Picture the scene: You’re having a nice party up in Catskill to celebrate the beginning of what you expect to be a successful re-election bid for state Senate. Friends and political allies are there, maybe having a few beers while talking politics and making plans for the 2022 campaign.

Then, just as you’ve wrapped up your speech and gotten a big hug from Pat Ryan as the guests applaud, someone appears out of left field and starts peppering you with pointed questions about why you’re not backing a statewide Good Cause Eviction law. You make a response — something about it being a campaign so you can’t get too much into legislation (say what now?) as the party-crasher — and as far as we know the only person on Earth to date to actually get a direct response out of you about this issue — is ushered from the room. Outside, more GCE supporters are standing with signs, talking to the guests about this issue. Did somebody say they might primary you next time?

You’re Michelle Hinchey, and yes, you have a Good Cause Eviction problem.

Five or six upstate small cities passing laws that basically prevent renters from being thrown out unless they are objectively bad tenants is one thing. Extending that across the state, and especially New York City, where rental housing is a billions-of-dollars concern and many get rich by buying buildings, jacking the rent so the tenants leave and replacing them with the more affluent, is another thing altogether. A very big thing.

So far, we have yet to see any indication that anyone with the power to advance the bill has any inclination to actually do so, other than a statement by Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins that while the bill as currently proposed won’t fly, some form of the concept might. The governor made no reference to it in her budget proposal, and it hasn’t appeared in either the Senate’s or Assembly’s “one-house” budget bills either. We suspect that’s at least in part because New York City landlords have spent more than $1 million lobbying against it, including phone-banking, mailers and digital and radio ads. There’s also the money real estate magnates give to lawmakers; Hinchey has gotten at least $17,800 from one Gotham landlord and the total figure of donations to her from that sector is likely much higher.

For the Many, the local housing advocate group that staged the March 8 demonstration and vow many more to come, say Hinchey’s one of the most vocal opponents of the bill behind closed doors. We have no way to independently confirm this as she has consistently met media requests for comment with silence. “Let them eat static,” someone said in a movie once; it sounds appropriate to use here, especially since she delegated the job of talking to For the Many about the matter to a subordinate.

But both Hinchey and Hochul point to other housing initiatives they say will relieve, if not cure, the housing crisis we find ourselves in. Just two days after the Catskill confrontation, her office put out a press release trumpeting a proposed $200 million for seven programs ranging from rental assistance to help for smaller landlords to helping senior citizens fix unsafe conditions in their homes. All of which we like, but none of which are as fundamental to housing security as Good Cause Eviction.

Things have come a long way for tenants in a short time. Until very recently, it was a landlord’s world and we were just renting in it, with the laws and those who enforce them coming down on the side of property owners much more often than not. That’s why we were surprised by the recent arrest of a local landlord on criminal charges for allegedly cutting off a renter’s heat over back rent issues. Nobody on the Editorial Team, including the member who’s been doing journalism in the Hudson Valley since joining the SUNY New Paltz Oracle in 1988, can remember something like that ever happening before. That tells us that sympathies have shifted a great deal toward tenant protection and away from landlords’ rights. As few as five years ago, Good Cause Eviction would have been laughed out of town, but now it’s the law of Kingston, and several other cities besides. We’ll see what happens with court challenges, but as we’ve said, we support GCE’s fundamental concept of leveling the owner-renter playing field.

Those who would label Good Cause Eviction as socialist fantasy lacking popular support may want to rethink things. Also last week, about a dozen of the state’s most powerful unions, including labor heavy-hitters SEIU 1199, New York State Nurses Association and District Council 37, New York City’s biggest union representing city government workers, put out an open letter to the governor and leaders of both state legislature houses urging GCE’s passage. “With the support of elected leaders like you, we fight for fair wages and respectful working conditions every day in workplaces across the state,” the letter reads. “Too often, though, the wage gains our members win at the bargaining table are wiped away by the escalating cost of rental housing.”

Further evidence of shifting sentiment is a poll taken last August by Data for Progress which found that statewide support for Good Cause Eviction is strong — 64 percent of respondents across New York said they either strongly or somewhat supported statewide GCE, a figure that rose to 77 percent among Democrats. In the Mid-Hudson region strong/somewhat support came in at 65 percent. As far as we can tell, Siena hasn’t polled on this issue — President Chris Gibson, can we put in a request?

Ulster County, which will be exclusively Hinchey’s to represent post-legislative redistricting, has always had a more progressive electorate than most places. It took decades, but Democrats now almost fully control countywide politics. This leftward pull shows no sign of slowing, much less stopping.

And that brings us back to Michelle Hinchey’s problem. Among Ulster-representing state-level Democratic legislators, she stands out as both Assemblyman Kevin Cahill and Assemblyman Jonathan Jacobson are in favor of Good Cause Eviction. (To be frank, GCE sounds just like the kind of thing her father would have supported had it come up when he was in the Assembly.) If Cahill, few people’s idea of a conservative, is getting a primary challenge from the left this year, we think Hinchey’s likely got one coming in ’24. Or maybe even ’22 — if we’re reading the political calendar correctly, there are still a few weeks remaining to get nominating petitions in for the June primary. Derailing Dave Donaldson was one thing, but if Sarahana Shrestha gets close or even beats Cahill in three months, Hinchey’s seat will likely be progressives’ next objective.

So we urge Michelle Hinchey to get on the Good Cause Eviction bandwagon. She’ll get to help protect millions of renters from Long Island to Lackawanna and from Massena to Manhattan, and help her own political prospects too.