NEW CITY — Bruce Blakeman was fired up and sounding confident about his campaign as he laced into Gov. Kathy Hochul’s record and talked up his own feats as a county leader from Long Island.
Blakeman, leading the charge for New York Republicans this fall as their candidate for governor, made his pitch while speaking to a few reporters during a short stop in Rockland County in July. He blasted New York’s “overtaxed” climate and promised a more affordable and safer state. He batted away the long odds Republicans face in statewide races — and the prospect that President Donald Trump’s deep unpopularity will hurt his party at the polls.
He argued that November’s elections, or at least his own, would turn mostly on how New York is faring under Hochul and fellow Democrats in Albany, not on what Trump has been doing.
“We are in a death spiral in New York,” he said from a lectern placed outside a Republican campaign office in New City. “I’m the pilot that can take us out of that death spiral. So when you look at various areas — Long Island, I believe we’re gonna do very well. That’s my home base, where we’re gonna launch this rocket from.”
Will New York GOP make a comeback?
New York Republicans were yearning for a comeback after a closer-than-expected governor’s race in 2022 and a Trump-ward shift in the state’s blue electorate two years later. Both seemed promising trends for a party that hasn’t won a statewide race since 2002 and lost its last grip on power in Albany in 2018, when Democrats wrested the Senate majority from them.
Much of upstate New York is awash in red: vast rural stretches that are traditionally Republican and even more so now, with Trump winning as much as 72% of the vote in some counties in 2024. The GOP also wields strength downstate in the much more populated Long Island and Staten Island, while Trump even put a dent in 2024 in Democratic dominance in other parts of New York City.
But 18 months into his second presidency, chances of a resurgence seem remote. Blakeman trailed Hochul by 10 points in Siena University poll results released Aug. 12 and had just a fraction of her campaign funding — $4.6 million to her $21 million as of July 11 — as he attempts to gain ground. And the state’s most competitive House race is for a GOP-held district that gives Democrats an even chance to pick up another seat.
For Republicans, there’s still hope for a revival, based on voter frustration with high living costs and the fact that Democrats hold all power in Albany. But most election momentum in the U.S. since Trump returned in 2025 has been on the Democratic side, including double-digit wins for its candidates in the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s races last year. And there are few signs for now that New York voters will swing the other way in November.
DeSantis offers Florida as model for NY GOP
Republicans were seated in a hotel banquet room in Manhattan for an annual party dinner in May when they were regaled with a story of contrast that must have sounded appetizing. Their keynote speaker was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who boasted of Florida’s booming population, a state budget half the size of New York’s, and an electorate that keeps getting redder.
In New York, Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by more than to 2-to-1 and have done so for more than a decade, a gaping enrollment edge. Florida, meanwhile, has become increasingly Republican. DeSantis told guests at the Plaza that night his state was evenly split when he narrowly won his office for the first time in 2018. Now it has 1.5 million more Republicans than Democrats.
He teased them about New York losing residents to Florida, joking that those departures were why he readily agreed to address the state GOP dinner.
“How can I turn down an opportunity to address some of my future residents?” DeSantis quipped.
Republicans often rail against New York’s out-migration and blame high taxes and excessive business regulation, as Blakeman has been doing in his campaign. Folded into that economic concern is a dose of self-interest: gradual population declines in rural, predominantly Republican areas upstate are costing the party voters.
Those trends were laid bare in data compiled recently by the Citizens Budget Commission for a look at the state’s economic strength. To take the most extreme examples, 11 counties with 2-to-1 Republican enrollment edges — or close to it — all shed 6% or more of their populations from 2010 to 2025. Steuben, along the Pennsylvania border, was down 7%. Herkimer, near Utica, had shrunk by 8%.
Against that backdrop, DeSantis tried to buck up guests at the GOP dinner as he boasted of deeds that they could only envy, including Florida’s newly redistricted House map expected to help Republicans gain seats this fall. He said no one anticipated in 2018 the rapid Republican shift that soon followed in Florida, and suggested New York could see the same.
“So people are going to say it can’t be done,” he said. “I’m going to tell you, this state is ripe for change.”
Blakeman gave a fiery speech at the dinner, saying he and his fellow Republicans running for New York’s statewide offices were waging “a fight for the heart and soul of our state.” He painted a dystopian picture of what could ensue if they lose in November.
“This is a fight we all better get into, because if we don’t win this state will not be a state where we will want to raise our children or grandchildren,” Blakeman said. “This will be a state of despair, hopelessness, poverty and lawlessness.”
Midterm curse looms for NY GOP in 2026
New York was more hospitable to the GOP back in the 1990s, when Democrats had a voting edge but a smaller one than today. By 1995, Republicans held the offices of governor (George Pataki) and attorney general (Dennis Vacco) and one of two U.S. Senate seats (Al D’Amato). They ruled the state Senate, a counter to the Democratic-led Assembly. New York City, in spite of its heavily Democratic electorate, had a Republican mayor (Rudy Giuliani).
And then a long dry spell set in. No Republican has won a statewide race since Pataki claimed his third and final term in 2002.
Today, Democrats hold all statewide offices, both U.S. Senate seats, 19 of the state’s 26 House seats and huge majorities in both chambers of the state Legislature. New York City is led by Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist. The one place the GOP still wields power is at the local level, with Republicans holding 12 of 18 county executive spots like Blakeman’s around the state.
The state’s most closely watched House race this year is in the Hudson Valley’s 17th District, where Republican Rep. Mike Lawler faces Democratic challenger Cait Conley in what is rated a “toss up” by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Democrats are hoping to flip that seat, while Republicans’ best hopes are a pair of Long Island seats held by Democrats Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen that are forecasted to “lean Democratic.”
