Politics
Hochul tells Dems to play dirty
With help from Amira McKee
YOU STARTED IT: She wants to be the gerrymanderer-in-chief.
Gov. Kathy Hochul hosted six lawmakers from Texas at the Capitol this morning — and while gracing them with some good ol’ northern hospitality, she also effectively told the Empire State’s good government groups to go to hell.
The Texas Democrats were fleeing the Lone Star State to prevent their state Legislature from having the quorum necessary to push forward a Trump-led redistricting measure, which would give the state five more Republican congressional seats.
The visit to Hochul’s backyard showcased how the governor is playing a key role in escalating the political arms race to redraw congressional maps around the country, POLITICO’s Bill Mahoney reports.
After greeting the Texans in Albany with a breakfast of eggs, bacon and sausage, Hochul held a press conference with them in the Capitol’s Red Room — where she slammed New York’s own redistricting process for not being partisan enough and embraced the full-fledged gerrymandering of New York’s congressional districts.
“I’m tired of fighting this fight with my hand tied behind my back,” Hochul said, when asked if she would change or disband New York’s independent redistricting committee. “Republicans take over the Legislature? They can have at it. But until then, we’re in charge.”
“All due respect to the good government groups, politics is a political process,” she added.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie agreed: “It’s very difficult to say play fair when your opponents are playing dirty and using every toolbox to undermine democracy.”
Hochul wants legislators to start a process of approving a constitutional amendment to let New York make changes to its own congressional lines. But that’s a lengthy process and wouldn’t impact the maps any sooner than the 2028 election — even if the amendment is approved by voters and the new lines aren’t challenged in court.
“We’re sick and tired of being pushed around when other states don’t have the same aspirations that we always have,” the governor said.
Mayoral candidate and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who authored the 2012 state constitutional language now restricting New York Democrats’ abilities to quickly respond to Texas, wasn’t totally on board with Hochul’s hardball efforts.
“I think what Texas is doing is grossly political and just gross gerrymandering and is one of the reasons why the public turns off on government,” Cuomo said at an unrelated campaign event in Manhattan. “It could also have a dramatic effect if it goes beyond Texas. But to pass it, to do it here, you would need a couple of years. … So my guess is, by the time you could actually do it, it would be irrelevant.”
The six Texas House Democrats — whose colleagues also fled to Illinois on Sunday — said today they were just stopping through Albany and planned to continue on their journey to meet with Democratic governors from other states.
They wouldn’t say where they’re headed next and refused to reveal if they plan to remain outside the Lone Star State until Aug. 19, when Texas’ special session concludes. If they don’t, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has the power to call another special session immediately after the current one to bring up the redistricting bill again.
“To run to states like New York and Illinois to protest redistricting, it’s kind of like running to Wisconsin to protest cheese. It’s just kind of outrageous,” Abbott said in response to the lawmakers Albany visit today. “New York and Illinois are two hallmark states that have already done redistricting to eliminate Republicans.”
Hochul’s naked embrace of Democratic gerrymandering in response to the Texas GOP’s own effort was condemned by New York Republicans in the state Legislature and Congress, including Rep. Elise Stefanik, who’s considering challenging Hochul for governor.
“The Worst Governor in America needs to be reminded that she conveniently forgot to tell the unlawful out-of-state radical Democrats at today’s desperate press conference that she lost not once, but TWICE in her effort to illegally draw gerrymandered lines in New York to rig our Congressional elections and suppress the will of the voters,” Stefanik said on X.
John Kaehny, executive director of the good government group Reinvent Albany, described Hochul’s move as trying to justify destroying the village to save it — which will really just undermine democracy.
“The state of New York motto is Excelsior, which means, ‘Ever Upwards,’ not, ‘We’ll Race Texas to The Bottom and Disenfranchise Large Swaths of New York Voters,’” he told Playbook. “Gerrymandering is without a doubt one of the most devastating ways to essentially nullify the votes of huge numbers of people, and that’s the opposite of democracy.” — Jason Beeferman
‘THE SAFEST BIG CITY’: Mayor Eric Adams touted falling crime rates today in Brooklyn, dubbing last month “the safest July in our subway system in recorded history.”
