Hochul’s Desperate Plea to Wealthy New Yorkers Exposes Major Failures

New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s recent plea for wealthy former New Yorkers to “come back” and replenish the state’s coffers was less a plan and more a confession of failure. Speaking at Politico’s New York Agenda forum, she openly admitted the state’s “tax base has been eroded” and even suggested supporters “go down to Palm Beach” and see who they can bring home — an extraordinary appeal from a governor whose policies helped push these people out.

It’s stunning to watch a Democrat who cheered taxing success now grovel for the very taxpayers they chased away. Conservative commentators have rightly called out the hypocrisy: politicians promise generous programs funded by other people’s money, then act surprised when the people with the money move to states that actually respect it.

Hochul tried to wrap her plea in realism, noting that remote work and aggressive tax regimes have made high earners far more mobile — but admitting the problem is not the same as fixing it. New Yorkers have fled to friendlier tax climates in Florida and Texas, where wages aren’t funneled into ever-expanding entitlement schemes and punitive proposals targeting success.

Worse, Albany’s instinct has been to chase more revenue by squeezing the movers rather than making New York a place people want to return to. From talk of new levies on second homes to local proposals that would sharply raise death and wealth taxes, the idea that the state can tax its way back to prosperity is bankrupt and politically tone-deaf. If you beg people to come back only so you can tax them harder, you’ve already lost the argument for governance.

The conservative case is simple: stop treating wealth as a target and start treating it as the engine it is. Fiscal sanity requires cutting wasteful spending, reforming runaway pension and entitlement liabilities, and creating a tax code that rewards job creators instead of punishing them. As Rep. Mike Lawler and other fiscal hawks have noted, desperate pleas for donors won’t fix a broken budget — honest reforms will.

Hardworking Americans watching Albany’s circus should be angry and motivated, not conned into funding a perpetual spending spree. Voters deserve leaders who build prosperity, not parlor tricks that beg the rich to return to a state that treats success like a sin. If New York wants its taxpayers back, it must first prove it’s a state that respects their freedom and hard-earned money.