Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York pressured state legislative leaders on Monday to call off a vote on a bill designed to hobble Republicans’ House majority, frustrating fellow Democrats who were prepared to approve it.
Neither Ms. Hochul nor leaders of the State Senate or Assembly gave any public explanation for the 11th-hour postponement. But in private conversations, the governor told them she was seeking to gain leverage in separate negotiations with President Trump over the future of the state’s new congestion pricing program, according to two officials familiar with the matter.
If lawmakers had followed through, the vote would almost certainly have antagonized Mr. Trump by giving Ms. Hochul the power to delay until November a special election to fill the House seat that will be vacated by Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, Mr. Trump’s chosen U.N. ambassador, when she is confirmed by the Senate. A monthslong vacancy would deprive House Republicans of a crucial vote as they try to muscle Mr. Trump’s legislative agenda through Congress.
Republicans currently control 218 seats in the House, including Ms. Stefanik’s in New York’s North Country, to the Democrats’ 215. (Republicans are expected to pick up two more seats in Florida in special elections in April.)
It was not immediately clear if Mr. Trump had expressed dissatisfaction about the bill to the governor, causing her to call off the vote on the special election timing, or if Ms. Hochul was being strategic by wanting to hold a bargaining chit in their talks about congestion pricing. A spokesman for Ms. Hochul declined to comment.
The governor’s intervention threw the future of the special election proposal into doubt and risked alienating a key ally: Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top House Democrat who had been aggressively lobbying the governor and state lawmakers to adopt it.
But in doing so, it also underscored the magnitude of the stakes as Ms. Hochul attempts to stop Mr. Trump from using federal authority to try to halt the Manhattan tolling program that went into effect last month. The state and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority are counting on the plan to generate crucial revenue to maintain and upgrade the aging transit system.
Mr. Trump renewed his threat to use the federal Department of Transportation to “kill” congestion pricing during an interview with The New York Post over the weekend. The tolling program, which applies to vehicles entering Manhattan below 60th Street, is “destructive” to New York, the president said.
Mr. Trump and Ms. Hochul have spoken several times in recent weeks about the program. Staff members for the two leaders talked last week as well, according to a person familiar with the discussions, with Ms. Hochul’s side arguing that the tolling program was working and providing relevant data. It’s not clear when the two last spoke.
The special election legislation had been progressing on a separate track until it stalled on Monday.
The bill’s passage seemed so assured that Albany Republicans held a news conference earlier on Monday bashing Ms. Hochul and their Democratic counterparts’ maneuvering. Republicans in New York and Washington have denounced the measure as an anti-democratic power grab.
They have threatened to sue to try to stop the change in court, and Representative Mike Lawler, a New York Republican weighing a run for governor, has called on the Justice Department to open a racketeering investigation into the Democrats.
“This is all about thwarting President Donald Trump’s agenda in Congress,” Robert Ortt, the leader of the Republican minority in the State Senate, said on Monday, adding that the move deprived Ms. Stefanik’s constituents of representation and was hypocritical.
Later in the day, Mr. Ortt took a victory lap, saying in a statement that Democrats’ “disgraceful scheme was exposed, and now their anti-democratic power grab has been halted.”
Democrats, though, insisted the effort was not dead. Andy Eichar, a spokesman for Mr. Jeffries, said in a statement that the special election change “remains under consideration by the Legislature.”
Ms. Stefanik’s district is one of the largest in the state, running from north of Albany to the Canadian border, and has been considered safely Republican in recent years. But Democrats plan to try to compete for it.
Even as they debated stalling the election, Democrats wasted no time coalescing behind a candidate to replace Ms. Stefanik. Last week, party leaders in the 15 counties that make up the district unanimously endorsed Blake Gendebien, a dairy farmer from near St. Lawrence County along the Canadian border, as their nominee.
Republicans, including aides to Mr. Trump and Ms. Stefanik, are still vetting their potential nominee. The finalists include Liz Joy, who ran twice unsuccessfully for a neighboring House district; Chris Tague, a state assemblyman who was himself formerly a dairy farmer; and Daniel G. Stec, a state senator and Navy veteran.
“There is no way that any Democrat beats me in the North Country,” Mr. Stec said.
“If anything, holding this special on the same day as a general election, with the higher turnout, more likely it will be a larger victory for Republicans,” Mr. Stec added.
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