The New York Times may not be covering the recent co/efficient poll showing that Republican Lee Zeldin has overtaken incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul in the New York governor's race, but you can bet Kathy Hochul has noticed.
Here's the latest two-step from her, according to Michael Goodwin at the New York Post:
Any skepticism about polls showing GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin drawing close to Gov. Hochul ended with Hochul’s sudden new ad claiming she is committed to public safety.
Zeldin has made the surge in violent crime his defining issue and successfully pinned the blame on Hochul and other Albany Dems. That she felt the need to push back so late in the race means her own polls reveal that Zeldin is striking a nerve with voters of all kinds, including Democrats.
Alas, the ad, like Hochul’s performance, is mostly fluff. Her promise that “You deserve to feel safe, and as your governor, I won’t stop working until you do,” would be persuasive if there was evidence to back
it up.
But she makes no promises to do anything differently, citing only secondary things she has already done.
According to Mayor Eric Adams, she's all in on the action:
Today’s announcement with @GovKathyHochul means the addition of hundreds of additional strategically deployed officers on our trains and help to those suffering from serious mental health illness so they can find a way out of the subway system. https://t.co/4zotLb8a0o pic.twitter.com/TYytzAHQCE — Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) October 22, 2022
Where she's going to get all these abundant cops now that the New York Police Department is suffering chronic staff shortages in the wake of the Black Lives Matter riots, where city officials made it clear they didn't have their backs, is anyone's guess.
In any case, with subway pushings and other crimes against riders at an all-time high, why, exactly, wasn't it done in the first place?
She's scrambling. Call it the subway scramble.
The New York Post today also has stories like this:
Disturbing new video shows a subway shover charge a 32-year-old man from across a Brooklyn platform to knock him onto the tracks in an unprovoked attack.
The attack happened around 2:40 p.m. Friday on the northbound L-train tracks at the Wyckoff Avenue and Myrtle Avenue subway station, cops said.
Police released footage of the assailant on Saturday, showing him standing on one side of the platform with his arms folded and back to the tracks as he spots his target on the other side of the platform near another set of tracks.
The pusher looks both ways as if checking that the coast is clear – then sprints and takes a tackle position, leading with his shoulder and hands to knock the victim off his feet.
The unsuspecting victim falls to the ground, and tumbles onto the tracks leaving only his sunglasses on the crowded platform. The attacker then runs back to the spot where he began, picks up his backpack, and runs out through the turnstiles.
...which is far from the first such incident. These aren't rarities anymore.
What Hochul's new cop dispatch sounds like is largely window dressing -- deploy more cops on the subway as elections approach, leave the projects to become warzones, and then restore everything to 'normal' after the midterms are over, taking the cops back.
New Yorkers, who put Zeldin in the lead, probably aren't going to be fooled by that one.
What we have here is a political establishment in New York that's running scared, desperate to try to stop the crime, at least temporarily, while defending their "no bail" and other Sorosian criminal justice policies they have championed, which have made New York City a crime pit and all but unliveable. The internal polls citing crime out of control must be horrific.
The Times has come out with a glossy endorsement of Hochul in this tweet here:
Honored to earn the endorsement of the @nytimes as we continue finding solutions to big problems and building a stronger state for all New Yorkers. pic.twitter.com/nGIvsEDUa4 — Kathy Hochul (@KathyHochul) October 22, 2022
But the Post is actually ... reporting the news -- the poll, the crime, the foolish window dressing.
Goodwin sums up the entire idiocy of it with this conclusion:
Those measures had little or no impact on the crime wave spreading across the state, so the ad serves to confirm Zeldin’s criticism she is failing voters on their top concern.
She's just concerned about her poll numbers. Voters in New York City are likely to be wise to her.
Image: Twitter screen shot