Hochul Comments On Chants During Rally
Governor Kathy Hochul might have made one of the most unintentionally comical political dodges of the year — and, in doing so, walked headfirst into a moment that now lives alongside “Let’s go, Brandon” in the modern political blooper reel.
Kathy Hochul oddly drags Buffalo Bills into ‘tax the rich’ chant that overwhelmed her appearance at Zohran Mamdani rally https://t.co/tTLLtrO6Nv pic.twitter.com/1vBIiNrzL6
— New York Post (@nypost) October 27, 2025
It happened during a rally for progressive New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, where the crowd broke into a now-familiar chant: “Tax the rich!” It's a rallying cry the far-left has weaponized in New York politics — one that’s unambiguous in tone, content, and, frankly, volume. But when asked whether she would cave to pressure from this tax-the-rich faction, or hold the line and risk a primary challenge, Hochul pulled a play out of the Talladega playbook.
“I thought they were saying, ‘Let’s go Bills,’” she claimed with a straight face.
This wasn’t Buffalo. This was New York City — six hours away, and a world apart in terms of football allegiances. Giants. Jets. Not Bills. And certainly not in Mamdani’s backyard, where progressive activism has been louder than any football crowd. Yet there Hochul stood, channeling her inner Kelli Stavast, the NBC reporter who famously misheard (or perhaps pretended to mishear) a Talladega crowd chanting an expletive-laced condemnation of President Biden, interpreting it instead as “Let’s go, Brandon.”
The parallels are uncanny, and critics wasted no time connecting the dots.
Rep. Elise Stefanik skewered Hochul on social media, writing, “The #BillsMafia won’t forget. What a trainwreck @KathyHochul is every single day.” Others were less polite, pointing out the absurdity of a governor pretending not to recognize one of the most well-worn chants in progressive politics — especially when she was standing feet away from the man whose platform revolves around that very slogan.
The #BillsMafia won’t forget
What a trainwreck @KathyHochul is every single day. https://t.co/dBgS5giRI2
— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) October 27, 2025
What’s more telling than Hochul’s obvious deflection is what it reveals about the state of Democratic politics in New York: a party increasingly torn between moderate pragmatists and hard-left ideologues. Hochul, facing pressure from progressive legislators and activists to raise taxes on high earners and corporations, is trying to walk a tightrope — and in doing so, may have tripped over her own feet.
Instead of acknowledging the tension or addressing the policy debate head-on, she chose to pretend she couldn’t hear the message — literally. It’s a dodge that doesn’t just insult voters’ intelligence, but comes across as tone-deaf at a moment when her political base is growing increasingly restless.
If “Let’s go, Brandon” became a viral euphemism for rejecting presidential leadership, Hochul may have just birthed its East Coast cousin: “Let’s go, Bills” — a phrase that, from now on, may be synonymous with political evasion in the face of inconvenient truths.