Kathy Hochul, Cuomo’s No. 2, Quietly Prepares to Step Into the Limelight

When Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was holding his marathon sessions of news briefings during the peak of the coronavirus crisis, he was often flanked by his closest aides.

Notably absent was Kathy Hochul, his lieutenant governor.

When Mr. Cuomo published a book that portrayed him as a heroic leader during the pandemic, he highlighted the roles played by a slew of his top aides. He made no mention of Ms. Hochul.

But for Ms. Hochul, being marginalized by her boss might now be a blessing.

After a damning state attorney general report concluded Mr. Cuomo had sexually harassed 11 women, most of them current or former state employees, he is now facing deafening calls for his resignation and possible impeachment.

On Sunday, Brittany Commisso, who accused Mr. Cuomo of groping her and filed a criminal complaint against him, came forward publicly in snippets of an interview that will air on Monday.

If the governor steps down or is forced out, Ms. Hochul, 62, will take his place, becoming the first woman to lead New York State — a remarkable rise for someone who has largely toiled in obscurity since joining the governor’s team in 2014.

Mr. Cuomo has a long and deserved reputation for governing by brute force and fear, alienating countless people through his tactics of bullying and intimidation. Ms. Hochul, in contrast, has established deep reservoirs of political good will, spending much of her tenure on the road, highlighting the administration’s agenda and engaging in extensive on-the-ground politicking.

She has taken pride in visiting each of New York’s 62 counties each year and has friends across the state. In a typically frenetic week in September 2019, Ms. Hochul had two appearances in Brooklyn, one in Manhattan, four in Niagara Falls, one in Lockport, another in Pendleton, three in Buffalo, four in Rochester, two in Binghamton and one in Cortland.

She is a practiced, and popular, retail politician who seems to take genuine delight in meeting people, and has always been this way, said former U.S. Representative John J. LaFalce, for whom Ms. Hochul worked in the 1980s.

“More than anything else, she was tenacious,” said Mr. LaFalce, who became Ms. Hochul’s political mentor. “She just turned the stone as many ways as you could to see what was underneath it and she didn’t let it go. By the same token, she was probably the most popular person in the office.”

At the moment, Ms. Hochul (pronounced HOH-kuhl) is keeping a low public profile. She canceled her public events last week, following the release of the state attorney general report, and declined to be interviewed for this article.

But behind the scenes, Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, has been preparing for what may well be the inevitable, consulting with her longstanding circle of advisers, and familiarizing herself with the minutiae of the transition process, should Mr. Cuomo resign or be impeached, according to an administration official. (If Mr. Cuomo is impeached by the State Assembly, he must hand the reins of government to Ms. Hochul while he faces trial in the State Senate.)

Ms. Hochul has been fielding numerous appeals from advocacy groups eager to brief her on their key issues, and from government leaders seeking to establish or expand relationships with her.

A couple of weeks ago, Liz Krueger, a state senator from Manhattan, and Ms. Hochul met at Pershing Square, a restaurant across from Grand Central Terminal. As they shared an avocado salad, Ms. Krueger asked Ms. Hochul how she felt about the possibility that Mr. Cuomo might resign.

“She assured me that she was ready to take over if that was what was required of her,” Ms. Krueger said.

Being prepared has been a hallmark of Ms. Hochul’s more than quarter-century spent in local, state and federal government, beginning with a 14-year stint on the town board of Hamburg, in western New York.

She grew up outside of Buffalo, in a Catholic family that faced economic hardships. She graduated from Syracuse University, received a law degree at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and entered private practice. Ms. Hochul quickly turned to government, serving as an aide to Mr. LaFalce and U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

She returned to western New York and embraced local politics, serving on the Hamburg town board and then as Erie County clerk, where she gained prominence when she challenged a plan by Gov. Eliot Spitzer to issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.

In 2011, she scored a monumental upset in a special election in one of New York’s most conservative Congressional districts, skillfully seizing on voters’ fears that Republicans would eradicate Medicare. By the following year, after a redistricting that made her district even more conservative, she was out. She was defeated by Chris Collins, a Republican who would leave office in disgrace, ultimately pleading guilty in 2019 to charges of making false statements to the F.B.I. and to conspiring to commit securities fraud. President Donald J. Trump later pardoned him.

In 2014, Mr. Cuomo chose Ms. Hochul as his running mate, seeking to shore up his courtship with western New York.

Their relationship, then and now, has been largely transactional. They rarely appear in public together, with Ms. Hochul fulfilling her role as his surrogate around the state in countless radio interviews, panel discussions and ribbon cuttings.

The tenor of that alliance began to change in late winter, when the sexual harassment allegations against the governor began to multiply, and Ms. Hochul sought to distance herself from Mr. Cuomo. In a rare break from the governor, she welcomed the news that the attorney general, Letitia James, had hired outside lawyers to conduct an investigation of the governor.

Ms. Hochul wrote on Twitter that the inquiry meant that “everyone’s voice will be heard and taken seriously,” and expressed confidence that New Yorkers would “soon learn the facts.” Mr. Cuomo and Ms. Hochul have not spoken since February, a senior official said.

At the same time, Ms. Hochul began preparing for the possibility of replacing the governor. In March, her team reached out to Mr. Cuomo’s top aides, asking for a heads-up, should a resignation be imminent, the official said.

An adviser prepared a memo for her, detailing what her first month in office might look like, in the event she would have to assume the top seat, another adviser said.

And while Ms. Hochul’s daily media advisories had been regularly distributed by the governor’s office, she cut off that arrangement, putting out her own press schedules instead.

Her last public appearance came Tuesday morning, when she rallied in Albany for paid family leave, roughly an hour before Ms. James announced the findings of a five-month investigation of sexual harassment claims against the governor.

Two outside investigators hired by Ms. James’s office found that Mr. Cuomo had violated state and federal laws around sexual harassment and had fostered an usually toxic workplace culture.

After the report emerged, Ms. Hochul issued a statement decrying Mr. Cuomo’s “repulsive and unlawful behavior.”

“Because lieutenant governors stand next in the line of succession, it would not be appropriate to comment further,” she added.

She is caught in what one of her close political allies, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, called a Catch-22.

“She can’t act like the governor, because she’s not the governor,” he said. “She can’t assume she will be the governor, because it’s not in her control. And she also is currently lieutenant governor and has a role to fulfill.”

Nonetheless, in recent weeks, Ms. Hochul has been reaching out to all of the state’s agency commissioners, a state official said.

She was told that if she intends to address the State Legislature after becoming governor, she should start putting together the guest list now.

Timothy Kennedy, a New York State senator who has known Ms. Hochul for more than 20 years, spoke with her last week and is confident she is ready.

“Lieutenant Governor Hochul is in the process of preparing to assume the governor’s seat,” he said.