Congress
He’s facing very long odds. So why are New York Republicans betting on Bruce Blakeman?
ALBANY, New York — Empire State Republicans expect Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman to turbo charge down-ballot turnout as their party’s gubernatorial nominee — boosting GOP candidates in crucial suburban swing races as he mounts an otherwise uphill battle to unseat Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.
If Blakeman falls short in an underdog bid, New York Republicans can still be successful in what’s shaping up to be a tough political environment.
“Blakeman’s top appeal for Republicans, particularly in swing suburbs, can be realized even if he loses,” said Larry Levy, dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University. “He could help them on Long Island, Westchester and the Hudson Valley to possibly win seats that could make a difference on which party controls the gavels in Congress. Blakeman is in a position to do that.”
Who leads the Republican ticket in this deep blue state will have critical implications for competitive House races that stand to determine which party will control the narrowly divided chamber and the course of President Donald Trump’s final two years in office. Blakeman’s coattails offer one possible remedy to GOP headwinds in next year’s midterm elections, as Democrats seize on affordability issues and stoke their base’s anger at the sitting president’s policies.
Blakeman, 70, is now the likely Republican nominee for governor after Rep. Elise Stefanik abruptly suspended her campaign last week. Stefanik and Blakeman are both Trump allies, and the 41-year-old upstate New York House member is far better known statewide.
Unlike Stefanik, Blakeman hails from a vote rich political bellwether in a state that’s otherwise dominated by Democrats. He is a self-described “pro-choice” Republican — a stance that will likely attract some independent and conservative Democratic voters. And he has cultivated a mutually beneficial relationship with The New York Post, the influential conservative tabloid that’s part of Trump’s media diet.
His bid is still considered a longshot against Hochul, who led Blakeman by 25 points in a Siena University poll this month. He remains largely unknown to most New Yorkers, and Republicans are trying to reverse a 23-year losing streak in statewide elections. Blakeman’s prior statewide bid for a U.S. Senate seat ended with a loss.
In an interview, Blakeman pointed to his ability to win in a large, diverse suburban county as a sign that he can be successful statewide.
“I want our congressional and Senate and Assembly and local candidates to be successful as well,” he said. “If you look at the demographics of Nassau County, we match the state almost as a mirror image. I feel very confident we’re going to win.”
New York Republicans know the power the top of their party’s ticket can wield in a midterm election. Then-Rep. Lee Zeldin’s 2022 campaign came within 6 points of defeating Hochul, but the Long Islander’s strong suburban showing was credited with helping sweep several House Republicans into office. GOP leaders are poised to replicate that plan in 2026 — a doubling down on a suburban strategy that will also tie all Democrats, including Hochul, to New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
Republicans want to cast the 34-year-old democratic socialist as a lightning rod. Blakeman, whose day-to-day movements are covered in the Big Apple’s media market, would have easy access to blast the left-leaning mayor’s policies.
The most immediate impact may be on the Long Island districts led by moderate Democratic Reps. Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen — both of which will be top GOP targets.
“It’s definitely going to put those two Nassau seats, Suozzi and Gillen seats into play,” said Conservative Party Chair Gerard Kassar. “I already thought the Gillen seat would be a top seat in the nation. Suozzi has a number of solid candidates nipping at his toes there to begin with. If I was residing in Nassau County and looking for some very positive results in 2026, I think I just hit the jackpot.”
Suozzi and Gillen campaign representatives pointed to their work with Republicans and ability to win swing seats regardless of the top of the ticket.
“Everyone knows that Tom Suozzi works across the aisle in Congress to take on the affordability crisis, lower healthcare costs, fix the immigration mess and keep our communities safe,” said Kim Devlin, a Suozzi senior advisor. “That’s why he was able to win his district, even while Trump won it as well. People are sick of partisanship and that’s why they will re-elect Tom Suozzi.”
The Gillen campaign offered a similar assessment, noting that she “has a proven record of embracing bipartisanship to achieve results to lower the costs of living and improve public safety.”
