Michael Goodwin: Hochul is running scared from the pied--terre tax but her prints are all over the proposed disaster

You can follow politics for decades and never see an elected official run away from a problem faster than Gov.Hochul did Monday.After a Staten Island judge halted the city’s muddled implementation of the unpopular pied-à-terre tax, the governor ducked any responsibility despite proposing the tax and pushing it through the Legislature.On Monday, that history seemed like the work of a governor from another planet when Hochul shifted into the role of an innocent bystander so smoothly that it looked rehearsed.At an appearance after the court ruling, she began by making an inane observation of the obvious, saying people are “frustrated with the rollout” of the tax but quickly shifted into “don’t blame me” mode.“We are not responsible for the rollout,” she said shamefully.

“This is something that we talked to the city about in advance.”Trying to wash her hands of the disaster won’t fly given how she boasted about proposing the tax and defending it as fair and necessary.President Trump certainly wasn’t fooled by her sudden claim of innocence.He blasted the tax in a Truth Social post as “pure Amateur Hour” that will “RUIN” the city and vowed to have the federal government look into the tax ­before it takes effect.He called the levy a dangerous “experiment” that will destroy the city and state, saying “it is hard, as President of the United States of America, to sit back and watch it happen, especially to a place I once loved.”The history of how we got to this strange moment cannot be separated from the ways Hochul’s re-election campaign aims to appeal to Mamdani’s legions of radical leftists.Higher taxes, especially on the wealthy, are foundational to the raging socialist mindset, and ­Hochul, while pretending to be a moderate, gave the mob what it wanted.Although she rejected Mamdani’s bid to raise income taxes on the wealthy and successful corporations, she offered the pied-à-terre tax as a substitute that would yield abo...