As Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York outlined her priorities for the coming year in her annual State of the State address on Tuesday, she drew upon Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s message of affordability and vowed to fend off attacks from the Trump administration.
The 47-minute, 47-second speech also offered a preview of the goals she will try to meet and the political constituencies she must please as she faces a contested primary and general election this year.
Here are eight takeaways from Ms. Hochul’s fifth State of the State address:
Bills, bills, bills.
No, not the Buffalo ones with helmets — the kind that add to New Yorkers’ financial concerns.
Lowering utility bills will be a key element of Ms. Hochul’s re-election strategy as she fends off accusations from Republicans that the state has become too expensive on her watch.
As part of that effort, she wants to put $50 million toward helping New Yorkers make their homes more efficient. She also proposed a change to auto insurance that would bring down rates by capping payouts for drivers who are breaking the law.
But probably her most transformative proposal was released last week: a pitch to eventually provide free, universally available child care. “This plan will ultimately deliver universal child care for every single family in New York. Full stop,” Ms. Hochul said on Tuesday.
As part of the plan, the state would spend an additional $1.7 billion to expand coverage to 100,000 children in the coming year, bringing the state’s total child care investment to $4.5 billion. Experts say that the cost for a statewide program would be $12 billion to $15 billion.
Mamdani’s agenda is not Hochul’s agenda.
Even as she embraced portions of the affordability agenda of Mr. Mamdani, New York City’s new mayor, Ms. Hochul also underscored the limits of their partnership. She made no mention of Mr. Mamdani’s goal of making the city’s 345 bus routes free, which could cost the state’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority close to $1 billion a year in lost fare revenue.
Such a subsidy would likely require Ms. Hochul to raise taxes, which she has steadfastly opposed.
Ms. Hochul did not mention taxes, or how she would pay for her vision. New Yorkers will get a better sense of how the governor plans to fund her proposals after the budget presentation last week.
No protesting within 25 feet of houses of worship.
Jewish voters have been profoundly divided on a number of fronts, particularly as Mr. Mamdani, a staunch critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, has risen to prominence. Many have expressed unease about their safety amid a rise of antisemitic episodes.
While Mr. Mamdani has said he will defend Jewish New Yorkers from antisemitism, many Jewish residents have not been persuaded and have looked to Ms. Hochul for support.
Ms. Hochul said she intended to support banning protesters from demonstrating within 25 feet of houses of worship and health care facilities. The move comes after a number of recent contentious episodes outside synagogues that have attracted attention.
Her outreach to Jews is not new. But her emphasis on a community that includes many members who feel estranged from New York City’s top leader was notable.
Mr. Mamdani did not applaud Ms. Hochul’s mention of this proposal, and said afterward that he wanted the city’s Law Department to review the legality of the plan before deciding whether he supported it.
State Assemblyman Micah Lasher, a Democrat who has been a proponent of the measure, said that it was “not a cure-all for the antisemitism that we’re seeing with disturbing frequency, but it’s a meaningful step the state can take.”
“This is a proposal that balances the right to exercise free speech with the reasonable goal of ensuring New Yorkers can walk into a shul without having to run a gantlet,” Mr. Lasher added.
Hochul wants to protect children.
The governor has been eager to grapple with how new and fast-changing technologies are seeping into the lives of New Yorkers. Ms. Hochul has banned cellphones in schools and regulated artificial intelligence, among other efforts, to protect New Yorkers — particularly children — from the harms of these technologies.
Her remarks on Tuesday built on this effort. Ms. Hochul called for new privacy standards that would make it harder for strangers to view, tag or message minors on gaming and social media platforms. She also said she wanted to prohibit campaigns from spreading A.I.-generated images of people, including opposing political candidates, without their consent in the 90 days before an election.
New York is going nuclear.
Even as activists champion new wind and solar projects across the state, Ms. Hochul has taken a more cautious stance. Amid warnings about rising costs and reliability challenges, she has angered environmental advocates with her recent moves to permit new natural gas pipelines in the state.
Ms. Hochul on Tuesday suggested that New York would lead “the race to harness safe and reliable advanced nuclear energy to power homes and businesses with zero-emission electricity for generations to come.”
Few nuclear facilities have been constructed over the past decade, in large part because of concerns about cost and the disposal of nuclear materials. On Tuesday, protesters gathered in Albany to oppose the governor’s proposal, which they said was dangerous and irresponsible.
Hochul pushes to break ground on M.T.A. projects.
Though Ms. Hochul spent much of last year defending congestion pricing in New York City, her speech on Tuesday was not particularly focused on large transportation projects. The governor announced two such endeavors and a number of new safety measures that included more safety barriers at subway platforms.
The first endeavor is a commitment to raise $50 million to redesign Jamaica Station, a crowded transit hub in Queens where 200,000 daily riders use a combination of the subway, the Long Island Rail Road and the AirTrain to Kennedy Airport. Jamaica is the fourth busiest commuter rail station in North America, but it has not been substantially upgraded since 2003, when the AirTrain opened.
Ms. Hochul also pledged to fund engineering and design work on a westward expansion of the Second Avenue Subway, the latest phase of a tunneling project first proposed in 1929.
The expansion, which Ms. Hochul first endorsed in 2024, would extend the train line from 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in East Harlem to a new terminus at 125th and Broadway, adding three new crosstown stops that will connect to seven subway lines and several buses.
Work on the extension will not begin for years, because the M.T.A. must first complete the construction of three stations north of 96th Street. That project, estimated to cost $7 billion, is expected to be completed in 2031. But Ms. Hochul’s commitment to start the next phase quickly could save the transit authority millions of dollars in construction costs and planning. The westward expansion is projected to cost an additional $7.5 billion.
New Yorkers may soon be able to sue ICE.
One of the biggest applause lines of the afternoon came when Ms. Hochul called out immigration agents who just last week killed a mother in Minneapolis.
“Let me be clear, public safety will always come first, but it must be pursued lawfully and with humanity,” Ms. Hochul said on Tuesday. She proposed restricting federal agents from certain sensitive locations, including hospitals, schools, day care centers and religious institutions.
In the event that these or other boundaries were crossed, Ms. Hochul said she would support legislation establishing the ability of citizens to sue in civil court federal agents who they believed had violated their constitutional rights.
Notably she did not include the New York for All Act, a priority of Democrats in the State Senate, which would forbid local officials from collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. On Tuesday, Democrats were already preparing to write new legislation that would include all of the protections that Ms. Hochul did not include in her package.
Bills, Bills, Bills.
Yes, this time we are talking about football.
Ms. Hochul sneaked numerous references to her favorite team into her address, joking that getting the whole state to support the Bills was her way of bringing downstate and upstate together.
She finished her speech by pulling out a Buffalo Bills hat and bopping her had to a cheer song for the team. Go Bills, indeed.
Stefanos Chen contributed reporting.
Grace Ashford covers New York government and politics for The Times.
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