Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman is taking another page out of President Donald Trump\u2019s playbook and refusing to say whether he will accept the results of the November election without a caveat. That comes shortly after he said Democrats will \u201csteal\u201d the election in order to win.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters in Penn Station on Wednesday, Blakeman said Democrats have \u201cconsistently tried to cheat\u201d over the course of the gubernatorial race so far. He cited a since-reversed decision<\/a> by the Democrat-majority Public Campaign Finance Board to deny him matching funds and being blocked from speaking<\/a> at the recent Dominican Day Parade. \u201cDo I think they\u2019re going to try and cheat?\u201d Blakeman said. \u201cYeah, but we\u2019ll stop them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump sowed distrust in the lead up to and in the aftermath of the 2020 election, and he has continued to falsely claim he won despite overwhelming evidence and investigations disproving the widespread election fraud he claimed. Blakeman\u2019s rhetoric now is not dissimilar.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the results of the elections are fair and they reflect what actually people voted for, yes,\u201d Blakeman said when asked directly if he would accept the outcome of the election regardless of who wins. He added, \u201cKathy Hochul, if you try to cheat, people are going to go to jail.\u201d<\/p>\n What exactly his definition of \u201cfair\u201d is is another question.<\/p>\n Asked for any additional evidence to suggest Democrats will engage or have engaged in illegal activity to sway the outcome of the election, Blakeman\u2019s campaign reiterated the same two examples the candidate already cited.<\/p>\n Earlier Wednesday morning, Blakeman claimed in a Fox Business interview<\/a> that Democrats would attempt to steal the gubernatorial election and engage in \u201cdirty tricks\u201d in response to a question about noncitizens erroneously voting in New Jersey<\/a>. (The state Board of Elections said New York\u2019s voter registration system is different from New Jersey\u2019s, so a similar mistake could not have occurred.) Blakeman also said his campaign is investing significant money in \u201cballot security\u201d and would recruit thousands of volunteers to combat any alleged malfeasance from Democrats.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s campaign blasted Blakeman\u2019s comments in a statement. \u201cWhen Bruce Blakeman says he\u2019s running for governor to bring \u2018Trump-style leadership to Albany,\u2019 this is what he means \u2013 first campaigning with January 6th architects, now embracing Trump\u2019s election denial lies,\u201d Hochul campaign spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki said. \u201cNew Yorkers see this for what it is: putting MAGA first no matter the cost.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman is taking another page out of President Donald Trump\u2019s playbook and refusing to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[19220,1414,4370,9,11,10,49,51,50,2327],"class_list":["post-309322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-2026-new-york-gubernatorial-election","tag-campaigns-elections","tag-gop","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309322","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=309322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}