Previously Published in The Messenger
By Matt Meduri
With just about two months to go until Election Day, all bets are off in the tumultuous national environment and the crucial 2026 midterms.
But in New York, a different battle is afoot – one against Governor Kathy Hochul (D-Hamburg), who is seeking a second full term, two other statewide officials, and the Democratic majority in the State Legislature.
Democrats gained a trifecta in New York after the 2018 elections, when the Party of Jackson flipped 8 seats to take control of the chamber that had otherwise been institutionally Republican for decades.
Meanwhile, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman (R-Atlantic Beach) is vying to be the first Republican governor of New York since George Pataki (R-Elmira) left office in 2007. Public polling on Hochul’s election lead and job performance have been bipolar, but it will be an uphill battle for the GOP to combat brutal political headwinds in a historically deep-blue state.
Blakeman is hoping to capitalize on voters’ wavering opinions on Hochul regarding crime, affordability, immigration, and a Legislature unbridled without a firm executive. He’s hoping to leverage his record as Nassau County Executive, first elected in 2021, and ride a downstate surge to Albany.
Part of that surge is a strong Republican turnout in Suffolk County.
“Suffolk County is the tip of the spear,” said Suffolk GOP Chairman Jesse Garcia (R-Ridge) at the annual GOP Lobsterfest last Thursday in St. James. He’s used the phrase throughout his career running the Suffolk arm of the Republican Party to describe Long Island’s necessity in making New York a perennial battleground.
In 2022, then-Congressman Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) nearly staged a massive upset for governor against the then-successive incumbent Hochul. In 2024, Donald Trump (R-FL) held Kamala Harris (D-CA) to just a 12-point margin, about half of Democrats’ usual statewide margins in presidential politics. Suffolk County was instrumental in both overperformances.
“We talk the talk, but we walk the walk,” said Garcia of Republican governance. In 2019, when Garcia was first elected Chair, Republicans were an electoral minority across the nation’s largest suburban county. Now, the GOP controls the County Legislature 11-7, they won the County Executive’s seat in 2023 for the first time since 1997, and the District Attorney’s seat in 2021. Throughout the era, the GOP has made inroads in communities previously considered off the table, such as Three Village and the Town of Babylon.
Garcia lambasted the “one-party rule” in Albany and said that Long Island’s needs would “be received” if Blakeman is elected governor in November.
Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine (R-Center Moriches) had a simple message in favor of Blakeman: “S.O.S. – save our state.”
Blakeman summed his campaign message based on what he’s heard from voters throughout the campaign.
“No matter where I go in New York State, people are miserable under Kathy Hochul,” said Blakeman to a fired-up crowd in St. James. “We are the most overtaxed state in the United States. Our electric bills are 70% higher than the national average. Kathy Hochul is the most pro-criminal governor in the United States. She doesn’t back the blue; she backs those who want to defund the police. And now, she won’t even let us cooperate with ICE.”
He invoked New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-Astoria), whom Blakeman labelled a “communist,” one whom Kathy Hochul endorsed and who, in turn, endorsed Hochul.
“They spent billions of dollars on illegal migrants. Kathy Hochul gave Zohran Mamdani $5 billion to bail out New York City without requiring him to cut one penny in spending,” said Blakeman. “We need to turn this state around so we can look our children and grandchildren in the eye and say, ‘we made a better state for you, just like our parents and grandparents made for us.’”
Nassau’s County Executive is known for his tongue-in-cheek humor and blunt mannerisms. His speech in Suffolk last Thursday was no exception. He decried the Democrats’ last-minute move to alter State language. That move replaced the State’s recognition of “father” and “mother” with the terms, respectively, “non-gestating parent” and “gestating parent.”
“Last I checked, the Ten Commandments said, ‘honor thy father and mother,’ not ‘honor thy gestating parent and non-gestating parent.’ We have to stop this nonsense. We need a state where boys play with boys and girls play with girls, cut taxes, lower electric bills, and back the blue.”
For Blakeman, Suffolk County is not only his next-door neighbor, but an indispensable ally in an uphill political fight.
“Suffolk County was there for me in the beginning, and Suffolk County will be with me on the podium on election night when we declare the greatest victory we’ve ever had.”
Suffolk played host to the entire statewide GOP ticket. Blakeman was joined by Saritha Komatireddy (R-Upper East Side), who is making her first bid for public office by taking on two-term Attorney General Letitia James (D-Clinton Hill). No Republican has held the spot of the state’s top prosecutor since Dennis Vacco (R-Buffalo) left office after one term in 1999. In the 1998 election, Vacco was narrowly defeated by Eliot Spitzer, who would later succeed Pataki as governor in 2006 and quickly resign amid a personal scandal.
Completing the trio was Joe Hernandez (R-Upper West Side), who has the herculean task of knocking off Comptroller Tom DiNapoli (D-Great Neck Plaza), an institution in New York politics who has served as the state’s chief financial officer since 2007. The last Republican to serve as New York Comptroller was Edward “Ned” Regan (R-Orchard Park), who served from 1979 until his resignation in 1993.