Con Ed rates<\/a> would shoot up again, because its property taxes are ultimately passed along to its customers through higher energy prices.\u00a0<\/p>\nWhatever path Hochul picks will give Blakeman a potent argument to accuse her of being a tax-and-spend Democrat and a pawn of Mamdani.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A huge jump in property taxes could potentially boost Blakeman\u2019s appeal among a broader swath of affected voters in the five boroughs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although Mamdani won City Hall with about 1.1 million votes, more than a million New Yorkers voted for other candidates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Additionally, the 34-year-old mayor is off to a very rocky start, especially with his cold-hearted response to the deaths of 19 people on the streets in January.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Those who voted against Mamdani in November, whatever their party affiliation, should be, in theory, open to electing a more centrist governor, and could help resurrect the GOP.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No Republican has won a state-wide election since George Pataki\u2019s 2002 victory for his third term as governor, but the margins of Dem victories have been shrinking.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The results in the city are key.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The recent high-water mark for Republican candidates in the five boroughs has been 30%. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s what Lee Zeldin got when he challenged Hochul in 2022, but he lost the state by 5 points.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thirty percent is also the share of the city vote President Trump got in his 2024 election, while getting nearly 44% of the total state vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That background gives rise to a belief among some in the GOP that Blakeman can defeat Hochul if he gets 35% in the city while also driving up turnout in reliable Republican precincts elsewhere in the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lose-lose\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the normal course of events, 35% in the city would probably be out of any Republican\u2019s reach during a midterm election where Dems are favored, but Mamdani\u2019s amateur start, his demonization of the NYPD, his antisemitism and his ultimatum to Hochul have the potential to break the pattern.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If the governor gives into the mayor\u2019s demand to raise city income and corporate taxes after repeatedly saying she would not because it would drive people out of the state, Blakeman could pounce.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the same time, if Hochul doesn\u2019t budge on the income taxes, but Mamdani gets council approval to raise property taxes by anywhere near 10%, Blakeman would have an opening to win over an even larger segment of disgruntled city voters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Already he has been linking Hochul to Mamdani, as when she, without public discussion, said she would transfer $1.5 billion of state funds to the mayor to help him close the budget gap.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cKathy Hochul is happily handing billions to New York City while suburban and upstate taxpayers struggle to pay their bills,\u201d Blakeman said, then added, \u201cIf Albany truly has a $1.5 billion surplus \u2014 or if the Governor simply has that much money just laying around \u2014 that money should be used to cut school taxes for hard-working New Yorkers\u201d instead of bailing out the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Before that, in a press conference with Mamdani, Hochul announced that the state would pay the first two years of free child care for city 2-year-olds, at an estimated cost of $500 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her election-year spending splurge recalls an unforgettable observation made by the late US Sen. Everett Dirksen: \u201cA billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you\u2019re talking real money.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And just like that, the honeymoon is over.\u00a0 Gov. Hochul believed she was on the cusp of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,1626,301,302,1168,153,426,19338,9,24,63,103,299,32544,2780,82],"class_list":["post-141562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-bruce-blakeman","tag-city-council","tag-city-hall","tag-con-edison","tag-donald-trump","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-lee-zeldin","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-nypd","tag-opinion","tag-survey-says","tag-taxes","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}