New York State Governor Kathy Hochul speaks during a "New York is Not For Sale" rally at Forest Hills Stadium, in the Queens borough of New York City, U.S., October 26, 2025. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
(New York, NY) – Even with the prospect of rising taxes to balance the massive city & state budget, Governor Kathy Hochul says there is no place like New York. Hochul recently changed her tune regarding people fleeing the state over politics. The switch is coming as New York sees one of the highest rates of exodus. Data released from the U.S. Census Bureau showed that in 2024, about 415,449 people left New York and 285,304 moved in.
Back in 2022, while speaking at an event in the Hudson Valley, Hochul urged GOP voters to hightail it out of the blue state and head down to Florida. She said while campaigning against Lee Zeldin, “jump on a bus and head down to Florida. You don’t represent our values, you are not New Yorkers”. While Hochul was met with cheers from the crowd, some New Yorkers were shocked that the head of the state would be so explicit in her political bias.
Fast forward four years later, Hochul is once again up for re-election and trying to reel in anyone that took her words and transformed them into action. Hochul made a plea to the upper echelon in particular, even as Mayor Zohran Mamdani along with the state legislature is calling to raise the taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers. She celebrated patriotic Democratic mega donors, but went further saying that they should recruit some of their Palm Beach friends and bring them home. While speaking at Politico’s Albany Summit, Hochul claimed, “the tax base has been eroded”. Hochul urged top earners to once again, or maybe for the first time, call New York home.
