Hochul opts for a change of scenery, if not script
Not so long ago, New York's governor described the state Capitol as the "original and rightful setting" for her annual message to the Legislature. So why didn't she stick with it?
Yesterday marked the first day of the New York State Legislature’s 2025 session. For much of the past century, that also would have made it State-of-the-State day in Albany—when the state Senate and Assembly would jointly convene in the Capitol’s Assembly chamber to hear the governor’s constitutionally required annual message to the Legislature.
But this year, for only the sixth time in 102 years, there was no joint opening session and no gubernatorial speech. Governor Kathy Hochul’s office signaled a month ago that she’d be pushing her 2025 State of the State address back to Tuesday, Jan. 14—and that the locale would be shifted from the Capitol to the Empire State Plaza’s Kitty Carlisle Hart Theater, in what’s better known as “The Egg.”
From 1923 to 2010, governors from Alfred E. Smith through David Paterson chose to deliver their annual messages in the state Assembly chamber on the Capitol’s third floor. The first break with that tradition came in 2011, when Andrew Cuomo moved the site of his speech to the cavernous Convention Hall beneath The Egg, on the Plaza’s concourse level. The old State-of-the-State rituals (similar to those surrounding the president’s annual State of the Union address to Congress) gave way to something more like a combined political convention and corporate product rollout—complete with a deep-voiced public address announcer, giant video screens, and Cuomo’s soon-to-be ubiquitous Powerpoint slides.
Cuomo’s first four annual messages lined up with the legislative session’s opening day, but he began to vary the schedule in 2015, when his father’s funeral also fell on the first Wednesday after the first Monday of the year. That year the governor chose to combine the State of the State with his annual Executive Budget presentation, delivering both on Jan. 22. Thereafter he stuck to no particular State of the State schedule, usually letting the message it slide into mid-January, never returning it to the Assembly chamber.
Honoring the past
In January 2022, a few months after succeeding Cuomo, Hochul made a point of delivering her first State of the State message on its traditional session-opening date and in its traditional locale (albeit mostly empty due to Covid restrictions).
“I have a deep reverence for our State's remarkable past,” she said. “And we're honoring it by coming together in this beautiful Assembly Chamber, its original and rightful setting, with elected leaders joined together to serve the public.”
Standing on the same spot and in the same role as predecessors including Al Smith, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Thomas E. Dewey, Nelson Rockefeller, and Mario Cuomo had to be an inspiring experience for the previously obscure lieutenant governor-turned-first female chief executive of New York, who just a year earlier was close to being nudged out of Albany to a Biden administration subcabinet post.
Hochul enjoyed a 46-32 percent favorable Siena poll rating early in her tenure but was elected to a full term in 2022 by a surprisingly narrow margin, and she most recently had a negative poll approval rating of 39-42 (which was a slight improvement over her previous level). She’s currently mired in controversy surrounding the rollout of congestion pricing for motorists in Manhattan (a Cuomo-initiated policy somehow rebranded as her own). To change the subject, Hochul has spent the past few weeks previewing elements of her State of the State program, starting with a proposal to send $3 billion in “inflation refund” checks to millions of New York taxpayers.
So, why shift her State of the State speech to The Egg? Unlike the historic Assembly chamber, the modernist bowl of the Hart Theater won’t lend any gravitas to the diminutive governor. If anything, it will tend to trivialize the occasion, although Hochul might comfort herself with the thought that she’s standing on the same stage once graced by the likes of Chaka Khan, Dave Chappelle, Margaret Cho, the Mark Morris Dance Company, and Boz Scaggs. The theatrical setting suggests the governor plans to reinflate the State of the State proceedings to a Cuomo-era level of grandiosity. Expect lots and lots of “Money in Your Pockets” sloganeering.
The days of wine and roses
For a glimpse of how things used to be, journey back exactly 50 years, to Jan. 8, 1975—the first State of the State address delivered by the late (and arguably great) Gov. Hugh L. Carey.
The seven-term congressman from Brooklyn had been elected governor in November 1974—an unsurprising win over the ultra-dry Republican Gov. Malcolm Wilson, Nelson Rockefeller’s former longtime lieutenant, in that post-Watergate Democratic wave year. Carey’s bigger triumph had been wresting the Democratic nomination from the initial heavy favorite, Howard Samuels, in a primary a few months earlier.
