A growing list of Jewish leaders and organizations has lined up behind Kathy Hochul for re-election. Sol Werdiger of Agudath Israel, Williamsburg Satmar figures such as Rabbi David Niederman and Rabbi Moshe Indig, and elements of the Crown Heights community have publicly backed her. The dominant reason is her decision to opt New York into the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit program, which channels private donations, encouraged by a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit, through Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs) to help with K-12 costs, including yeshiva tuition.
That decision may have made her popular in the last few weeks, but it does not make her a friend of the Jewish community. It simply makes her a duplicitous politician who can read polling and the election calendar.
The program itself is a Republican creation. It was written into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act by the Republican majorities in Congress and signed by President Trump on July 4, 2025. It allows taxpayers to claim a nonrefundable federal credit of up to $1,700 individually (or $3,400 for joint filers) for cash contributions to qualified SGOs. Those organizations must spend at least 90 percent of what they take in on scholarships for eligible students, households up to 300 percent of area median income, for expenses such as private or religious school tuition, tutoring, books, and special-needs services.
The money is private; it does not come from state budgets or reduce public-school aid. Governors simply choose whether their states’ students can receive the scholarships. There is literally no reason for states not to participate in this unless they are being controlled by teachers’ unions (which most Democrat-led states are). Dozens of states, overwhelmingly Republican-led, opted in nearly a year ago, well before New York. Hochul decided to wait until a month before an election.
The timing is not subtle. Orthodox advocacy groups had pressed her for months. However, this is not a sudden conversion to school choice. It is an election-year calculation: deliver a low-cost concession to a motivated voting bloc while the federal government and private donors do the actual work. Calling it “historic yeshiva tuition relief” makes it seem like she did something difficult. All the difficult work was done by House and Senate Republicans, and, of course, President Trump. All Hochul did was sign a piece of paper, something that any Republican would have done a year ago.
The program is real and useful. Any additional private money flowing to yeshivas and day schools is welcome. But it is not a voucher or Education Savings Account system. Donors cannot earmark funds for their own children. SGOs decide awards. There is no guarantee any given family receives meaningful help. Yeshiva tuition for a single child often runs into the tens of thousands of dollars; a scholarship of a few thousand dollars, if it arrives at all, is a modest offset, not a structural solution. True relief would require New York to confront its own high costs: property taxes, energy, regulation, and the absence of a real state-level school choice program that actually competes with the public system. These are steps that Hochul would never take, and opponents like Bruce Blakeman would.
Her record on the issues that matter to Jewish families is poor. New York’s energy costs have climbed under policies she has championed and implemented. The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act framework she advanced has contributed to high utility bills. For the first few years of her term, it seemed like whatever Gavin Newsom did in California, she copied in New York.
In July 2026, she imposed the nation’s first statewide moratorium on large hyperscale data centers, pausing permits while the state builds a regulatory framework. That decision kowtows to activists instead of prioritizing growth and investment at a moment when energy demand is rising and New Yorkers are already paying among the highest rates in the country. She claims it would raise energy rates when studies show that areas with data centers have seen rate decreases.
On public safety, she has continued the cashless bail regime that emptied jails of people charged with serious offenses and produced unsafe streets. While homicides in New York have dropped, other violent crimes have risen. Criminals know that if they do not commit the ultimate crime, they will be released. This includes many crimes that destroy New Yorkers’ quality of life, like activists blocking streets and college campuses, getting desk appearance tickets, and going back onto the street to ruin more lives.
This does not include her shameful reaction to the college campus protests, which saw Jewish students at Cooper Union hiding in libraries and Jewish faculty at NYU and Columbia being harassed. Republicans from all around the country gathered in New York in 2024 to show solidarity with a Jewish community that was being targeted because of Israel, while Democrats, including Kathy Hochul, hid like cowards from their own activists. One of those activists became NYC mayor, and Hochul is spending the final days of the race campaigning with him.
Contrast that with Bruce Blakeman’s record as Nassau County Executive. Nassau has been ranked among the safest counties in the United States by U.S. News & World Report under his watch, with measurable declines in major crime, aggressive hiring of police and corrections officers, and cooperation with federal immigration enforcement that removed criminals. He has held the line on taxes, canceling his Democratic predecessor’s planned increase and delivering consecutive years without hikes. He enacted a mask ban aimed at preventing masked protesters from concealing their identities during antisemitic incidents and other disturbances, the first of its kind in the country, with sensible exceptions for health and religion. He has acted to protect girls’ sports from biological males and has been clear about standing against the tent-city campus radicalism and street disorder that targeted Jewish students and institutions. These are concrete results, not one-time opt-ins to someone else’s program.
Jewish leaders are playing a political game as well. They think that since New York is such a blue state, they might as well be friendly with the Democratic governor because there is no chance a Republican can win. This is the logic of the downtrodden. If that is the mentality, then New York is beyond saving, and the Jewish community should relocate to a friendlier state. We should use our power to work toward something better, not make the best of something that is failing. That is how we thrive in the future, not simply survive the present.
Editor’s Note: The Queens Jewish Link does not endorse political candidates. The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the newspaper or its editorial staff.
Moshe Hill is a political analyst and columnist. His work can be found at www.aHillwithaView.com and on X at @HillWithView.