a 13-year-old from Brooklyn, skipped his eighth-grade classes and came with his father to serve as a captain on one of the nine buses that left the Barclays Center before dawn.
In all, about 1,500 people from across the state filled the old Washington Avenue Armory in Albany, N.Y., where a succession of union organizers, democratic socialist elected officials and Mamdani fans fired up the crowd before a march to the State Capitol.
The ambitions for Wednesday’s event had heightened dramatically since Mr. Mamdani was elected mayor in November.
Armed with the Mamdani campaign’s database of more than 100,000 volunteers, the event organizer, Our Time for an Affordable NYC, had envisioned an event headlined by the mayor and his allies, like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, with even more people in attendance. The thinking was that it would come at a moment of maximum leverage as Ms. Hochul, who has steadfastly opposed tax increases, was fending off a leftist challenger, Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, in the Democratic primary for governor.
But weeks before the gathering, Mr. Mamdani endorsed Ms. Hochul, Mr. Delgado dropped out of the race and the mayor decided to skip the rally.
Even so, speakers invoked Mr. Mamdani’s victory as evidence that a more progressive vision for the state was possible. Recent polling from Siena University found that nearly two in three voters across the state favored making child care universal and also backed increasing taxes on those earning more than $1 million a year.
The speakers took turns bashing Ms. Hochul’s reluctance to raise taxes. She has said often that she worries that such a move would hurt the state’s business climate. That was not a concern of the attendees on Wednesday.
“New York is the wealth capital of the country,” said Rafaella Abeo, a local organizer with the United Auto Workers. “We can also be the state that leads the nation in economic justice. The money is here. The question is, Governor Hochul: Do you have the courage to collect it?”
Ms. Hochul, who was in New York City on Wednesday, has committed billions of dollars to expanding child care and supporting city services. Her office declined to comment on the rally.
Mr. Mamdani is still hopeful that the governor can be persuaded that increasing the corporate tax rate and the income tax rate on people making more than $1 million is the best way to pay for his ambitious agenda.
The mayor has said these increases are essential to fixing the city’s $5.4 billion budget hole, and has proposed raising city property taxes as an undesirable option if the governor declines to raise taxes on corporations and high earners.
Unlike those tax increases, the pain of a property tax increase would be spread across varying income brackets.
For Mr. Mamdani, staying in Ms. Hochul’s good graces seemed to take precedence over standing with his ideological allies in his old stomping ground of Albany, where he served three terms in the State Assembly.
“My not attending one event does not change in any way the strength in which I believe this,” Mr. Mamdani said on Wednesday at an unrelated news conference in New York City.
Despite their disappointment about the mayor’s absence, the organizers recognized that their visit to the Capitol had given their most engaged supporters a vehicle to replicate the excitement surrounding Mr. Mamdani’s campaign — and a cause to rally around.
“If want a better world and more fair politics, who am I to expect that someone else is going to show up at 5 a.m. to get on this bus?” said Mr. Stess, who was visiting Albany for the first time.
Like Mr. Stess, Micah also volunteered for Mr. Mamdani’s campaign, joining the effort in October, often working with his friends or his parents to canvass across Brooklyn. (Micah’s father, Andrew Blum, asked that his last name not be used.) Phone banking was a favorite campaign activity, and Micah recounted the satisfaction of finding a ride for a 90-something-year-old voter on Election Day.
“Even though I don’t have much experience, I know something: We need to keep going,” the teenager said.
Mr. Mersmann, wearing a bumblebee-yellow rain jacket as he stood in the snow, his 7-year-old and 5-year-old twins clamoring for attention, said Mr. Mamdani’s mayoral victory had inspired him. He believes that now is the time to expand on the mayor’s successes and press for the policies that animated his campaign. Child care needs to be universal, he said, and “the way we pay for that is by taxing the wealthy.”
After the rally, Mr. Mersmann brought his family to the State Capitol’s historic War Room, which had been transformed into a playroom for the children of rally attendees.
As the children romped, speakers addressed their parents about Ms. Hochul’s recent commitment to spend close to $2 billion to expand child care in New York City.
Gustavo Gordillo, one of the leaders of the Democratic Socialists of America’s local chapter, said that he viewed the governor’s reluctance to raise taxes as tantamount to supporting President Trump.
“The governor considers herself somewhat who fights Trump,” Mr. Gordillo said earlier at the rally. “But Kathy Hochul’s economic inaction in the face of Trump tax cuts is nothing short of support for Trump’s agenda.”
At the Capitol, one of Mr. Mersmann’s children also seemed to have had enough. Running into his arms, the child protested, “It’s never going to be done.”
Jeffery C. Mays contributed reporting.
Benjamin Oreskes is a reporter covering New York State politics and government for The Times.
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