SCHENECTADY — Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado is pitching himself as a transformative leader who will make fundamental changes to how New York operates and will prioritize issues, blaming “current leaders” — his boss Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul — for failing to effectively respond to the core issues of our time.
On Saturday, in a humid half-court YMCA gymnasium to a crowd of about 150 people in his hometown, Delgado spoke of family, of loyalty, of his commitment to representing the people of New York above all, and batted away criticism that he’s proven a disloyal No. 2 to Hochul.
“Some folks will talk about this idea of loyalty, since I announced my run for governor, loyalty,” he said. “But I have to ask, loyal to who? Loyal to what?”
“Loyalty to a broken system is why we’re in this mess to begin with,” he continued. “Don’t talk to me about loyalty unless it’s loyalty to the people.”
Delgado didn’t name Hochul outright in his speech, but derided many of the policies the Hochul administration has overseen as fundamentally out of touch with good governance.
“All New Yorkers, every single New Yorker, deserves better leadership,” he said.
He criticized programs that funnel public, taxpayer money into private enterprises, both to achieve economic growth and to deliver public benefits like healthcare and public housing. He questioned the financial viability of such programs, which he said have not done much to improve quality of life or boost economic performance. He said New York is the nation’s third-largest economy, and would be eighth in the world if identified as its own nation — and with a $254 billion public state budget for the coming year.
“Where is the money going?” he asked his supporters on Saturday.
Delgado laid out a number of broad policy proposals — just a first look, he said. He called for efforts to address poverty, taking back public housing programs and increasing the income cap to qualify for New York’s “Essential Plan” publicly-subsidized health insurance plan. He called for universal pre-school across the state and an increase in the statewide minimum wage “for everyone.” He said the state should stand up it’s own rental assistance programs, and make efforts to reach the estimated seven out of 10 eligible people who don’t take advantage of that and other public benefit programs.
He also called for universal childcare beyond universal pre-school as well, and said the state should establish a taxpayer-funded account to pay extra money to childcare workers as well.
But when asked if he supported the extra spending that would come with those programs, Delgado said he wasn’t backing the bills that currently exist in the state legislature that would enact many of these programs.
“What I’m laying out is a vision,” he said to gathered reporters after the campaign event. “Then you work with the legislative body to effectuate the vision and figure out what the best way forward is to get there.
Delgado’s message is one of change, of a departure from the way Hochul and recent governors before her have done things — and he said he has not been a significant part of that governance despite being the No. 2 most senior elected official in the state since 2022, when Hochul appointed him to replace then-Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin.
“I’ve tried very hard to communicate all these things within the administration, I’ve tried to push to make sure that we take bolder steps,” he said. “Now listen, to do that you have to be part of the decision-making process, right. To do that, you have to be included.”
He said he was not included in that process, despite promises from Hochul before he was appointed that she would take a different approach to governing and would include the lieutenant in more decisions.
That’s not historically how the job works — for years, the lieutenant governor position has been varying degrees of thankless and responsibility-free. The lieutenant is no longer even regularly handed control of state government when the governor leaves the state, thanks to modern communications technology and the governor’s private planes and helicopters.
Delgado broke with Hochul nearly a year ago — first by calling for President Joseph R. Biden to step aside from his reelection campaign after his poor debate performance in June of 2024, then on further and further issues. After telling reporters in a rare Capitol news conference that he was working toward a better relationship with the governor, Delgado announced he would step aside and not run for reelection with Hochul. She responded by stripping him of everything but the most basic essentials for his office — taking back his downstate and Capitol second floor office space, a significant amount of his staff, digital devices, executive email and vehicles. Delgado has been left with a skeleton crew for official staff and a rarely-used office off of the state Senate chambers mostly used for ceremonial purposes in typical times.
She also took all the duties and initiatives she’s assigned to him and his team — a program to boost civic engagement and any assignments to represent the Governor’s office at events across the state. All that remains is his constitutional duty to preside over the Senate — another rarely used ceremonial role almost always delegated to the Senate Majority Leader by assigning them as President Pro Tempore. Delgado hasn’t done that since the first day of session in January.
Delgado has maintained for months, since he started to break with the governor, that his real job is to “get out there and connect with people,” a phrase he’s repeated often including on Saturday. He, in his capacity as Lieutenant, has held quasi-campaign rallies across the state framed as town hall events, meeting with those in the community who care to show up. Many of those events were filmed and cut together for his campaign announcement video.
“As lieutenant governor, I can’t control when somebody decides to take a look at my staff, I can’t control someone taking my phone, I can’t control that,” he said. “What I can control is my connection to New Yorkers, and I’m going to continue to lean in on my connection to New Yorkers. New Yorkers, who, by the way, who independently elected me to serve in this capacity.”
Delgado went on to say that he didn’t see that same approach from Hochul — and that’s what made him decide to run against her.
“I wasn’t seeing the plan, on top of that you don’t have visibility to where we’re going, you don’t know exactly what the plan is, what the vision is, this feels more reactive, that’s the piece I want to make sure that I change,” he said.
Delgado’s path to victory is far from simple — Hochul has the incumbency advantage, years of fundraising, the support of the state Democratic party and polls better than Delgado in statewide rankings. Shortly after Delgado dropped his announcement video on June 2, a coordinated effort by the state party to shore up local Democratic support resulted with over 40 out of 64 local county Democratic chairs endorsing Hochul. On Friday, three leading Schenectady County Democrats announced they’re backing Hochul.
Hochul’s campaign declined to comment on the lieutenant governor’s criticism, or his candidacy in general, but pointed to a handful of news reports detailing those county and local endorsements of her, plus a New York Post article from Saturday with the headline “’No Show’ Delgado: NY’s lieutenant governor does little to earn $220k paycheck, records show.”
But Delgado isn’t without his support — a handful of Democratic chairs, including from Greene and Otsego counties were at his event on Saturday. They appeared in their personal capacities — many county committees don’t endorse before a primary, and others haven’t had meetings to decide if they want to endorse, and who to endorse, yet.
Greene County Chair Lori Torgerson said her county committee hasn’t met yet, but said that for her personally, Delgado represents a good leader with a clear vision.
“Antonio has integrity, everything he said today I believe he delivers on, and in my experience he has never been a leader who says one thing and does another,” she said.
Otsego County chair Caitlin Ogden said her committee generally doesn’t endorse a candidate if there’s a primary, but said that since Delgado’s time in Congress he’s demonstrated an ability to flip Republican and Trump-loyal voters and could be the best pick to stop the shift to the right the electorate has demonstrated in recent elections
“I feel that he’s the one whose got a proven track record doing that, and he has a really good shot,” she said.