Life after Congress: How John Katko got a PBS show

WASHINGTON — John Katko has had three careers now — none that he would have necessarily predicted, but all ones he’s enjoyed.

First, nearly two decades as a federal prosecutor. Then, eight years in Congress representing a swath of central New York that included Syracuse.

Now, Act 3: television personality.

Katko, 63, a moderate Republican, in 2024 launched a pilot TV show with his local Syracuse-based PBS station that was picked up last month by the PBS World channel. It’s being distributed to more than 188 PBS member stations nationwide, along with a new podcast and an expanded YouTube presence.

Called “Balancing Act,” the show echoes Katko’s philosophy for four terms in the House — no-nonsense, striving for solutions and aiming for the segment of the population that Katko argues is underserved by the mainstream media: moderates.

“If you’re a hard-right conservative, you can get a steady diet of hard-right conservative news via the internet or TV, and same if you’re a hard left,” he said. “And you know, I think the middle is vastly underserved in this country.”

The show offers a tangible way he can weigh in on a political environment that he finds endlessly frustrating, an environment that contributed to his 2022 decision not to seek a fifth term.

Both parties, he argues, are “obsessed with gaining the majority.”

“And when they get the majority, they really don’t know what to do, or they do things that are so crazy that they get tossed out next term,” he said. “It’s almost like they’ve lost the nuances of governing and replaced it with the insatiable desire to just be in the majority at all costs.”

Meanwhile, he said, the nation faces an increasingly daunting list of problems.

“Both sides are like dogs chasing the car,” he added. “They finally catch up to the car, and they don’t know what the hell to do.”

Katko, who served as the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, said cyber issues present a persistent and ominous threat.

“If we ever get into a real conflict with Russia or China, we are going to have massive cyberattacks against us, and it’s a war that is going to be fought oftentimes behind the computer.”

He’s also concerned about drones.

“We’ve got a lot of vulnerabilities where we have mass gatherings of people that could be prime targets for bad people to exploit,” he said. “We cannot take our eye off that stuff.”

Bills do get passed, he acknowledges. But when they do, it’s usually because the majority party has rammed them through with little to no bipartisan support.

“The dysfunctionality is really high,” he said. “I guarantee you that both parties wouldn’t be doing a lot of things they’re doing now, with respect to the shutdown and other things, if there wasn’t such a grip on their respective parties by the extreme elements. To me, that’s the real problem in Congress.”

Leaving Congress

Katko announced plans to retire from Congress in 2022, a year after voting to impeach President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

He was one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach, and many assumed the pressure surrounding that choice led to his decision to leave.

But the two issues weren’t linked, he said.

Katko and his wife had lost all four of their parents within a two-year span. He was nearing his 60th birthday. He had always been a believer in term limits.

“I looked at the dysfunctionality of Congress,” he said. “I looked at a number of good years I have left on this great Earth, and mindful of the passing of our parents … I just thought it was a good time to go.

“I don’t regret that decision for a second.”

With impeachment, “I put on my prosecutor’s hat, and I did a clinical analysis, and it came to an inescapable conclusion that he should be held responsible. And I had a long track record of not being afraid to do what I think was right, as opposed to what’s politically expedient.”

The impeachment vote was by no means the first time he’d bucked his party.

In 2017, he voted against the GOP health care plan. In 2021, he voted to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., of her committee assignments. And he supported the final version of the bipartisan infrastructure act and CHIPS and Science Act during the Biden administration.

The latter votes were points of pride for Katko at the time — evidence that despite the partisan divide, “there are a lot of things that [get done in Congress that] are very, very good.”

“You know, I understand you pick and choose your battles and all that, but they don’t pick and choose any battles,” he said of the current Congress.

Look at the so-called “big, beautiful” bill, he said.

“If you’re really a fiscal hawk, like all the Freedom Caucus guys said they were, they would have said, ‘No, we can’t do this because it’s going to blow a hole in the budget.’”

His advice to current lawmakers?

“Don’t be afraid to do what’s right, and don’t be afraid to lose your seat, because there’s a wonderful life after Congress,” he said. “And it’s better to leave Congress with your integrity intact than to leave Congress with your integrity tarnished because you voted too many times to save your job.”

Life after Congress

Though the TV show and his consulting work take up a lot of his focus, Katko said he’s able now to spend part of the year in Syracuse and the other part in Florida, near Sarasota.

“Never in a million years did I think I was going to be a snowbird, but here I am,” he said. “It’s funny, though, when you get on the plane to go to Florida from Washington … there’s probably half a dozen retired members of Congress on the plane with you. It’s quite a little fraternity.”

He said the biggest adjustment of post-congressional life is “not having a scheduler.”

“Oh, it’s brutal,” he said, describing “screwing up” his times and flights now. “You don’t realize how much you relied on individuals. They basically ran your life.”

Katko was already serving as a senior adviser for HillEast, with clients including airport authorities for Sarasota and Syracuse airports, and consulting. He also served as a contributor on ABC News. Still, the PBS show was a bit of a fluke.

About a year ago, he said, he was giving a speech at a private club in Syracuse. “And I was unvarnished, which I’m prone to do these days, and somebody came up to me afterwards, and they said, ‘Hey, we’ve got to do a TV show.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, you’re crazy.’”

That somebody was Mitch Gelman, president and CEO of WCNY, a public media station in central New York, and Rich Ezzo, vice president of sales and marketing for the station. Despite Katko’s initial skepticism, they started with a pilot run in the summer and fall of 2024 before taking a hiatus until spring of this year. On Oct. 28, WCNY announced that World had picked up the program. The show’s goal, according to a press release, is to “move beyond partisan talking points and bring together diverse perspectives — with Katko walking the ‘tightrope’ between viewpoints.”

His hope, he said, is to present a balanced view.

“There’s much more of a clamoring for a moderate voice. And I think that’s why we have so much angst in this country politically — is that it’s a ‘shirt’ and ‘skin’ type thing,” he said. “You’re either with us or against us, and never the twain shall meet.

“And that’s just not the art of politics.”