Money talks!

​​Transit workers are splitting from their union brethren by speaking up for Gov. Kathy Hochul’s embattled pick to lead the state’s highest court ​– ​just months before their contract ends with the Hochul-controlled MTA.

“Nothing has been communicated to me with any kind of specifics about why he’s anti union,” John Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers Union of America, told The Post Monday ahead of an expected confirmation hearing next week by the state Senate Judiciary Committee on Hector LaSalle’s nomination to be New York’s top judge.

“Let’s send him to a hearing – a fair hearing – and let him sit on the hot seat and answer the questions and let’s see what this guy’s really about,” Samuelsen added after releasing an open letter on the topic Monday.

The move by the TWU comes ahead of the May expiration of its labor agreement with the MTA while giving the governor much-needed momentum to say her nomination can still succeed despite growing opposition among state senators.

Hochul has faced scrutiny for alleged pay-to-play schemes involving campaign donors as well as getting support from labor groups with business before the state.

“Most definitely their contract being up soon has everything to do with TWU’s position,” a Democratic consultant said Monday.

But Samuelsen denied Monday that pushing back at the progressives on LaSalle had anything to do with winning brownie points with the governor on behalf of his 155,000-member union, roughly half of which work for the MTA.

“I sent this letter out to have a fair hearing to find out exactly what he believes about the trade union movement and its importance to working people,” he said.

Support from his group contrasts with the fierce opposition from lefty legislators and activists along with other powerful labor groups like SEIU 1199 healthcare workers and 32BJ building workers, who have blasted LaSalle over his judicial record.

This includes a 2015 decision that allowed Cablevision corporate leadership to sue union leaders in their personal capacities.

Supporters of LaSalle – who currently is presiding judge of the second department of the Appellate Division in Brooklyn – say the handful of past rulings cited by his critics merely highlight his commitment to the letter of the law.

Hochul has also touted LaSalle for administrative acumen that she says could go a long way towards streamlining the state’s byzantine court system and unclogging a back-up of jury trials caused by the pandemic.

But Democratic state senators are listening to union leaders more than Hochul on LaSalle, as progressives push the Court of Appeals in a more leftwards direction after years with a relatively centrist majority in New York alongside an increasingly conservative U.S. Supreme Court.

“We’ve looked at what’s happening nationally. We looked at what’s happening here on a state level. And now there’s an opportunity to change the trajectory of this court. And that’s what we would like to see done,” state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said Monday.

So many Democratic senators have said they oppose LaSalle that he will need at least some Republican votes to get approved if his nomination can even get out of the Judiciary Committee to reach the state Senate floor.

Republican state Senate Minority Leader Robert Ortt told reporters Monday that the governor has “refused to reach out to me or to engage in a conversation” with his side of the aisle despite their potential willingness to give her 21 out of the 32 votes she would need to get him approved by the full 63-member Senate.

Hochul has reportedly been whipping votes for LaSalle by personally “putting the screws” on Democratic state senators, but some of them have told The Post they are weary of bucking demands by big labor to vote him down.

Those efforts continued Monday at the Capitol where union leaders rallied against LaSalle in a renewed effort to get Hochul to withdraw his nomination, especially considering all the effort that labor groups put into her gubernatorial campaign amid a tough challenge from Republican Lee Zeldin.

But the close relationship Hochul has had with organized labor appears to be fraying just over a week into her newly-won term with the exception of the TWU.

“I was Team Hochul,” James Mahoney, general vice president of the Ironworkers District Council, said at a Monday rally within the Capitol.

“When she was worried that she’s gonna lose this race to the console right, and the phone rang, and the phone rang. We need more money, we need more volunteers, we need labor behind. She promised us that we we’ve got to have a seat at the table, she put us on the menu,” he added.

Hochul yanked Mahoney’s invitation for her Tuesday State of the State speech shortly after his blistering speech concluded, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.

“No comment,” Mahoney told The Post when asked about it.

A Hochul spokeswoman did not immediately provide comment.