Adams, a retired NYPD captain, won his 2021 campaign in large part on the promise that he would make a pandemic-ravaged New York City safer. Now, as New Yorkers’ public safety insecurities endure, he’s returning to crime statistics — in the face of his abysmal performance in recent polls.
“New York City is grieving this week after the tragic loss of four innocent lives — including an NYPD officer — in a senseless shooting in Midtown,” Adams said in a statement. “As we mourn, we must also find ways to turn our pain into purpose; it’s the least we can do to honor the victims. While this incident will forever be a stain on our city, it happened against the backdrop of a larger, more hopeful picture — one where the brave men and women of the NYPD continue to drive down crime.”
The first seven months of 2025 saw the fewest shooting incidents and shooting victims in recorded history, according to July crime statistics put out by the NYPD today. The department’s seven major crime categories, including murder and robbery, are down 5.6 percent overall from last year.
While Adams has blamed media coverage for lingering fears over public safety, a POLITICO analysis found overall crime in the city is yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.
The mayor and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch told reporters today that they attribute their progress, in part, to the administration’s focus on illegal gun removal and gang takedowns.
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor who leads the field in recent polls, has offered different policy prescriptions from the mayor when it comes to policing. Their divergent views have become a centerpiece in the race in the aftermath of a mass shooting that killed an NYPD officer in Midtown Manhattan last week. Mamdani has distanced himself from his previous calls to “defund the police,” but his future with the nation’s largest police force remains a delicate matter.
Adams took aim at Mamdani today for his calls to disband the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, the controversial unit responsible for policing protests and responding to major public disturbances — including the mass shooting.
“We just have a philosophical difference in the principles of public safety, and there’s a reason crime is down and jobs are up, and idealism collides with realism when you are saving the lives of people,” Adams said at his press conference on the stats. — Amira McKee
IF YOU PAY THEM, THEY WILL COME: Cuomo unveiled a public safety proposal of his own today — it’s designed to retain and attract more NYPD recruits.
The former governor proposed offering new recruits a $15,000 signing bonus and then layering in additional retention bonuses throughout their tenure. He floated the idea of recruiting retired cops to rejoin the force, allowing them to collect their pension and a salary. Cuomo also proposed a city-run scholarship fund that would offer a full ride to officers without a bachelor’s degree.
Sweetening the pay — which would cost $250 million over five years — and offering other perks would help the city hire 5,000 more police officers, Cuomo said.
“It’s time to build a new New York City based on what we are dealing with and what we’ve learned,” Cuomo said.
The former governor also devoted a significant portion of his press briefing to attacking Mamdani and poring over the state legislator’s past support for defunding the police. Mamdani has said during his campaign he would maintain funding for the department while creating a new Department of Community Safety that would handle tasks like mental health emergencies.
“Either you were telling the truth then or you’re telling the truth now, but you cannot justify those two statements,” Cuomo said.
The former governor further separated himself from the 33-year-old democratic socialist by proposing to expand the Strategic Response Group, a controversial NYPD unit, and continuing to have it handle protests. Mamdani has proposed disbanding the unit and creating a new one designed to respond to emergencies like the Midtown mass shooting last week. — Joe Anuta
ON YOUR RIGHT: Adams is planning to do a fireside chat next week with the conservative Manhattan Institute as he seeks support on the right for his longshot independent reelection effort.
“Governing in NYC,” a conversation between Adams and Manhattan Institute President Reihan Salam, is set for Aug. 14 at the Hilton Midtown. The prominent think tank welcomed Adams’ 2021 election as a change from the de Blasio years. But even as the institute’s scholars have written extensively about the mayor — both positively and negatively — Adams has largely kept his distance from his conservative backers.
The institute has been an intellectual force behind attacks on DEI initiatives and gender identity protections.
Adams is also mending fences with an old friend on the right, the Trump-friendly radio host Sid Rosenberg, the Daily News reported Friday.
We’ll be watching to see if newly minted Manhattan Institute fellow Danielle Sassoon shows up, after she resigned as acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, rather than comply with the Department of Justice’s order to drop the corruption case against Adams. — Jeff Coltin
— STATEN ISLAND 4 MAMDANI: Democratic leaders in New York City’s most conservative borough are backing Zohran Mamdani over Andrew Cuomo. (New York Post)
— NY POST TAKES LA: The New York Post will launch a new daily newspaper in Los Angeles called “The California Post” in early 2026. (Axios)
— ‘BASIC DECENCY’: Hochul responded to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz after he criticized her for wearing a head covering to the funeral of a slain Muslim NYPD officer. (New York Times)
Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.
