With less than four months to go until Election Day, affordability promises to be the word of many of the remaining days in the race for governor of New York.
For Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, leaning into the issue provides both leverage and challenges.
Republican strategist Chapin Fay, founder of Lighthouse Public Affairs and Democratic Strategist Trip Yang broke them down on Wednesday’s episode of Capital Tonight.
After crime dominated Hochul’s closer-than-expected victory over Republican Lee Zeldin in 2022, both Hochul and Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman are trying to persuade voters they have the better answer to what appears to be the big issue of 2026: New York’s high cost of living.
Hochul continues to best Blakeman in the polls in heavily blue New York, and the governor’s political standing has improved significantly since 2022 as Democrats stand to benefit from a mid-term year with President Donald Trump in the White House — but conversations around high prices when it comes to everything from energy to child care are a non-stop presence in a state where Hochul is chief executive.
Republican strategist Chapin Fay told Spectrum News 1 that Blakeman should follow Zeldin’s single-issue template applied to affordability. He argued pocketbook issues present Republicans with a broader political opening than crime did four years ago.
“This campaign is really going to be about who gets the blame for these affordability problems,” he said. “It’s a stronger, longer-lasting, more sticky issue because it affects everyone, where crime was really a problem in the city, and high-crime areas,” he said.
Democratic strategist Trip Yang countered that Hochul has already taken steps to address affordability through initiatives such as child care funding and other budget measures like auto insurance reforms and a middle class tax cut, while arguing Blakeman’s ties to Trump dilute his argument.
“He has to answer for the fact that Trump has not made life more affordable for New Yorkers,” Yang said. “The Trump tariffs have just been devastating.”
Beyond affordability, both said the candidates will also have to navigate divisions within their own parties during the general election campaign.
Democrats have sought to tie Blakeman closely to Trump, which Blakeman has wasted no time doing himself. Fay argued that strategy would be used regardless of how closely he aligned himself with the president, so there is limited downside to leveraging the connection where he can.
“Even if he was a never Trumper, they would still do that,” Fay said. “That’s what they do to Republicans. They’re doing it to Congressman [Mike] Lawler who has distanced himself from the president many, many times.”
While Hochul atop the Democratic ticket is gathering momentum at a time when her party appeared to lurch left in many places in the June primaries in the wake of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s victory last year. Hochul has worked to embrace Mamdani while standing firm on certain issues like opposing an income tax hike on the wealthy. In the wake of those primary victories, she stressed the need for unity.
Yang agreed that Democrats just need to pitch that big tent.
“We probably agree on most things, especially when Donald Trump is in the White House,” he said. “Sometimes it is OK to not agree on everything as long as we unite to defeat Republicans in New York this November and win control of Congress.”
The debate over affordability is already extending into policy fights beyond taxes and household costs, including energy prices and the governor’s proposal to pause new large data center development while the state studies its impact on the electric grid, a move Blakeman opposes.