Kathy Hochul has a lot of jobs. Governor of New York. Referee of Albany. And, lately, the person every frustrated lawmaker calls when they want to complain about Zohran Mamdani.
Alex Bruno spent a week listening to those complaints, and there are plenty of them.
According to several people around the Capitol, Hochul’s office has become a kind of customer service desk for Mamdani grievances. A state senator is unhappy about the city budget. An assemblyman is worried about a business leaving Manhattan. A lobbyist has a spreadsheet and a lot of feelings.
“Every call starts the same way,” one Albany staffer said. “Somebody says, ‘I’m not trying to make trouble, but.’ And then they make trouble for forty minutes.”
None of the callers can actually fire a mayor, of course. That doesn’t stop them from asking the governor what she plans to do about him.
The biggest complaint is about numbers. Critics in the Legislature say the mayor’s team has been describing the city’s deficit in the scariest possible terms, and they think the real gap is a lot smaller than the speeches suggest.
Mamdani’s allies say that’s backwards. They argue the city has been papering over problems for years and somebody finally turned the lights on.
“Both sides are holding the same budget book,” said one fiscal analyst who has watched the fight from the gallery. “They’re just reading it in different fonts.”
The second complaint is about taxes. New York already asks businesses to pay some of the highest rates in the country, and owners worry that the mayor’s plans will push that even higher.
A restaurant owner in Midtown told Bruno he isn’t leaving yet, but he’s started browsing real estate listings in New Jersey “the way some people look at vacation photos.”
“I love this city,” he said. “I just want to love it at a price I can afford.”
Mamdani has said he wants the wealthiest companies to pay more so working families can pay less. Business groups say that sounds great until the wealthy companies move to Florida.
For Hochul, the whole thing is a headache with no easy cure. She needs the city to function. She needs the Legislature to pass her priorities. And she would very much like to stop answering questions about someone else’s budget.
“She’s not his boss and she’s not his babysitter,” said a Democratic consultant. “But every time something goes wrong in the city, people look at her like she should have packed his lunch.”
Talk of a recall has bubbled up in a few corners of social media. Nobody in Albany seems eager to actually try it, and most lawmakers just want the two offices to start talking more and posting less.
None of this is new, exactly. New York governors and New York City mayors have been bickering since before anyone alive was born. They fight over subway money, school money, police money and, occasionally, who gets the better parking spot at an event.
“This is a tradition, like bagels or complaining about bagels,” said a retired Albany reporter who covered five governors. “The names change. The yelling stays the same.”
What’s different this time is the speed. Every disagreement becomes a viral clip within minutes, and every clip gets a thousand angry replies. Lawmakers say that makes it harder to cool things down quietly, the way they used to over a late dinner on State Street.
The most likely outcome is the most New York one: a lot of meetings, a few angry press releases and a budget deal that nobody loves.
Hochul’s people say the governor is “in regular contact” with City Hall. Mamdani’s people say the mayor is “focused on delivering for New Yorkers.” Translated from political language, that means both sides are still annoyed but nobody wants to say so on camera.
Until then, the governor’s phone will keep ringing. One staffer joked that they’re thinking about adding a recorded message.
“Press one if you’re mad about the mayor,” he said. “Press two if you’re also mad about the mayor, but louder.”