Watergate echoes aside, it was not an auspicious moment to take the reins of any state government, especially New York’s. An inflation surge in the early 1970s had been temporarily suppressed by federal price controls, only to burst open again following the Arab oil embargo of late 1973. The stock market had crashed, and would not turn steadily bullish again for years to come. The lead story on The New York Times front page the day before Carey’s speech quoted Alan Greenspan, chairman of President Ford’s council of economic advisors, as warning that “the economic outlook for 1975 is neither pleasant nor reassuring.”
A few days earlier, the Times had highlighted federal statistics showing that New York’s state and local taxes were the highest in the country as a share of personal income—and had risen faster than in any state during the previous two years. Looming just over the horizon was New York City’s virtual bankruptcy, although the city’s visibly fraying finances had been barely mentioned during the prior year’s campaign, and not at all in the governor’s speech.
At 55, Carey had no executive experience in or out of government but had already experienced his share of challenges in life and politics. A decorated combat veteran of World War II1, he married a young war widow, and together they raised 14 children. In July 1969, a few weeks after Carey had been narrowly defeated in a primary for City Council president, his two oldest sons were killed in a car accident. In 1972, his congressional mentor, House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, was lost in a plane crash. In May 1974, Carey’s wife died of breast cancer at 49, although not before encouraging him to seek the governor’s office.
This was not a man given to sugar-coating.
Brushing off the day’s “ceremonies and celebrations” as a mere “prelude,” he began: “In this chamber, in this arena, we confront the deepest and most difficult problems of one‐tenth of the American nation. Seldom has an American legislature met with a greater challenge or a greater obligation before.”
Carey spoke of “sudden storms” sweeping across the economy, “shattering our hopes and our illusions of comfort.” He said it was “a special time for truth.” And it got darker from there.
All we say and all we do is shaped by two harsh facts. One is that the nation is in deep economic difficulty. The second is that New York State suffers more than its full share of the nation's travail.
The State Council of Economic Advisers told us just three weeks ago that New York's unemployment and busintiss activity have been in decline for the past five years.
In New York City and in particular upstate areas the council finds that the economy is in genuine stagnation. Unemployment is rising every day. Thus New York would be in difficulty were these the best of national times.
Then came the money grafs, culminating in one of the best-remembered lines of any New York gubernatorial speech of the modern era:
In the very simplest of terms, this government and we as a people have been living far beyond our means. What We did was limited only by our imagination and our desire.
Our buildings were the tallest and Most sumptuous. Our civil service the most highly trained and paid. Our public assistance programs the most expensive. Thus our taxes also became the highest in the nation.
And every interest and group and advocate came to think of the state budget and of the state subsidy of local budgets as a never‐ending horn of plenty that could pay for more and more each year.
Now the times of plenty, the days of wine and roses, are over.2 So we must first recognize the immediate burdens we inherit. We do this not in a spirit of recrimination, nor in the criticism of any man or party. There is responsibility enough to go around for all of us. [emphasis added]
The full-length print version of the governor’s message, distributed to reporters and legislators, also used a different metaphor summarizing the situation more prosaically: “We were in the lead car of the roller coaster going up, and we are in lead car coming down.”
Carey’s said he’d order an immediate state government hiring freeze, urging local governments to do the same, and that he’d reduce state spending by 10 percent in real terms and seek to restrain the growth of local aid in his coming budget. His other, non-fiscal proposals included a constitutional amendment providing for gubernatorial appointment of all judges, tougher criminal sentencing guidelines, and new facilities for the confinement of violent juveniles.
In the next day’s Times, Maurice Carroll took note of the speech’s “Kennedy cadences”—which figured, since it was the work of a writing team headed by Adam Walinsky, a former aide to Sen. Robert K. Kennedy, and polished by another RFK staff alumnus, Jeff Greenfield.
Amid his dire warnings about the budget and economy, the governor left unspoken what everyone knew: the one individual most to blame for “the burdens we inherit” was Carey’s predecessor once removed, Nelson Rockefeller, who had vastly expanded state spending and debt during his tenure as governor from 1959 through 1973. Yet Carey was careful not to mention Rockefeller, much less scapegoat the Republicans who remained in control of the state Senate.3
Austerity budgeting aside, the headline policy proposal of Carey’s State of the State— mentioned in the longer printed version of the message, but not in what the Daily News described as his “lengthy, stiffly read” speech — was for a 10-cent per gallon increase in the state gasoline tax.
