There’s trouble in Albany as Gov. Hochul’s rift with Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado — whom she once hand-picked to be her No. 2 — has burst into open hostility, with Delgado announcing he won’t run with Hochul next year and laying the groundwork for a gubernatorial run of his own. Delgado insists he’s an “independently elected individual,” but he is dead wrong. Hochul is his boss and the top of the ticket that he won on.
There’s a key distinction between getting on the ballot independently and winning the election as an independent actor. Delgado won a contested primary for the lieutenant governorship, but in November only appeared as a name under Hochul’s. We hate to break it to him, but we’d imagine that if you asked the typical Hochul voter about Delgado, the response would be “who?”
Before 1954, governors and LGs ran for election by themselves, sometimes creating odd couple pairs of a Democratic governor and Republican LG and vice versa.
The voters wisely changed the state Constitution to have them run as a joint ticket. Now, the Legislature should take the next logical step here, doing away with separate primaries for LGs. Let each party’s gubernatorial nominees select loyal running mates, as is done for presidential elections. It increases stability of government if the state’s executive and the stand in are formally and explicitly on the same team.
The lieutenant governor is not like an attorney general or a comptroller, positions that have wholly separate functions that are to some extent supposed to act as a check on the executive. LGs are, by structure and definition, the No. 2, with few official duties, mostly ceremonial functions and a policy portfolio that extends just as far as the governor will allow.
LGs are there to take the reins if and when the governor cannot lead, which means they should be more or less publicly in lockstep with the governor. Does this mean there will never be disagreements? Certainly not; we don’t want our leaders surrounded only by yes men. But specific policy distinctions are things to be ironed out in the executive office.
We don’t know where Delgado got the notion that he not only is an individual actor but that this is somehow the natural state of being of a position that has “lieutenant” in the title. The statewide travel he often references as an impetus for casting out on his own is traditionally undertaken as an envoy for the governor.
His own predecessors in the office seem confused by Delgado’s approach, with former Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy suggesting, as many others have, that Delgado should consider a resignation rather than stay on in a role he clearly does not want to have.
If Delgado thinks that he’s got what it takes to convince voters to put him in the top job, then have at it. It’s a democracy and he’s eligible to run, to raise money and seek endorsements and free to make his case to the electorate. But he perhaps shouldn’t do it from within the very administration that he has now started speaking out against, and let someone else be on standby as Hochul’s No. 2.
