If you want real change and a better standard of living, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman deserves your vote for governor over incumbent Kathy Hochul — indeed, New Yorkers can’t get rid of her soon enough.
Only 40% approve of the job she’s doing, just five points more than President Donald Trump gets in the same Emerson poll; a full 46% disapprove.
Hochul, recall, “won” office by accident, taking over after scandal pushed out Andrew Cuomo — whereupon she immediately adopted a single goal: to hold onto the job and all its lucrative opportunities.
She’s been a real pro at that, one of the most prolific fundraisers the state has ever seen — but hopeless when it comes to governing and legislating, where she’s built a pathetic record of breaking her own promises and surrendering to the far left.
In an early, unprecedented move, radical lawmakers nixed her choice for the state’s chief judge, and instead installed a jurist who’d reliably back their political agenda, especially on rigging voting districts for Democrats.
On spending, taxes, crime, education and energy, she’s let the left and the special interests keep feeding at the expense of New York’s future.
For all her vows now to make the state “affordable,” taxes and other costs have done nothing but soar on her watch.
Among her worst financial wallops: doubling down on the state’s insane green agenda, which set fantasy deadlines for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions sure to cost billions without making a dent in global warming.
Those costs have already trickled down, and now the public’s being crushed not only by higher utility bills but also higher prices generally, fueled by those rising energy costs.
She has repeatedly raised taxes or introduced new ones, like the congestion-pricing tolls and the pied-à-terre “surcharge,” never mind her no-new-taxes vow.
As Cuomo’s No. 2 in 2021, the pair goosed income and corporate taxes by a jaw-dropping $4.3 billion, an all-time record, leaving taxpayers with the nation’s heaviest state-and-local-tax burden.
All to pay for a budget that’s doubled since 2015, when she joined Cuomo — i.e., 2½ times the inflation rate.
And still, Albany faces massive red ink over the next few years.
As for New York’s scarce, expensive housing — again: Blame Hochul.
She’s done nothing to fix the mess left when Albany passed its 2019 housing “reforms,” which reduced the city’s housing supply by making it uneconomical for landlords to rehab regulated units, while pushing up rents on unregulated ones.
She’s been similarly impotent on crime, seeking only tiny fixes to the disastrous criminal-justice “reforms” — and failing to get most of that through.
Notably, Gotham’s overall crime rate is still above where it was before “reforms” began taking hold in 2020.
Hochul also stands with the far left when it comes to violent illegal immigrants, opting to make New York their “sanctuary.”
And she just can’t stop sucking up to Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his fellow socialists, to the point that some regard him as New York’s real governor.
Not only did Hochul endorse Mamdani; she also handed him a pied-à-terre tax to placate his “tax-the-rich” base along with billions in state support to enable his reckless spending.
Nor has she said boo about his incessant antisemitic incitement.
Yet she expects to win re-election with a campaign exclusively about bashing Trump rather than improving life for New Yorkers.
What a contrast from her challenger. A lawyer, Blakeman has a lengthy record of public service, including as county exec, presiding officer of Nassau’s legislature, Port Authority commissioner and Hempstead councilman.
His life-long priorities: public safety and fiscal responsibility.
To fight crime, he’s hired more cops, cooperated with ICE and fought sanctuary policies.
As governor, he’d end the protection Hochul’s granted violent illegal-immigrant criminals, boost funding for law-enforcement and push lawmakers, via the budget, to scrap cashless bail.
To ease the tax burden, he’s pushing cuts — of as much as 100% — for many, if not most, New Yorkers.
He’d also end Hochul’s punitive congestion-pricing tolls.
For relief on utility bills, he’ll halt “Hochul’s expensive energy experiments,” returning $2.4 billion in unspent green-energy funds to ratepayers.
Blakeman would also be a vital check on Mamdani’s extremism.
Not only he would he stand up to him on crime and fiscal irresponsibility, Blakeman (himself Jewish) would counter Hizzoner’s nonstop anti-Israel agitation, which only enflames antisemitism.
Kathy Hochul plays the moderate, claiming to check socialists like Mamdani and the radicals who control the Legislature — but that only means slowing down New York’s decline, when she isn’t just going along with the left to get her way on her own pork-barrel priorities.
Anyone who wants the state to have a better future needs to choose a governor who’ll fight to rebuild the sensible center — to stop the slide and start to reverse it — and that means a vote for Bruce Blakeman.