By Ryan Schwach<\/p>\n
Four years ago, Thomas Sullivan came tantalizingly close to ousting a Queens political dynasty.<\/p>\n
Running for Assembly District 23, which covers the Rockaway peninsula and parts of South Queens, Sullivan, a Republican, lost by a little over a dozen votes to Stacey Pheffer Amato, the Democratic incumbent whose mother once held the seat. <\/p>\n
Though not the sole factor in his near-victory, Sullivan\u2019s performance was propped up by Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, who drew out a large number of voters in the conservative section of Queens. <\/p>\n
This year, Sullivan is again on the ballot. And while Zeldin is not, Sullivan won\u2019t be without a Republican name on the top of the ticket. <\/p>\n
Bruce Blakeman, who currently serves as Nassau County\u2019s executive, is running to oust Governor Kathy Hochul, who is running for her second full term in office. <\/p>\n
Sullivan\u2019s performance in the upcoming race for the Assembly against Pesach Osina, who won the Democratic primary for the seat after Pheffer Amato announced her retirement earlier this year, will likely be tied to Blakeman\u2019s performance. <\/p>\n
But whether Blakeman\u2019s presence in the election will bring Sullivan as close to becoming the sole Queens Republican in the state legislature as Zeldin did remains to be seen. <\/p>\n
While Sullivan has welcomed Blakeman\u2019s support \u2013 the GOP gubernatorial candidate endorsed him and has campaigned with him in Queens a handful of times \u2013 he said he thinks Blakeman will be a nonfactor in securing the votes he believes he truly needs to win the Assembly race. <\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people are going to walk in, vote for the governor, and walk out,\u201d Sullivan told the Eagle in an interview last week. \u201cI can’t afford that.\u201d <\/p>\n
Sullivan\u2019s campaign is targeting two groups of voters in Far Rockaway \u2013 Black Democrats upset with the state of the Democratic Party and conservative-leaning Orthodox Jewish voters. <\/p>\n
While Sullivan feels Blakeman will help turn out Republican voters in other parts of the district, he doesn\u2019t think he\u2019ll play much of a role in offsetting the thousands of votes his opponent is expected to receive from the Orthodox Jewish community, which Osina is a member of. <\/p>\n
\u201c[Blakeman] is not going to help me out there,\u201d Sullivan said.<\/p>\n
Blakeman\u2019s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n
\u2018Painfully purple\u2019<\/p>\n
The 23rd Assembly District, which encompasses a chopped-up and jagged section of the Rockaway peninsula, as well as Broad Channel, Howard Beach and a section of Ozone Park, is one of a shrinking number of Queens seats that could still firmly be seen as a toss-up in the post-Zohran Mamdani political age.<\/p>\n
The district\u2019s retiring incumbent, Democratic Assemblymember Stacey Pheffer Amato, described it as \u201cpurple\u201d in a conversation with the Eagle earlier this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis district is working class, but we have very good social values,\u201d she said. \u201cAt the same time, we’re getting very conservative.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI do still see that we are a majority in the Democratic register, but I think we’re painfully purple,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n
The district went firmly to Andrew Cuomo in both the mayoral primary and general elections last year, and voted for Donald Trump in 2024 after voting for Joe Biden four years prior. <\/p>\n
A different landscape<\/p>\n
Sullivan has attempted to flip the district twice before. <\/p>\n
In 2022, the retired Army colonel from Breezy Point came about as close to winning as a losing candidate could. <\/p>\n
Energized by a three-to-one Republican turnout in the district\u2019s conservative sections brought on by a close gubernatorial race between Zeldin and Hochul, Sullivan was ahead by more than 200 votes on election night. <\/p>\n
Following a recount and a slew of legal challenges from Pheffer Amato, the incumbent ultimately secured reelection by a mere 15 votes. Election results weren\u2019t finalized in the race until early January. <\/p>\n
But the political landscape in the 23rd District is vastly different in 2026 than it was in 2022. <\/p>\n
Four years ago, Hochul was a far weaker candidate, running for her first full term as governor after assuming the office when Cuomo resigned amid sexual abuse allegations. <\/p>\n
Nationally, Democrats were also weaker, as Biden\u2019s first two years in office did little to inspire voters. <\/p>\n
This year, Hochul appears to be in a stronger position. And while voters will likely again head to the polls to react to an unpopular president, they\u2019ll be trading in Biden for Trump, whose administration is plagued by the war in Iran and rising inflation. <\/p>\n
Though Blakeman is close to Trump and appeared with the president at a rally in Long Island last month, he\u2019s largely refrained from touting Trump\u2019s endorsement or using his name in campaign ads in recent weeks. <\/p>\n
A recent poll from Sienna University found that 60 percent of New York\u2019s voters viewed Trump unfavorably. The same poll showed Hochul leading Blakeman in the race 49 percent to 39 percent. <\/p>\n
\u2018Jewish voters will be critical\u2019<\/p>\n
Also different this year is Sullivan\u2019s opponent. <\/p>\n
No longer running against an incumbent, Sullivan is running in an open race, which political observers generally believe is easier to flip. <\/p>\n
But still, Osina is a political veteran. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ryan Schwach Four years ago, Thomas Sullivan came tantalizingly close to ousting a Queens political dynasty. Running…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-358603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358603","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=358603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}