Three other seats once seen as competitive are now viewed as likely or sure to stay in Democratic hands.
Republicans were sure to face headwinds this year, if only because midterm elections usually recoil against the president’s party. Democrats gained 41 House seats in 2018 during Trump’s first term. This time, that pattern is compounded by Trump’s low approval rating — 37% overall in New York in August, and 42% with independents — and his war against Iran that has spiked gas prices for months.
Blakeman spies a path to victory in blue NY
None of that seemed to worry Blakeman as he fielded questions in Rockland in July.
He pointed out he just overcame a Democratic enrollment edge in Nassau County by winning a second term as county executive by an 11-point margin in November. And he argued there are enough ripples of voter discontent across the state — even in deep blue New York City — for a Republican to prevail despite the much steeper odds for a governor’s race.
Republicans are still buoyed by Lee Zeldin’s run for governor in 2022, when the then-Long Island congressman (now Trump’s administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency) waged a tough race against Hochul in her first run for a full term and came withing 6 points of winning.
Blakeman thinks he can do better. Hochul, who was lieutenant governor and succeeded Andrew Cuomo after his resignation in 2021, now has a record to critique, he said. And unlike Zeldin, Blakeman supports abortion rights, which he says will shield him from campaign attacks that Zeldin faced.
“We have taken that off the table,” he said. “I’m a pro-choice Republican. I have been for the last 30 years.”
Blakeman is a longtime Trump ally who voices nothing but support for the president, even as Democrats batter him for Trump’s cost-raising tariffs and Iran war and clearly see them as a major liability for him. Speaking in Rockland, Blakeman dismissed the idea that Trump’s low approval rating would have any bearing on his race, which he said was strictly about “state issues.”
“So the fact of the matter is, it’s not going to be about Washington, about Donald Trump,” he said. “Kathy Hochul wants to talk about everything but her record.”
Hochul campaign spokesman Ryan Radulovacki fired back in response: “New Yorkers know Governor Hochul’s record: She’s put money back in their pockets at every opportunity, invested $3 billion to date in public safety, and fought back against every single Trump attack on New York – while her opponent raised property taxes twice on Long Islanders, embraces ICE’s abuses of power in his backyard, and says he’ll cut Medicaid in half if he wins. And yes, he loves Donald Trump.”
Hochul has consistently led Blakeman by double digits in Siena University polls this year, with margins ranging from 10 points to 20 points. Blakeman’s campaign has trumpeted numbers more favorable to him in two private polls, both commissioned by groups supporting him. They showed Hochul leading by just 6 points and 4 points.
Co/efficient, the GOP-aligned polling firm that put Hochul’s lead at 6 points, was way off on forecasts of the New Jersey and Virginia governor’s races last November. It had Democrat Mikie Sherrill virtually tied with her Republican opponent in New Jersey and yet she won days later by 14 points. Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the Virgina race by more than 15 points shortly after co-efficient measured her lead at 5 points.
Dems see Trump as a drag on NY GOP
State Sen. James Skoufis is an Orange County Democrat who has won tough races in mixed terrain since 2012, and managed to win re-election by 14 points in 2024 in a Hudson Valley district that also voted heavily for Trump. What he sees on the ground now is a punishing landscape ahead for Republicans.
“All of the conversations I have with Republicans, they are mortified about what awaits them in November,” he told the USA TODAY Network in an interview.
Skoufis predicted a “challenging if not bleak environment” for the GOP, arguing that Democratic voters are angry and far more motivated than Republicans to turn out at the polls, with Trump as an “overarching concern.” Suggesting Trump won’t be a factor in New York, as Blakeman did, is “disingenuous or foolish or both,” Skoufis argued, noting that turnout is driven by the national political climate.
“There’s no question he’s an anchor” on Republican candidates, Skoufis said of Trump.
He saw little threat to Democrats in Republican attempts to fashion their own anchor. The GOP has been hammering Democrats over Mamdani and a trio of left-wing candidates who won House primaries in New York City in June, painting their party as in thrall to extremists with positions far out of the mainstream.
Skoufis said he has had the same “political exposure by association” tactic wielded against him in his races, with past Republican targets — Bill de Blasio, former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — serving as boogeymen instead of Mamdani. He argued those attacks will be an ineffective strategy for the GOP this year, particularly because no democratic socialists are running in the state’s competitive House races.
GOP sees an opening on affordability
Republican strategist Bill O’Reilly differs on the potency of Mamdani-related criticism and sees more favorable terrain for New York’s GOP — a target-rich environment based on the economic concerns that move voters the most. After all, there’s no question which party is in charge of New York when voters grouse about the high cost of living.
“They’ve made New York the least competitive state in America, and that drives everything,” he told the USA TODAY Network.
Yes, Trump’s Iran war has driven up gas prices, and that is a legitimate concern, O’Reilly said. But New York’s Republicans should have no trouble tying Democrats to higher utility costs, he argued — because of state resistance to new gas pipelines and the closure of the Indian Point nuclear power plant under Cuomo that cut off a big supplier of electricity.
O’Reilly worries that party fissures over the Iran war and other issues may cause some GOP voters to sit out the elections. But he also sees some promise in the party’s courtship of Jewish Democratic voters alienated by growing criticism of Israel within their party.
And perhaps a way out of the wilderness.
“A healthy Republican Party should be able to win statewide in November,” O’Reilly argued. “The issues are there. They’re right there.”
Chris McKenna covers government and politics for The Journal News and USA TODAY Network. Reach him at CMcKenna@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Inside the NY GOP strategy to make a comeback in midterms | Exclusive
Reporting by Chris McKenna, New York State Team / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Chris McKenna, New York State Team | USA TODAY Network
