Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, center, now the likely Republican gubernatorial nominee, talks to reporters during a recent visit to Albany.
Dan Clark/Times Union/Dan Clark/Times Union)
In a recent Siena Research Institute poll, 80% of upstate New Yorkers said they didn’t know Bruce Blakeman enough to have an opinion about him.
That highlights the challenge facing the Nassau County executive as he begins his campaign for governor. It is also an opportunity. For better or worse, the Republican is a blank slate for many New Yorkers, a picture to be painted. Blakeman will need to make his case, as he attempted in an interview before Christmas.
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“I am not well-known upstate, and we’re going to remedy that situation,” Blakeman told me. “I will be there so often they’ll probably send me a tax bill.”
Of course, most upstate Republicans expected that U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik would be the party’s nominee in the race against either Kathy Hochul or Antonio Delgado, the lieutenant governor who is challenging the governor in the upcoming Democratic primary.
But Stefanik unexpectedly dropped out of the race, saying that “it’s not the right political time.” In part, then, she was agreeing with a widespread view that Republicans will face a difficult environment in 2026, particularly in traditionally blue New York.
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Blakeman, 70, has an answer. He points to his reelection in November, when he won even as Republicans faltered in much of the country. Long Island’s Nassau County, he says, demographically and politically mirrors the state, and yet voters there chose him over a well-funded Democrat.
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“I’m able to reach into other communities that typically don’t vote Republican because I have a message of prosperity,” Blakeman said. “I have a message of keeping taxes down, making their lives more affordable and making safer communities. People appreciate that, and that’s why I was able to win in a landslide with 110,000 more Democrats (than Republicans) in Nassau County.”
Blakeman has known Donald Trump for decades, and the president quickly endorsed him when Stefanik left the race. That move stymied potential Republican candidates and saved the party a primary it wanted to avoid. Like it or not, Blakeman’s the guy.
“Bruce will be the nominee of the party, no doubt about it,” said Ed Cox, chairman of the state GOP. “He will have the full support of the party.”
Trump, deeply unpopular in New York, even among independents, is unlikely to be an asset to Blakeman in the coming campaign. Hochul, eager to define the newcomer, is already painting Blakeman as an obedient Trump acolyte. In a statement, her campaign accused him of “blind loyalty to a wannabe king.”
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I asked Blakeman if the president, prone to saying and doing outrageous things, will hurt his chances.
“Well, having the support of the president of the United States is always a help,” he said. “But I’m running against Kathy Hochul, running against her record, and I’m running on my record … I’m going to keep laser-focused on how we can make this a much better state, by making it more prosperous, creating jobs, keeping people safe, and lowering taxes.”
Blakeman comes across as an old-school, pre-Trump Republican in the mild-mannered, almost-bland mold of George Pataki. Republicans believe those traits will make it hard for Hochul to put a MAGA hat on Blakeman, and they hope his record of steady governance will help make the case.
Those are advantages Stefanik would not have enjoyed. The 41-year-old has never held an executive office, and her unyielding defense of Trump during the 2019 impeachment inquiry (and beyond) would seemingly make it more difficult for her to distance herself from the president during a New York general election.
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On the other hand, Stefanik’s bombastic aggression gave her a national brand, with a fundraising prowess that Blakeman has not demonstrated. It will take money, piles of it, for him to win in a state where a Republican hasn’t been governor since Pataki exited in 2006.
“We’re going to run a campaign on her record of making people miserable and unhappy,” Blakeman said, referring to Hochul. “My job as governor will be to make people happy, to make them prosperous, to make them feel safe in their communities, just like I did here in Nassau County.”
Blakeman said he was surprised Stefanik dropped out of the race — a move that makes the first stage of his candidacy much easier than expected.
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Whether he can be elected governor, well, time will tell. Nobody who’s looked at the race realistically expects a Republican to have an easy time of it.
The challenger could struggle to match the standard set by Lee Zeldin, another Long Islander. In 2022, he lost to Hochul by six percentage points.
But Blakeman said Zeldin showed the path to follow. “We’re going to build on his success,” said the Republican, hoping that, as his picture is painted, voters like what they see.
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