Hochul isn’t restraining Mamdani — she’s enabling and protecting him

If it weren’t already clear, Gov. Kathy Hochul made it unmistakable last week: She’s committed to enabling Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s worst excesses.

Sure, the gov tells fat-cat donors that she’s reining the mayor in — but it’s barely even good-cop/bad-cop.

More like Dr. Frankenstein and his monster — Gov. Hochulstein, perhaps?

Last week’s tell was her out-of-the-blue defense of Mamdani’s despicable “enemies list” — his Department of Finance’s release of hundreds of thousand of names of New Yorkers who might need to pay the Hochul-Mamdani pied-à-terre tax.

Her name belongs on there every bit as much as his: She pushed it into law in Albany, after she chose it back in April from among his team’s long list of possible tax-the-rich revenue-raisers; her people even did the math to figure out where it needed to kick in to produce the desired take.

The cutoff is $5 million for a standalone-home value; just $1 million for a condo or coop, though the mayor keeps saying it’s only the $5 million amount.

And it was just one part of her bail-out-Zohran package, along with other big state grants and giving a thumbs-up to the city running up billions in fresh debt to fund socialist spending now.

And never mind that it will hit plenty of non-rich: Many a modest unit, bought for far less years ago, could now sell for $1 million or more.

Worse, the DOF enemies list was completely unnecessary: It’s not about notifying the potential taxpayers (the city must contact them directly), so it has to be about alerting the public, especially the mayor’s Luigi Mangione-loving fans, of the names and addresses of their class enemies.

Yet Hochul went out of her way to deny that: The list is nothing “out of the ordinary,” she insisted: “This is a list that’s released on an annual basis. Nothing unusual here.”

If so, gov, point to it — and don’t pretend that the much larger database of all property values is the same thing. We’re waiting . . . 

No: A guilty-till-proven-innocent tax (one where it’s hard to prove innocence!) that’s already swept up innocent New Yorkers is most certainly “out of the ordinary.”

Hochul is now only pretending (for the purposes of not losing in November) to be a moderate: Witness her remarks just the other week that New York “should not be raising taxes on high-net-worth individuals”or job-creating companies — when she’s done at least three such hikes this year alone, including the pied-à-terre tax. 

Whether from fear or cynicism, she’s committed to backing Mamdani’s plays — and is sure to do even more of it after November, when the DSA ranks in the Legislature have grown larger and she no longer has to worry about what the voters think.

Sane New Yorkers need to take notice, and cast their November ballots accordingly: A vote for Hochul is a vote for Mamdani unleashed.