Vetting: Kathleen Hochul

If Andrew Cuomo resigns, Lt. Governor Kathleen Hochul will become the first woman governor of New York State.

On Tuesday, independent investigators appointed by New York State Attorney General Letitia James concluded that Governor Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women and retaliated against at least one. The investigators’ report also found that the governor’s office fostered a hostile work environment. On Friday, one of his accusers filed criminal charges against the governor.

Because Cuomo may resign to avoid impeachment and outright removal, the Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Hochul is on track to become the fifty-seventh Governor of New York. That said, who is Kathleen Hochul?

Kathleen Hochul (pronounced HOH-kull) was born in Buffalo, New York in 1958. She attended the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Hochul, a member of student government led a partially successful boycott of the campus bookstore and led protests to get Syracuse University to divest from apartheid-era South Africa. Her protest to get the university stadium’s name changed to honor Ernie Davis, the first African-American Heisman Trophy winner, flopped. Hochul interned at the New York State Assembly before graduating from Syracuse in 1980 with a bachelor’s degree in political science.

After college, Hochul attended Catholic University of America in Washington, DC and earned a law degree in 1984. After a brief stint with a law firm, Hochul became a legal and legislative aide to…