ALBANY, New York – New York’s ambitious lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, made a rare appearance in the state Capitol in late March.
Members of both parties thought he’d be helming the state Senate session. But after word got out Republicans were planning to make that job difficult, he disappeared — and hasn't performed any official business in the Senate chambers since.
In fact, Delgado hasn't done much official business at all this year — not since he openly split with Gov. Kathy Hochul in February. And certainly not since he announced plans in June to challenge Hochul in next year’s Democratic primary.
Hochul has made sure Delgado has stayed far away: The governor this year reduced her hand-picked lieutenant's staff to one employee. She revoked his executive email account. And she even seized his cell phone.
And now her supporters are hammering the idea that Delgado is a do-nothing elected official.
“What Lt. Gov. Delgado has been doing as it relates to service in government is nothing,” former New York City Council speaker Christine Quinn told POLITICO. “It just galls me that somebody who had an opportunity to serve and accomplish things like Hochul did would squander that opportunity in an effort to take the first woman governor out of office.”
There’s certainly little evidence Delgado has maintained a busy official schedule since he shifted into campaign mode — his office only preannounced six non-political events from March through July.
But that’s at least partially due to the fact that he doesn’t have much of an office anymore. Hochul has spent a decade extolling the importance of a loyal lieutenant governor. When Delgado split, the governor flexed her muscles by removing all his resources: Hochul went so far as to prohibit Delgado from working out of an office once used by toll collectors on the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge, ending a longstanding practice of letting lieutenant governors have a desk close to home.
All of this together has made for high drama early in the 2026 gubernatorial race — a contest in which Delgado has so far emerged as the governor’s only serious primary challenger. The incumbent governor’s supporters are now characterizing Delgado as lazy, pointing to a thin public schedule. At the same, Hochul has so thoroughly sidelined her No. 2 that he now has fewer official resources than many town council members. And the efforts to ostracize him have been so complete that the usual channels for keeping tabs on his official activities have completely broken down.
“The Governor has spent more time inventing cheap attacks than actually working with the Lieutenant Governor’s office. She stripped away staff and resources and now complains there’s less to show for it,” Delgado campaign spokesman Steven Ileka said.
“Antonio Delgado has been everywhere — listening to New Yorkers, elevating their voices, and holding this administration accountable. That’s what leadership looks like. Instead of focusing on results, Governor Hochul has fallen back on Republican-style smear tactics about his work ethic — the same kind of dog-whistle politics New Yorkers are tired of.”
Lieutenant governors essentially occupy two roles.
One is serving as Senate president. The other is more nebulous, but also more visible. As the lone high-ranking elected official with a light formal workload, lieutenant governors of the past have barnstormed New York as the face of state government. Think: ribbon cuttings for new businesses and town centennial celebrations.
Those duties are often accompanied with promoting the governor’s agenda. Delgado obviously isn’t doing that. But POLITICO’s attempts to glean what else he might be engaged in quickly devolved into a Kafkaesque journey through New York’s bureaucracy.
In May, POLITICO submitted Freedom of Information Law requests for Delgado’s daily schedules since his February split with Hochul. Those requests went to both the lieutenant governor’s office and the governor’s office.
The email to the lieutenant governor bounced back. That’s because when Hochul’s administration downsized Delgado’s office, they revoked his access to email.
A paper FOIL request slipped through the door of his one remaining Albany office went unanswered as well. A Capitol staffer near the office said they hadn’t seen anyone there in weeks.
The governor’s office — which is legally responsible for making the lieutenant governor’s schedules available to the public — replied a month later. Since Hochul’s staff is no longer in touch with Delgado, her FOIL compliance team said they have no way of obtaining his schedules since February. Instead, they suggested contacting the state Senate, since Delgado’s lone remaining staffer was given a legislative email address as their sole means of communication.
The Senate, unsurprisingly, does not maintain records for executive branch officials, but did have an email address for Delgado’s staffer. She eventually responded by saying that since the lieutenant governor’s office doesn’t have a FOIL officer, they can’t comply with the law. Try sending the request to the governor’s office or the Senate, the staffer suggested.
POLITICO made another attempt to find out what Delgado has been up to through Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s office, which responded to a FOIL request for reimbursements and purchases Delgado’s office has made with a state credit card since February.
Delgado’s office was reimbursed for only six events in the 15 weeks after he announced his split with Hochul, according to those records. One of the state-funded trips involved booking hotels in Syracuse on April 30 and Buffalo on May 1.
That sojourn coincides with town halls Delgado held in the two upstate cities. Those events were promoted by his campaign and held in partnership with groups such as Indivisible, which directly engage in electoral work. His campaign also spent $2,900 on hotels and meals in Syracuse and Buffalo on those days.
As Delgado’s critics have noted, his schedule of officially advised public events typically hasn’t been substantial at any point during his tenure as lieutenant governor. He made 91 preannounced public appearances in 2024, in 28 of the state’s 62 counties. Hochul started serving as lieutenant governor in 2015 and held that role until Andrew Cuomo stepped down as governor in 2021. By comparison, she has regularly topped 400 advised events per year over the past decade. She even had a seven-year streak of annual visits to each of the state’s 62 counties.
The number of non-campaign events Delgado has put out advisories for has dwindled significantly since he split with the governor. He released schedules for 28 such events in the first six months of the year, compared to 275 for Hochul in the first half of her fourth year serving as lieutenant governor. Only six of Delgado’s events occurred from March through June.
Delgado also performs another function as lieutenant governor: serving as president of the Senate. In that role, he presides over legislative sessions, providing a link between the legislative and executive branches. The job is less important than it once was, as a commanding Democratic majority means the party hasn’t needed a tie-breaking vote on procedural matters in years.
But it’s still the only day-to-day role prescribed by the state constitution — and a duty that can be fulfilled even when a governor isn’t willing to give their running mate other responsibilities. Lt. Gov. Betsey McCaughey Ross presided over the Senate seven times in the three months after she announced her bid against Gov. George Pataki in 1998.
“That is the one duty that’s outlined in the constitution, yes. And I’ve done that,” Delgado said when asked at his campaign launch whether he’d return to the Senate for the first time since January. “But a part of that really is making sure that I connect directly with the senators.”
Delgado had 33 conversations and events with individual senators identified in his personal schedules from May 2022 through Feb. 2025, an average of one every 31 days.
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