Life Imitates Art? Kathy Hochul Will Be New York’s First Female Governor

On Tuesday, August 24, 2021 Kathy Hochul will be sworn in as New York’s 57^th Governor when current Governor Andrew Cuomo’s resignation goes into effect.  Cuomo announced his resignation on August 10 (to become effective two weeks from the announcement) in response to Attorney General Letitia James’ report which found that Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women.  Importantly, Hochul will, at the same time, become New York’s first female governor. 

Kathy Hochul will become the 1st Female Governor of New York on Aug. 24, 2021

It is no secret that women have struggled to reach top executive elected positions throughout the United States.  The United States has never elected a female president, has only seen a woman lead a major party ticket once, and just elected its first female vice president in November 2020.  At the state level, women have fared only marginally better.  44 women (26 Democrats, 18 Republicans) have served as governors across 30 states throughout U.S. history.  This number will tick up to 31 when Hochul takes office next week, leaving 19 states that have never had a female governor.  Of these female governors, the first elected to office was Ella Grasso (Democrat from Connecticut) in 1975.  Prior to her, three women served as governors in Wyoming, Texas, and Alabama without winning election.  Instead, these women were selected as surrogates for their husbands who either died or were term limited.  Additionally, 12 of these female governors assumed office upon resignation of the male governor that held office prior to them.  Overall, then, we see that only 29 women have been elected to state governorships on their own right.  Next week, Hochul will join this list of female politicians to assume office after the resignation of a male executive.

Geena Davis played Vice President-turned-President Mackenzie Allen on Commander in Chief

This path of ascension to higher office for female candidates is a clear instance of life imitating art, as the lack of elected female executives is portrayed in popular culture as well.  Even in television and movies it is rare to see a woman elected to be president of the United States or governor of a state.  Instead, pop culture places females in an executive position by way of the male executive’s resignation from office, death, or some other calamity.  In the short-lived television series Commander in Chief, Geena Davis’s character becomes president upon the sudden and unexpected death of the president. Additionally, despite being the elected vice president, she was asked to resign her position prior to the President’s death so that the Speaker of the House (a male) would become president upon his passing.  In HBO’s Veep, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s character becomes president upon the resignation of the president.  Then, when she actually runs for president she is defeated. 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus played Vice President-turned-President Selina Meyer on Veep

Since Hillary Clinton’s historic run for the White House in 2016, we have seen many women (on both sides of the political aisle) run for public office.  Many have since been elected.  In fact, there is plenty of political science scholarship that tells us that when women run, they are just as likely as men to win.  Women are just not encouraged to seek office as much as men are.  However, seeing a woman hold the top executive office in a state is still fairly uncommon and Kamala Harris is the first woman we have seen win the vice presidency of the United States.  Popular Culture even struggles to provide examples of women in positions of executive authority—at least those elected to executive positions on their own right.  New York, however, will get its first example of a female governor when Andrew Cuomo’s resignation goes into effect.  Kathy Hochul, a Buffalo native no less, will break the gubernatorial glass ceiling in New York next week when she is sworn into office. She will become the latest example of female executive leadership in one of the largest states in the country.