While the initial media was subdued, Carey’s gas tax hike proposal was politically baffling. Over the previous two years, the average retail price of gasoline had already skyrocketed from 36 to 53 cents per gallon ($2.76 to $3.21 in 2024 terms)—at a time when the average car barely managed 15 miles to the gallon. Over the previous several years the state’s motor fuel tax already had been raised in small increments to 8 cents a gallon; more than doubling that tax would have meant raising prices at the pump by 15 to 20 percent at a time of already raging inflation.
The Legislature’s reactions to the State of the State—as reported in the premiere of what would become public television’s long-running “Inside Albany” program—ranged from muted to unenthusiastic. Within two months, Carey was back-peddling from the most controversial programmatic proposals in his speech. In mid-March, Newsday quoted an anonymous Carey advisor describing the governor’s opening address as “a disaster in a lot of ways … too serious, too much without hope.” Carey quickly abandoned the gas tax idea and dropped his opposition to local aid increases sought by the Legislature. He also agreed to business tax increases and a temporary renewal of a personal income tax surcharge.
Measured by policy specifics, his first State of the State was a failure. But Carey’s surrenders were only tactical and short-term. The speech did, in fact, represent a turning point; he had succeeded in changing both the tone and direction of state government. During multi-year tug-of-war with the Legislature, Carey more often than not delivered on the restraint he had called for in January 1975. As I wrote in this 2002 study:
While state budgets throughout the country grew rapidly as inflation approached double-digit heights during the late 1970s and early 1980s, New York’s per-capita spending increased much more slowly than the average. In fact, the New York State budget under Carey didn’t grow at all after adjusting for inflation— even though, during this same period, Albany assumed full financial responsibility for the four-year colleges of the City University of New York and for the operating expenses of the statewide court system.
The Carey Administration also reduced taxes—cutting the top income tax rate on wages and salaries by a full third, from 15 percent to 10 percent, eliminating the state’s unincorporated business tax, and expanding investment incentives for manufacturers. To be sure, these efforts were made easier by rising inflation, which rapidly pushed taxpayers into higher income brackets and thus drove up revenues even as tax rates were being lowered. Nonetheless, the cuts represented a welcome reversal of state policy from the Rockefeller era.
Carey’s role in managing New York City’s fiscal crisis recovery is a story in itself. Suffice it to say, he earned the title conferred by his biographers: “The Man Who Saved New York.”
Clapping contrasts
Substance aside, compared to New York State of the State addresses since the 1990s, one of the most striking contrasts of the 1975 speech is the audience reaction. Keep in mind: Democrats in the Capitol that day 50 years ago had every reason to be in high spirits. They had recaptured the governor’s office for the first time in 16 years, and they had taken back the Assembly majority to boot. Yet as heard in the archived video, the applause that greeted Carey—introduced by Lt. Gov. Mary Ann Krupsak as “His Excellency, the governor of the State of New York”— was notably restrained by recent standards. Once the speech had ended, the clapping began to fade even before Carey had even stepped off the podium.
By contrast, when Hochul is introduced (dispassionately) by Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado next week, she’ll almost certainly be greeted with wild applause and even some audible cheers — one of the benefits, come to think of it, of her decision to stage this speech in a bigger venue to which she can invite plenty of loyalists. In contrast to Carey, who was interrupted only twice by moderate applause during a 28-minute speech, Hochul will probably talk for closer to 45 minutes and will be loudly applauded at regular intervals—even while saying nothing particularly remarkable.
A genuine war hero, in fact; his decorations included a Bronze Star, Croix de Guerre with Silver Star, and Combat Infantry Award.
The phrase would have been familiar to mid-1970s New Yorkers as the title of a 1962 movie about a couple’s descent into alcoholism. It originated in the second half of a late 19th century two-stanza poem:
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
While he took Malcolm Wilson and Republicans in general to task for the state’s declining manufacturing employment and rising crime rates, Carey had also refrained from criticizing or even mentioning Rocky by name during the general election campaign of 1974. This wasn’t out of personal distaste or hostility. In fact, as Richard Reeves reported in the New York Times Magazine in October 1974, Carey had been “Rockefeller’s favorite congressman” and “a Rockefeller friend and insider of good standing.”