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After many hours of preparation, my Spectrum News colleagues and I settled on 11 substantive questions to ask Governor Kathy Hochul and Nassau County executive Bruce Blakeman in their first and only televised debate<\/a> in the race for governor, and I got through ten of them with my co-moderator, Susan Arbetter, before time ran out. But that still leaves pressing matters we couldn\u2019t fully explore that New York\u2019s governor will have to confront when the State Legislature convenes in January, on topics ranging from housing to food stamps to mental health.<\/p>\n We\u2019re lucky that Hochul and Blakeman agreed to debate at all. New York has no legal requirement that state candidates show up for public debates unless they receive money through the state Campaign Finance Board, and Hochul, flush with campaign cash, hasn\u2019t joined the matching funds program.<\/p>\n It\u2019s too bad we don\u2019t have mandatory debates<\/a> for important offices; when public, non-scripted discussions of issues are optional, politicians often duck debates for fear of making a verbal or visual stumble that can go viral and send a campaign into a death spiral. Even before a catastrophically shaky debate performance<\/a> in 2024 ended the reelection chances of President Joe Biden, a generation of campaign consultants routinely warned their clients against repeating disasters like the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate<\/a>. (Nixon, not wanting to appear fancy or phony, declined an offer to put on TV makeup and ended up looking sallow and nervous next to John F. Kennedy\u2019s Hollywood good looks.)<\/p>\n Another cautionary tale, the New York Senate debate of 2000, featured a popular Long Island congressman, Rick Lazio, who never recovered from the ill-advised stunt<\/a> of marching over to the podium of his opponent, Hillary Clinton, while angrily waving a piece of paper (a pledge not to accept soft-money donations) and demanding that she sign it on the spot.<\/p>\n Wary politicians have overlearned the lessons of the past, and the public has suffered as a result. Nationwide, in 21 out of the 36 states where voters are selecting a governor in November, there have been zero debates between major-party candidates, according to ABC News<\/a>. That includes close races in consequential states like Georgia, Nevada, and Ohio that\u00a0 are likely to be regional battlegrounds in the 2028 presidential race.<\/p>\n Fortunately, New York\u2019s top contenders are lifelong political animals with too much experience and ego to pass up a turn on the debate stage. \u201cThis is my 16th election,\u201d Hochul occasionally mentions in private, a reference to her long climb through the ranks as mayor of Hamburg, clerk of Erie County, and a member of Congress before years of serving as lieutenant governor and governor. Blakeman, who successfully ran for the Hempstead Town Board and Nassau legislature in the 1990s before winning the post as county executive, recalled childhood visits to Albany with his father, a state assemblyman. \u201cI would meet senators and assemblymembers and commissioners and Governor [Nelson] Rockefeller, and I just loved it,\u201d Blakeman once told me<\/a>. \u201cIt was exciting, it was interesting. You got to help people every day. And I\u2019ve had it in my blood since then.\u201d<\/p>\n Blakeman and Hochul clashed over how to handle the Cornell University rape case; the first ICE shooting in New York City; the ailing upstate farm economy; the high cost of energy; the regulation of data centers; the candidates\u2019 different approaches to public safety; and the runaway expenses of the state\u2019s Medicaid program. (You can watch the whole event here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n