Kathy Hochul’s empty State of the State message: Please re-elect me!

Gov. Kathy Hochul couldn’t have been clearer about her top priority Tuesday: getting re-elected.

In her fifth State of the State Address — her big chance to offer a real vision — she rolled out a poll-tested grab bag of proposals, with a few decent ideas, but mostly a mix of harmful ones, petty small-ball and pure nonsense.

Hochul seized on the new buzzword, “affordability” — with “universal day care” her chief offering.

That’s also one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top goals, of course: The gov wants his love, and his voters . . . even if it bankrupts the state.

Characteristically, she offers just a modest foot-in-the-door first step: a pilot program to reach just 2,000 city kids by fall.

But down the road, experts put the tab for statewide universal child care at $15 billion or more: That’s likely after she leaves office, though; she’s aiming to win credit for being on the right side without having to budget for it until she’s done facing the voters.

Meanwhile, the state already faces billions in red ink in coming years, and billions more as Washington cuts back on Biden-era no-questions-asked federal funds for New York’s sprawling welfare state and the special interests that feed on it.

The gov opted to paint that as DC Republicans’ war on the state, insisting New Yorkers’ “rights are under attack” and vowing to “fight back.”

Conspicuously, she offered no hint of seeking reforms to Medicaid, the largest single category of state spending after her last effort at a fix (to the scandal-plagued home-health-aide program) proved a fiasco.

Hochul also jumped on the anti-ICE bandwagon, vowing to “stand up” to agents who abuse their power and banning the agency’s use of state resources to nab illegal immigrants who haven’t committed “serious” crimes; she also wants to require judicial warrants for any “civil immigration enforcement” at “sensitive locations.”

That’s a blatant pander to the radical, anti-ICE left, but hello?  Agents who break the law are already subject to consequences.

And all-out resistance to ICE guarantees trouble: New York already shields even the “worst of the worst” illegal immigrants from the least-disruptive apprehension, namely as they leave jail, prison or court.

Instead, state law forces ICE to go into the community — upping the odds of conflict.

Red states that cooperate with ICE aren’t seeing the violence and mayhem roiling uncooperative blue ones.

OK: A few Hochul ideas deserve some praise: She wants to crack down on auto-insurance fraud and cut red tape to speed up housing development; she recognizes the need for more energy and vowed to expand nuclear power (though she’s still committed to a lunatic green-energy plan that would reduce other energy sources).

Also worthy: The gov’s push to protect kids from online gaming and social-media threats — including mandatory default privacy settings, expanded age-verification requirements, restricted AI chatbot features and parental tools to limit kids’ financial transactions.

Congress should pass nationwide rules for these issues, but keeping kids safe is too important: She’s wise to push state protections now (particularly if multiple states can adopt similar ones).

Details on Hochul’s full agenda will dribble out in coming weeks — starting with her budget presentation next week, which should at least hint on how she’ll pay for her plans.

Caught between a US president and New York City mayor each pushing radical change (and relentlessly grabbing headlines), Hochul’s small-ball agenda could come as a relief — if the Empire State weren’t mired in long-term decline.

The gov’s message really boils down to managing that decline; perhaps that rock-no-boats agenda will indeed win her another term, but it does nothing to even challenge the forces eating away at New York’s prosperity.