Kathy Hochul suddenly found herself the governor of New York after the surprise resignation of Andrew Cuomo on August 10, 2021. Cuomo had rose to national stardom for his soothing, daily COVID lockdown broadcast but suffered an equally meteoric fall from grace with the build up of sexual harrassment and assault allegations. Hochul, a moderate upstate New York politician who had served for decades in relative obscurity, found herself in the national spotlight. Her status as a scandal-free, hardworking, Great Lakes–accented upstate public servant was in stark contrast to Cuomo’s hypermasculine, bullying personality. She also was New York’s first female governor and claimed that her inauguration signaled a new era in Albany.

As a result, Hochul enjoyed decent approval ratings for her early months in office. Yet the veneer of the ethical girl boss began to fade as Governor Hochul’s tenure continued.

Despite her rhetoric of a “new era of transparency,” journalists uncovered legal but ethically dubious practices, such as granting multimillion-dollar state contracts to large donors, accepting donations from political appointees, and a contract allowing Delaware North, a food concession company where her husband serves as general counsel, to be food concession and visitor’s center operator at Niagara Falls state park. Hochul’s lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, resigned in disgrace in April 2022 when federal prosecutors unveiled his illegal campaign fundraising practices.