Thirteen days before the 25th anniversary of September 11, New York Governor Kathy Hochul held a campaign event at a mosque and donned a hijab to appease the Muslim men in the audience.
She is Christian.
Within hours, she was being roasted by the President of the United States and a former reality TV star from The Hills.
When Spencer Pratt is your harshest political critic, you've had a bad week.
Pratt — who ran for mayor of Los Angeles — posted on Twitter with a photo of Hochul in the headscarf: "Feminist icon, Kathy Hochul. Slay, kween!" Four words and a comma, and he said more than most columnists managed all weekend.
President Trump was more direct: "Kathy Hochul, considered the Worst Governor in the Country, in a recent picture working hard to get the Arab Vote." Then he connected it to policy: "Congestion Pricing in Manhattan is hurting her with everybody, but especially the people for whom she wears the hijab. The whole thing is CRAZY!"
He's right about the toll. Manhattan's $9 congestion charge went into effect January 5, 2025, with increases to $12 in 2028 and $15 by 2031. Twenty-four percent of New York's medallion drivers are from Bangladesh. Ten percent are from Pakistan. Drivers from 167 countries work those streets. Hochul is wearing a headscarf to win over a Muslim community her own toll policy is bleeding dry.
Bruce Blakeman, the Republican nominee for governor, put it most precisely: "Kathy Hochul will say whatever she needs to say and become whoever she needs to become when there are votes on the line." Then: "Less than two weeks before the 25th anniversary of 9/11, this kind of political pandering is especially tone-deaf."
This is the Democratic Party that built an entire political culture around who gets to wear what and why — that ends careers over Halloween costumes, scolds corporations for ethnic imagery in advertising, and lectures the country about the sanctity of cultural boundaries. Those rules suspend themselves when a Christian governor needs to look inclusive at a mosque for campaign content.
The 25th anniversary of September 11 is days away. Nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered. And the collective political judgment of Hochul's entire operation — her staff, her consultants, her advance team — was that this was the moment for a hijab photo-op.
Hochul is not governing New York. She is auditioning for it — neighborhood by neighborhood, costume by costume, borrowing identities like wardrobe pieces and returning them the moment the cameras turn off.
She wanted a viral moment. She got one. Just not the kind she had in mind.
