Now that she’s won election in her own right as New York’s chief executive, will Gov. Kathy Hochul feel better able to stand up to the far left? The first sign will come with her pick to replace retired state Chief Judge Janet DiFiore.
The job includes supervising the state’s entire court system, but at least as important is that the opening represents the “swing seat” on the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest bench, which is otherwise roughly split between three moderates and three progressives.
From the time DiFiore announced her retirement, progressives have pushed Hochul to flip the court into a rubberstamp for their agenda. Lefties like No. 2 state Senate Democrat Michael Gianaris denounced DiFiore and her so-called “conservative bloc” and vowed to block any nominee lacking the right (that is, left) bona fides.
Gianaris shouldn’t get his way. Most obviously, New York needs a top court that will keep slapping down blatantly illegal moves like Democrats’ recent bid to gerrymander the Republicans into oblivion in clear defiance of the state Constitution’s (voter-passed!) directive for nonpartisan redistricting.
In September, a hard-left gay Democratic club wrote Hochul to condemn the judge now serving as acting chief. “Although Judge [Anthony] Cannataro is openly gay, he does not represent our values,” thundered Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club chief and LGBTQ activist Allen Roskoff.
But Cannataro is now one of the seven candidates forwarded Wednesday by the state Commission on Judicial Nomination. The gov is supposed to pick one by Dec. 23. The others are law profs Abbe Gluck of Yale and Alicia Ouellette of Albany Law School, Appellate Division Judges Hector LaSalle and Jeffrey Oing, Deputy Chief Administrative Judge for Justice Initiatives Edwina G. Richardson-Mendelson and Corey Stoughton, top attorney at the Legal Aid Society.
If Hochul really wants to play her cards close, she can tap Cannataro for the top job (which he’s done so far in exemplary fashion) and still leave the court evenly divided. Then she has more time to mull over whether to bow to the left in filling Cannataro’s slot as associate judge.
She plainly (and characteristically) wants to split the difference; in a recent op-ed, she vowed to pick “a leader who, through intelligence and conviction, can unite the existing court so that it speaks in a strong and respected voice . . . so that the three branches of [state] government can work together to serve and protect New Yorkers’ rights and safety.”
But the fact is that the left will never be satisfied by compromise. Gianaris, notably, is one of the top voices refusing to allow modest fixes to the Legislature’s botched criminal-justice reforms — the very issue that nearly lost Hochul the election.
Handing control of the top court to the hard left would be the end of Hochul’s efforts to steer a middle course; what progressives couldn’t achieve via legislation, they’d get through litigation. The governor needs to send a clear message to the left that the Court of Appeals won’t be guided by radical ideology, but by competence and a commitment to delivering justice.