“In fact, Bruce Blakeman endorsed her and served as her deputy Supervisor,” a campaign spokesperson said. “Her moderate approach, that prioritizes Long Islanders over politics, is why Rep. Gillen will be re-elected in November.”
Democrats have dominated New York statewide elections since George Pataki left office in 2006. The party lost its final toehold on power in Albany after losing control of the state Senate in 2018. But Republicans continue to maintain competitive races in suburban enclaves, where voters are sensitive to high taxes and concerned about public safety.
“You’re always more likely to lose than win as a Republican in New York, but I think he’s going to be our strongest statewide candidate since George Pataki,” said Republican operative Chapin Fay. “He’s winning in a blue area and he’s sort of MAGA without a lot of the baggage.”
Ensuring success in down-ballot races will be paramount for local Republican leaders with many municipal races switching from low-turnout odd-years to even-numbered years, when more people are expected to vote. That means races for GOP-held seats on some town and village boards and county legislatures may take on a more competitive tilt — threatening Republican power on the local level.
In Nassau County, where Blakeman has served as the top elected official since his 2021 victory, Republicans maintain a robust political operation led by Chair Joe Cairo. Despite widespread GOP losses last month, Nassau County Republican candidates overperformed, Blue Light News reported. Those results underscore the potential strength of Cairo’s voter turnout effort.
“To me, it’s a good strategy,” said Assemblymember Ed Ra, a Nassau County Republican. “It helps when we have a couple of House races that we think are going to be very competitive. For us in the Legislature, we think having a suburban, well-known, well-liked candidate is going to be a positive.”
Long Island is a major prize for any statewide candidate — and the suburbs have been trending Republican this decade with voters activated by concerns over crime and Democratic-backed criminal justice reforms.
New York Democrats acknowledge Blakeman’s strength in Nassau County in particular will present a challenge for down-ballot candidates.
“He will have an organization working for him in Nassau County,” said Jay Jacobs, who serves as both the statewide Democratic Committee chair and the Nassau County Democratic leader. “But I would say that while it certainly will be a factor that we have to take into account in those congressional races and down-ballot races, he likes to tout his great win and his perceived popularity, but we don’t see it that way and our polling doesn’t show it that way.”
Hochul, a Buffalo native, has struggled in the New York City suburbs.
The governor and Jacobs publicly disagreed over supporting Mamdani’s candidacy as her hand-picked party chair moved to distance suburban Democrats from the incoming mayor. She lost Nassau and Suffolk counties to Zeldin three years ago. Hochul was also forced to retool a controversial home building and zoning proposal amid a bipartisan revolt on Long Island.
Hochul on Monday pointed to her efforts addressing crime, housing and jobs on Long Island.
“We will do very well on Long Island,” she predicted. “I’ve spent an enormous amount of time on Long Island.”
Blakeman’s political vulnerabilities may still complicate matters for Republicans. A liberal stance on abortion is unnerving conservative voters the party can’t afford to have stay home. Upstate Republicans, slighted by yet another New York City-area nominee, will have to be won over. Trump’s unpopularity in his native state is also expected to work against Blakeman, who was endorsed by the president over the weekend.
Hochul, too, is expected to be a more formidable incumbent than she was three years ago when she was still a rookie governor and running in a backlash year for her party. The Democratic governor is a formidable fundraiser and she has also worked to build up the state Democrats’ political infrastructure to buttress vulnerable candidates running below her on the ballot.
Her campaign moved swiftly to define Blakeman, who remains unknown to 70 percent of voters, the Siena poll found, saying Blakeman “has gone all-in on Donald Trump’s deeply unpopular MAGA movement.” And Hochul questioned whether he ultimately would be the nominee.
“The Republican Party is in such chaos, I’m not even sure he’s going to end up being the nominee. This changes by the hour,” Hochul told Blue Light News at a news conference. “I’m not going to speculate about the prospective opposition, other than knowing it’s going to be a MAGA, Trump-endorsed Republican.”
Bill Mahoney contributed to this report.
