| IT’S NO BALONEY: Gov. Kathy Hochul really does have support for pausing congestion pricing with diner patrons — and we at Playbook saw it for ourselves. At the Townhouse Diner in midtown Manhattan, over a lox omelet and rye toast meal on a Tuesday afternoon, the unthinkable happened. The governor was finishing up an impromptu lunch with Playbook when she was interrupted by a customer who needed to tell her something important. “Governor, I know you’re not doing business,” the woman, who later identified herself as Sharon from Forest Hills, said in a soft and almost trembling tone from the booth across from us. “But I just want to say how pleased with you I am for the stop or the hold on congestion pricing,” Sharon continued. The moment was almost too good to be true. On June 7, when Hochul first stood in front of reporters to explain her abrupt decision to halt congestion pricing, she cited a familiar, and often cliche, political rationale: she made the decision after consulting everyday New Yorkers in diners. Probing journalists and bristled advocates were skeptical given the role House Democratic leadership reportedly played in her decision — something we heard from multiple sources, and that Hakeem Jeffries’ team disputed. But we saw it for ourselves. “All of my doctors are in Manhattan,” a wide-eyed Sharon told Hochul on Tuesday around noon, explaining that the $15 toll would’ve made the medical visits tough for her. “I’ve heard that a lot from people,” the governor said, nodding thoughtfully toward her. The idea that the governor would use diners and food venues as her on-the-road laboratory for testing a policy with billions of dollars behind it drew fury from transit and climate advocates who had worked so hard to put the congestion pricing into place. But the sentiment is rooted in an underlying truth around her decision: the program is roundly unpopular with a majority of voters, some of whom, it appears, do eat at diners. Two months before the pause, 63 percent of voters statewide opposed congestion pricing, including 54 percent of Democrats. And a poll released Tuesday shows 59 percent of New York voters want the program to be permanently scrapped. Just moments before Sharon’s diner declaration, Hochul had been repeating to Playbook the story of how she had entered through the rear entrance of a Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan only to find hundreds of catering staff give her a standing ovation for canceling the program. “I walked into a room of people that were all dressed up, the hotel wait staff, who were gonna go sell breakfast to 500 people,” Hochul said last month. “I got a standing ovation, and I didn’t understand why. They said, ‘Thank you, because we don’t have to pay this.’” The outlet Hell Gate investigated the grandiose story, but could not find conclusive evidence of its truthfulness. In June Hochul claimed the toll would have dissuaded New Jersey residents from driving into Manhattan to eat at their favorite diners — a curious assertion given how singularly popular the Garden State is for its roadside diners. Hell Gate also noted that the governor appeared to have performed her focus group tests in diners steps away from Grand Central Terminal that are seldom reached by car. But others, like Mayor Eric Adams’ spokesperson Fabien Levy, rose up to testify to the governor’s diner devotion. “I know for a fact that Gov. Kathy Hochul not only loves the food at diners, but she uses them as a sounding board about the issues important to working-class people,” Levy, who worked with Hochul when she was running for the House, wrote in a social media post. Sharon, who had finished her meal and had apparently been waiting for that moment, got up and left. The governor then leaned across the table to your now-thoroughly nourished correspondent. With raised eyebrows, she said “See?” as if the apparent I-told-you-so moment happens all the time. — Jason Beeferman | 
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