CONCORD, New Hampshire— Pete Buttigieg is barnstorming the nation in the final weeks before the midterms, boosting candidates in battlegrounds and even areas traditionally hostile to Democrats. And it’s helping him look beyond November.
Down the homestretch, Buttigieg is set to campaign in at least six states: North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, Georgia and Nevada, along with his adopted home state of Michigan, according to an itinerary shared first with Playbook by a spokesperson for Win the Era, his political group.
Buttigieg has been refining his campaign trail message as he crisscrosses the country, connecting concrete cost-of-living concerns to the more abstract need for political reform.
It’s a kind of real-world testing that helps him further define his political brand at the same time that he leverages it to “be useful,” as he so often puts it, to his party.
“I have a lot of conviction that, actually, your economic message only has credibility if you have a reform message, too,” Buttigieg said in an interview after a Rochester Opera House rally where he received a standing ovation. “Because otherwise, what you’re doing is you’re saying things that people agree with, which is great, but they might not believe that you can actually deliver it.”
He’s also building the kinds of relationships with voters and party leaders that can be useful if he runs for president in 2028, a question he was repeatedly asked. (“We’ll see,” he told one woman at the Deerfield Fair.)
“For Pete, it’s less about getting credit nationally for what he’s done for Democrats and more about building relationships in places that will be beneficial down the line,” said David Axelrod, a Buttigieg confidant.
Buttigieg’s status as an in-demand surrogate was on full display during his 48-hour swing through the Granite State, where he finished “a very, very, very close second place” to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the 2020 primary, as Buttigieg put it in Saturday evening remarks at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s Eleanor Roosevelt Dinner in Concord.
“I couldn’t ask for a better wingman,” Rep. Chris Pappas said, introducing Buttigieg at the packed rally Friday in Rochester. “People know that he’s a trusted voice,” Stefany Shaheen, who is running for Pappas’ seat, told Blue Light News after campaigning at a book store, cafe and candy shop with Buttigieg along Elm Street in Manchester.
How Buttigieg is learning from the midterms
Buttigieg has neither a battleground governorship nor a personal fortune to wire into midterm races. What he has put on offer is himself: He’s made more than 100 endorsements this cycle, campaigning in person for roughly half of them, and stops in 37 states since he left the Transportation Department.
Buttigieg was welcomed in places where candidates shunned some of his potential rivals. He campaigned with Rob Sand and Josh Turek in Iowa as they run for governor and senator, respectively. He backed Brandon Dukes in his special election effort to flip a Pennsylvania state House seat that Trump won by 18 points. He was alone among his peers in endorsing Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin in his victory over longtime Rep. John Larson in Connecticut.
“If I can help give voice to what people are after in diverse geographies, including very conservative areas,” he said, “turns out that’s my best use of time.”
Buttigieg admitted he wasn’t certain what role he would play in the party’s midterms at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. Now he’s processing all of the data and inputs he’s receiving along his travels.
“I’m learning a lot about our country and our party as I go, and what I’m seeing is that people have a real hunger for change,” he told Blue Light News. “First of all, in policy. Secondly, in the kind of politics that we have, and third, in the system itself.”
That’s developed into a core argument in his speeches connecting the cost of living to political reform: “If we want the kitchen table to be better off, we got to deal with the political system that is kicking the legs out from under the kitchen table,” Buttigieg said at the Rochester Opera House Friday evening.
It’s a message that can last long beyond the midterms, and Buttigieg is trying to point his party there.
“Part of what I’m really trying to push my party on is the need to have answers for ‘then what,’” he said. “There’s a big ‘then what’ for when Donald Trump leaves the political scene, but there’s an immediate ‘then what’ starting on Nov. 4.”
A Democratic Congress, he argued, needs “a compelling governing vision coming out of the gate” and should move quickly on tariffs, the minimum wage, tax fairness, health care, the Child Tax Credit and political reforms including gerrymandering.
The 2028 question
Even as he sidestepped several questions from reporters about his next moves, saying he was focused on 2026, remnants of his 2020 campaign and hints of a future one piled up. People wore “Pete for New Hampshire” buttons and T-shirts. His old playlist, including Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Up Around the Bend,” played at the Friday night rally.