A top pollster for President Donald Trump is pushing back on recent public polling showing Republican Mike Rogers trailing progressive Abdul El-Sayed in the marquee Michigan Senate race.
Tony Fabrizio, who is conducting polling for Rogers, says the polls released this month are over-sampling Democratic-leaning voters, specifically college-educated and Black voters, according to an internal memo obtained by Blue Light News. A Susquehanna poll released this month showed El-Sayed leading by seven points and a TIPP poll showed him leading by four points.
El-Sayed’s lead in those polls is a “fake narrative,” Fabrizio wrote. His polling for AARP — conducted alongside Democratic firm Impact Research — showed the race essentially tied.
The warning follows huge polling misses in the Democratic primaries in the Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida, which he wrote were “some of the most egregious examples of public polling failures in recent memory.” It’s also a sign that Republicans are wary of the string of bad polling numbers for Rogers in the race, which is crucial for determining control of the chamber.
Jim Lee, CEO of Susquehanna Polling and Research, told Blue Light News that the firm did not oversample any demographics. “I think their head is in the sand,” Lee said, noting in part what he said was a gap in enthusiasm between Democratic and Republican voters this cycle.
TIPP didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Fabrizio, in the memo, argued on the Susquehanna poll: “50% of the sample in this survey is college-educated – making them massively overrepresented to what they should be. We took a look at 2022 and 2024 Exit Polls and VoteCast data and, as shown below, there is no indication that the Michigan electorate will be anywhere near 50% college-educated. In fact, it is unlikely they will be even 40% college-educated.”
He also noted “a huge gap” between college-educated and non-college educated voters.
“This was the driving issue of the public polling misses for President Trump in 2016 and 2024, especially in the Upper Midwest states of Michigan and Wisconsin,” Fabrizio added. “By increasing college-educated voters by 10+ points, and thus decreasing non-college educated voters by the same, we can pretty much guarantee this poll is significantly overestimating El-Sayed’s vote share.”
President Donald Trump and hemp industry lobbyists are hoping to win a final vote on Capitol Hill next week to skirt a ban on intoxicating products — with shutdown politics as leverage.
Nine months ago, Congress cleared a bill to close a loophole created in 2018 that allowed the sale of some hemp-derived products containing types of THC colloquially known as “diet weed.” That ban is supposed to take effect in mid-November, or roughly 11 weeks, to limit overall THC levels in hemp products that can get people high — including gummies, canned drinks, pills and vapes.
But Trump and industry leaders successfully lobbied Senate leaders to add language to a government funding patch earlier this month to delay the ban until mid-December, with the administration promising instead to finalize regulations cracking down on how the products are made and sold.
Now House Republican leaders are aiming to clear that bill for Trump’s signature early next week, according to three people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions. And many GOP lawmakers are not pleased at the prospect of being rolled.
Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) told reporters last week that he expected House lawmakers would “iron out” some “sticking points” with the Senate-passed funding bill, “particularly the hemp issue,” rather than pass the legislation without changes — which appears to be GOP leadership’s current plan.
Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) was more blunt: “it is morally reprehensible to threaten a shutdown over a loophole Congress agreed to close to less than a year ago,” he said in a statement Thursday.
Yet despite fierce pushback from lawmakers warning that the intoxicating products are harming Americans, hemp industry leaders are preparing for a victory, betting members of Congress ultimately care more about swiftly passing legislation to avert a Sept. 30 government shutdown before the midterms.
“Any effort to try to shut down the government — over a one-month delay on a hemp issue — I don’t think is going to fly well with most members of Congress,” Jonathan Miller, a top lawyer for the U.S. Hemp Roundtable advocacy group, said in an interview this week.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about its plans for imposing new rules on hemp products in the coming months. But the Trump administration is expected to need more time than mid-December to finalize regulations, so hemp industry representatives are discussing a “regulatory bridge” that would impose temporary rules while continuing to avoid a full ban, according to Miller.
