Talk:List of governors of New York

re time in office

I don't see how it's relevant to know the exact number of days someone spent in office, especially when so many are exactly 2 years. (and are, in fact, calculated incorrectly, since the template can only subtract days but has no knowledge of the midnight-to-midnight posting) The ones that served less are easily noted by election column and the why-the-left bit which I'm working on adding in a moment. So I won't push on this at this moment, but when I get these other columns up to snuff I would like to revisit the time-in-office bit. --Golbez (talk) 19:19, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Kathy Hochul as New York's first female governor

Should that be mentioned in the lede as it mentions that David Paterson was the state's first African-American and legally blind governor?

Notelist: Andrew Cuomo's Resignation

ab: ^ Cuomo resigned due to allegations of sexual harassment.[6]

Due to should be because of, which is correct grammar and usage. Of course, I'm just an anonymous contributor and will defer to the official Wikipedia editors. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.198.85.24 (talk) 01:47, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Proposed merge of List of governors of New York by time in office into List of governors of New York

the same result can be achieved by the reader by sorting the correct column of the List of governors of New York page. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 13:26, 3 July 2022 (UTC) -MPGuy2824 (talk) 13:26, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

I boldly redirected the new list to this one. Indeed, this list is sortable and is well-cited (as a featured list), so there's not really much to merge aside from perhaps a few additional citations, which are accessible in the redirect's history if desired. ComplexRational (talk) 01:43, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Midnight

Does anyone know when the midnight thing started? The article presently says early terms ended June 30 and the next term began July 1, but that's not backed up by anything, and I think whoever did that assumed the midnight rule applied back then. I'm right now operating on the assumption that it started mattering when they went to a January 1 inauguration, but if anyone has any hard info that'd be great. --Golbez (talk) 03:30, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

More January 1 shenanigans

All modern sources say that Reuben Fenton took office on January 1, 1865. I even found a source from as far back as 1910 saying this: [1] --- except, wait a second. That source says "Monday, January 1, 1865". January 1, 1865 was a Sunday. And I think this mistake has been repeated forever, because every contemporary news source I've found on newspapers.com says he was inaugurated at noon on Monday, January 2 (example: [2]) And from what I can tell, the constitution in effect at the time did not specify the start date of the term, so unless someone can find some source that says that, by law, the governor-elect became governor on Janaury 1 automatically, then I think we need to shift Reuben Fenton's start date to January 2. --Golbez (talk) 05:06, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Ok, more on the midnight stuff:

• 1821 constitution: "The governor ... first elected under this Constitution, shall enter on the duties of their respective offices on the first day of January, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-three; and the governor ... now in office, shall continue to hold the same until the first day of January 1823, and no longer." This implies that the changeover happens on January 1, not in between. So. For this constitution the term is considered to end Janaury 1 and begin January 1.
• 1846 constitution: "... the governor and lieutenant governor in office when this Constitution shall take effect, shall hold their respective offices until and including the thirty-first day of December of that year." Implying that they cannot be in office January 1, and so the changeover is at December 31/midnight.
• 1894 constitution: "The Governor ... shall hold office until and including the thirty-first day of December, 1896" "until and including" implying the whole of December 31 but nothing more, implying a midnight changeover.

But,

• I find no mention of any kind of midnight changeover until 1899, when Teddy Roosevelt was took the oath of office on December 31, implying he took office at midnight January 1.
• After that, I find mentions of midnight changeovers in 1905 ("took place at midnight tonight") and 1911 ("in power at midnight") [I've only worked up to 1915 so far]; the changeovers of 1901 ("took office at 12:30pm"), 1907 ("Hughes takes oath at noon [Jan 1]") and 1913 ("inaugurated at noon [Jan 1]") explicitly give a time other than midnight.
• I'd like to just be able to say "all governors after 1846 switch at midnight" or, more reasonable, "all governors after 1894", but the people at the time don't seem to have thought of it that way.
• Therefore, right now, my plan is to include a midnight changeover only when an early/midnight oath is specifically mentioned in contemporary reporting. Otherwise, if the locals didn't think the governor had changed, why should we disagree?

I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts or other evidence on this. I tried googling around for "new york governor midnight" to see if there was a particular history or reasoning but Hochul's recent inauguration crowded out all results. --Golbez (talk) 15:25, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

To put into short terms: What's really messing this up is the constitution never specifies when a term begins, only when it ends. In most cases I've seen, when a successor is delayed in taking office, the predecessor stays on until they've done so, which implies that we should only include midnight changeovers when they were explicitly so. --Golbez (talk) 15:26, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Oooh, I found an interesting one from 1921: [3] "Judge Miller took the informal oath of office late [Dec 31] ... in order that the state would not be without a governor between midnight tonight when Governor Smith's term expired, and noon tomorrow when the formal oath of office will be administered" At least this particular newspaper thinks the term ended right at midnight and ... I guess an interregnum? Presumably they don't think it passed down the line of succession. --Golbez (talk) 15:41, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

re 'length of term' table

The new table largely recreated the main table, listing names, terms, parties, and sources, while adding a single new datapoint of length of term. This is a lot of effort for a single datapoint. And my personal feeling is, it's not an important datapoint. It doesn't really add anything to an understanding of the subject beyond what the main table does. But I don't own the article, so I'm simply making my argument. --Golbez (talk) 15:16, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Martin Van Buren has an RfC

Martin Van Buren has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Emiya1980 (talk) 05:57, 28 August 2024 (UTC)