At the Roosevelt dinner the next night, in front of a sold-out crowd of over 400, Buttigieg earned a standing ovation that ended in “Pete, Pete, Pete” chants.
“Pete had a great New Hampshire organization in 2020, nearly winning,” Ray Buckley, the chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, told Blue Light News. “If anything, his popularity here has grown.”
Much has changed since then.
On Saturday evening, instead of walking out to Panic! At the Disco’s “High Hopes,” his ubiquitous anthem back then, or even Imagine Dragons’ “It’s Time,” which he road-tested last year, Buttigieg employed “You Get What You Give” by the New Radicals.
There have been deeper changes, too: Buttigieg is now the father of 5-year-old twins, Gus and Penelope. He is weighing whether he can run for president and remain a good and present father.
His husband, Chasten, is a “great dad” and “knows why I’m on the road.”
Back on the road, Buttigieg is winning over those who didn’t back him in 2020.
At the back of the room in Rochester on Friday night, the town’s Mayor Chuck Grassie wore a “Pete for New Hampshire” button as he took in the scene. Grassie, who backed Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2020 and considers himself a “pragmatic progressive,” said Buttigieg could knit together the party’s moderate and progressive factions.
“He’s a guy I think would attract a lot of people,” Grassie said. “And a lot of people I talk to are saying, ‘You know, he’s looking better and better every day.’”
Added Grassie: “In New Hampshire, I think Pete may be the guy to beat.”
Sen. Ted Cruz fired back at JD Vance for suggesting he’s already focused on a 2028 presidential bid, calling the vice president “insecure” while insisting he’s focused on the 2026 midterms.
“In my experience, people engage in political bomb-throwing when they’re feeling insecure,” Cruz said in a phone interview Saturday. “So he’s welcome to make whatever comments he likes. I’m going to keep focusing on the midterms and helping us win on Election Day in the next 30 days.”
Cruz’s comments came in response to an NBC News interview Thursday with Vance in which the vice president suggested Cruz was prematurely eyeing a White House run.
“It is really obvious to me that, at this very moment, Ted Cruz is running for president,” Vance said. “At this moment, I’m not. I’m trying to help elect Republicans. That’s what I’m going to keep on doing.”
Vance is widely viewed as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, but Cruz has said he doesn’t believe Vance is the sure-fire nominee and suggested he might throw his own hat in the ring. “I’ll certainly be part of the discussion,” he told MS NOW in August.
On Saturday, Cruz told Blue Light News he is dedicated to helping Republicans maintain control of both chambers of Congress. He pointed to his travel this cycle to campaign with candidates in Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina as well as in his home state of Texas as proof. He also said he has trips planned this month to campaign with Republicans in Alaska, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina.
“Over the last 10 years, there’s no Republican in the country who has campaigned for more Senate candidates, more House candidates, more gubernatorial candidates than I have, and this year will be no exception,” he said.
Cruz rattled off a list of a dozen GOP candidates he’s helped bolster in past years, including former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, U.S. House candidate Karoline Leavitt — and the vice president.
“Indeed, ironically, I spent a full day on the road with JD Vance, campaigning with him when he was running for Senate in Ohio [in 2022],” Cruz said. “I was very glad he won that race. I was very glad to help him.”
A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to Cruz’s latest comments.
Vance campaigned in Texas and Florida this week and will hold a rally in Alaska on Monday.
Republicans have tried to find a new boogeyman this year as they rail against Democratic socialism and the “radical” left: Zohran Mamdani. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Bernie Sanders.
Still more mentioned than all of them, at least in campaign ads: former President Joe Biden.
A Blue Light News review of hundreds of ads running in battleground House and Senate races in recent months shows Republicans largely haven’t seized on progressive icons in paid media. Instead, Biden is the Democrat most likely to be mentioned in GOP ads this cycle, coming up across dozens of races.
President Donald Trump has frequently sought to blame Biden for high prices and other challenges that his administration has faced. Even so, the former president has become a far less useful punching bag for Republicans since leaving office and remaining largely out of the spotlight: At this time in the 2024 cycle, Biden had been mentioned in more than 1,000 Republican House and Senate ads, according to AdImpact data.