That could include restricting purchase to adults age 21 and older, blocking imports from China, mandating certain manufacturing practices, cracking down on copycat products that look like popular candy or potato chips and requiring transparency in product labeling.
While lawmakers have been back home over their summer break, hemp industry leaders have fanned out across the country to make their case for this plan. “The hemp industry does not have an August recess,” Christopher Lackner, head of the Hemp Beverage Alliance, said in an interview this month of the group’s work to facilitate passage of the Senate-passed funding bill.
Trump administration officials have also been telling reluctant lawmakers they will use the one-month delay to work on regulations. “The White House has committed to me that they’re committed to regulate the industry,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in an interview this month.
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), who fought in the Senate to retain the ban as originally intended, said White House officials have said “they don’t want another extension, and I agree with that.”
In a statement, Ricketts said that “manufactured high-THC products like gummies and drinks are putting our kids in the hospital” and need to be taken “off our shelves.”
Some supporters of the ban say the White House and industry are just employing delay tactics to get to December, when lawmakers will face another pressure campaign to delay the ban while they are motivated to avert a shutdown before leaving town for the holidays.
“What they’re really after is to try to jam this on some must-pass, end-of-the-year funding,” Budd told reporters earlier this month. “That’s really what this is about.”
Budd fought to block the delay in the Senate as part of the government funding measure, but his amendment to that end was shot down 61-32 before the chamberpassed the legislation, sending it on for House action.
Trump personally called Budd after the senator filed the amendment and talked about creating federal regulations for hemp products, according to a Senate aide granted anonymity to describe the private discussion.
Days later, Budd demanded a vote on the amendment anyway and continues to slam the hemp industry.
“It is clear that businesses that sell unregulated, intoxicating products will stop at nothing to protect their bottom line, even at the expense of children’s health and safety,” he said in a statement this week.
Besides lawmakers fighting to ban intoxicating hemp products, others are pushing alongside the White House and industry for federal regulations.
Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-W.Va.) has crafted legislation that would direct the Food and Drug Administration to create federal rules for intoxicating hemp products and wants to see mandates for third-party testing, as well as new THC limits per serving.
Griffith told reporters Thursday the “deadline push” in the Senate-passed government funding measure “is not long enough” to finalize necessary regulations.
Since state limits for THC vary widely throughout the country and the federal government has taken years to step in since the hemp loophole was created in 2018, Griffith argued it makes more sense to regulate the intoxicating products than to enact a federal ban.
“That horse is out of the barn,” he said. “What we need to do is corral it.”
Kelsey Brugger, Amanda Friedman and Rachel Shin contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump’s $400-million super PAC is taking its first steps into the general election: hosting a public event in battleground Michigan, headlined by Vice President JD Vance.
Battleground Republicans have been clamoring for Trump’s MAGA Inc. to spend in competitive races. The Michigan event is an early indicator of how the massive group might seek to use its funds to help the party keep control of Washington.
Vance will be joined in Sterling, Michigan, on Monday by GOP Senate nominee Mike Rogers, 10th District nominee Mike Bouchard Jr. and gubernatorial nominee John James, along with several other Michigan Republicans, according to an event advisory from MAGA Inc.
The GOP sees Michigan’s open seat as its best Senate pickup target this fall as Rogers faces former public health leader and progressive Abdul El-Sayed, who emerged from a grueling primary earlier this month.
“MAGA Inc. will be hosting events throughout the nation to ensure that Republicans retain control of Congress in order to finish cleaning up the mess the Biden-Harris-Pelosi-Schumer Democrats left,” said Alex Pfeiffer, spokesperson for MAGA Inc. “We’re not going back to their record inflation, open borders, and surging crime.”
MAGA Inc. is sitting on more funds than any other super PAC, and Republican donors and battleground candidates have been hoping it will unleash that money to help the party keep control of the House and Senate.
So far, the group has only spent only a few million dollars out of its massive fundraising haul, and its funds have largely gone to competitive Republican primaries. Most recently, it spent $827,000 on phone calls and text messages to boost Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) in the state’s special primary.
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