Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado received some national political attention last year when he said former President Joe Biden should drop his reelection bid — long before many others in his party made the call, including his boss Gov. Kathy Hochul.

With Hochul up for reelection next year, there’s speculation that Delgado may want the job for himself — a political rumor that the lieutenant governor doesn’t want to talk about.

As New York’s second in command, Delgado not only has the ability to chart his own future but believes he can also change the trajectory of the state’s Democratic Party.

“To have the president now reemerge, the focus now, I believe, has to go from him to us. How do we get back into this position? What are we doing wrong?” the Democrat said. “What are we missing in our capacity to want to lead folks in a way that makes them feel like we actually give a damn?”

Raising eyebrows — and his profile.

Delgado emerged as a critic of the Democratic status quo: breaking with Hochul when he called on Biden to take a knee and later penning an op-ed column condemning his party’s leadership.

“It’s important to be vocal. It’s important to name things honestly and genuinely just in the same way with Biden. I thought it was important for me to speak [about] my conscience. I thought it was important to say what I genuinely believed even if it would have some type of political fall out potentially — it was irrelevant to me,” he said.

The job can be a launchpad.

His own boss shot to the top of the ticket when ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned.

Other former lieutenant governors, Mary Anne Krupsak and Betsy McCaughey Ross, unsuccessfully tried to challenge the governors they worked for.

Asked whether he’s got his eyes on Hochul’s job, he said, “As I’ve said: I don’t have any intention of doing that. My focus right now is to do exactly what I’m doing, which is to engage with the people, to stay connected to the people, to articulate the pain of the people.”

During this last election cycle, he crisscrossed the state campaigning for battleground Democrats — an effort that was often left off his public schedule.  

“Try to figure out how to leverage the role that I have, to give people hope for the future and to help them see something that is possible, that is tangible in a real way. And I’m trying to do that with whoever is willing to do that. The stakes are too high to think about anything other than that,” Delgado told NY1.

Before getting plucked to replace Hochul’s first choice, Brian Benjamin, Delgado was almost a two-term congressman who represented a disparate rural district covering the Hudson Valley and parts of Central New York.

“I got into politics as somebody completely outside politics,” he said, recalling his congressional campaign for New York’s 19th district in 2018 — before the lines changed in the 2020 redistricting process.

He served in the seat from 2019 to 2022.

“In a district that no Democrat had ever won, a district that Trump had won by seven points, 90% white, eighth most rural congressional district in the country. Not a lot of folks thought I could win that district,” Delgado said.

The father of 8-year-old, identical twins, Delgado is a firm backer of the governor’s proposed cellphone ban in schools and parts of the state budget geared toward families.

“The child tax credit is an important piece to the budget. Not only does that grow in terms of the actual amount,” he explained. “What the governor has done is allow folks that are the lowest income filers, who were for reasons that are hard to fully comprehend, not able to fully access the full credit. That’s being changed too.”

Leading the state’s Council of Community Justice, Delgado says more dollars should go toward pretrial services to avoid sending people to jail.

“Making sure that folks can get on the subway and feel safe, our kids can get on the subway and feel safe. I think having the cops on the subway is an important step in that direction. I think the decision to start really thinking through whether or not we should rework the involuntary piece is an important component as well,” he said.