The data illustrates how Republicans have been unable to land on a clear villain as they seek to convince voters that Democratic control of Congress would be worse than keeping the GOP in charge. Their warnings about old establishment figures like Biden and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi don’t land like they once did. But they also haven’t been able to seize on emerging democratic socialists like they had hoped to.
Democrats’ foil, meanwhile, has never been more obvious, with Trump’s approval rating in the mid-thirties amid continued high prices and the Iran war.
“No one will match the level of Pelosi for Republicans, in part because the Obamacare vote was such a touchstone moment. And the ‘we have to pass it to find out what’s in it,’” said Doug Heye, a longtime Republican operative who noted he still has “Fire Pelosi” swag from the Republicans’ successful 2010 midterm rout. The then-speaker was central to the GOP’s campaign message that year.
Part of the challenge for Republicans comes from Democrats’ lack of a clear leader. Pelosi stepped down from Democratic leadership at the start of 2023, and her successor, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) does not elicit the same animus from Republicans. In the 2022 cycle, her last term as Democratic leader, Pelosi was invoked in more than 80 GOP ads, Blue Light News’s analysis found. Now, she’s mentioned just a handful of times, while Jeffries hasn’t been mentioned in any battleground TV ads this year, according to the Blue Light News review of transcripts.
Biden was an easy target for the GOP in 2022 and 2024, when Republicans blamed him for high inflation and the cost of living. Now, poll after poll shows that voters are more likely to hold Trump — not Biden — responsible for the current state of the U.S. economy, even as Trump tries to redirect the blame.
Even Kamala Harris, the most recent Democratic standard-bearer as their 2024 nominee, is named less often in paid media this cycle than Biden. And among other potential future Democratic presidential candidates, only California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez appear as Republican foils — and not as often as Harris or Biden.
Ocasio-Cortez is often mentioned by Republicans in the same sentence as Sanders, especially when the GOP seeks to tie Democrats in battleground races to the party’s progressive wing. In Michigan’s hotly contested Senate race, former public health official Abdul El-Sayed was endorsed by both — something his opponent Mike Rogers and GOP outside groups have seized on.
“El Sayed is endorsed by extreme liberals like AOC, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders,” one recent ad from the conservative super PAC Sentinel Action Fund says.
Some Republicans have sought to run against the progressives even when there are no such ties: One ad that ran earlier this year from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the state’s GOP comptroller promised to stand up to Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and the “new radical left.” Neither Sanders nor Ocasio-Cortez have endorsed in either race.
Most often, the GOP has run ads seeking to tie Democratic candidates to socialism or communism — the concepts themselves — in dozens of House battleground races and nearly every major Senate race. Just this week, the Trump administration launched a national $20 million DHS-funded campaign-style ad spree that features Trump lambasting “communism, socialism, and Marxism.”
But when it comes to specific political figures — like Mamdani, New York City’s mayor — it gets complicated. Republicans once salivated at the prospect of Mamdani as a foil when he was first elected last year. But his first year in office has largely boosted his standing with voters, complicating efforts to turn his tenure into a negative for Democrats.
Trump’s surprising continued embrace of the New York City mayor — just last week, the president stood by Mamdani and said he hoped he would “be a great mayor” — has further complicated GOP efforts to paint him as a villain.
In a handful of swingy New York congressional districts, Republicans have still attempted to tie their opponents to Mamdani, while Democrats have pushed back on the connection. In New York’s 21st District, which Trump won by more than 20 points two years ago, Democratic dairy farmer Blake Gendebien ran an ad arguing that his Republican opponent wants voters to think he’s “running against Zohran Mamdani” but “that’s a load of bull.”
The GOP has characterized prominent Democrats as socialist for decades. As progressives won a series of contested primaries this year, some Democrats worried the rise of figures with ties to the Democratic Socialists of America would give Republicans easy ammunition for the general election.
But being called a “socialist” may not have the same shock value it once did.
“I don’t think just calling a candidate ‘socialist’ works that well for Republicans, particularly this late in the game,” said Matt Towery, a longtime GOP pollster. “If a candidate focuses on parts of the DSA’s platform and can authentically pin it on their opponent, that might work. But Republicans just assume people have a bad reaction to the term socialist, and the term doesn’t elicit the same reaction it used to.”
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