Kathy Hochul wants to break law to change voting map

Gov. Kathy Hochul is on a mission . . . to prove she can spew blarney with the best.

“Children are starving,” Hochul emoted to Rachel Maddow on Monday; that’s why she’ll “fight fire with fire” by redrawing New York’s House districts to counteract Texas’ redistricting plan — which she calls a “declaration of war on the American people.” 

Utter hogwash: The gov claims kids are “starving” because Republicans cut SNAP (food stamp) benefits; in fact, the expanded work requirements (for some recipients) won’t kick in until 2027 at the soonest — it’s another phony “famine.”

The string of nonstop lies began with Hochul’s pledge in a Houston Chronicle column to save “our democracy” by gerrymandering New York’s congressional map to kill Republican-leaning seats if Texas GOP lawmakers go ahead with their Democrat-reducing plan.

Yet the gov can’t get New York redistricted that fast: The state Constitution not only explicitly forbids (nakedly) partisan map-drawing, it also orders redistricting get done at the turn of the decade.

As it is, the state just redrew its maps last year after long court battles prompted by state Democrats’ 2021 drive to kill GOP districts.

Even after Dems packed the state’s top court, the justices will find it hard to swallow Hochul ordering up a new map just because she’s changed her mind about the one she signed into law a year ago.  

So she’d need to get the state Constitution amended first — and that’s at least a two-year process that she’d have to start by calling a special session since the Legislature finished for the year months ago.

Hochul’s just jumping on the Democrat outrage wagon, along with Govs. Gavin Newsom and J.B. Pritzker. 

Yet, unlike those two blowhards, Hochul isn’t even eyeing a 2028 presidential run, so why bother with this bull?

Our best guess: She figures Democrats are so deep in denial that they’ll turn on her if she doesn’t join in the fibbing.

Which prompts the question: Who’s more pathetic here — Hochul or her whole party?