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.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer plans to force a vote on a measure that could allow lawmakers to jump-start litigation against the Trump administration for failing to comply with the new law requiring the full release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

“The law Congress passed is crystal clear: release the Epstein files in full so Americans can see the truth,” the New York Democrat said in a statement Monday. “Instead, the Trump Department of Justice dumped redactions and withheld the evidence — that breaks the law. Today, I am introducing a resolution to force the Senate to take legal action and compel this administration to comply.”

The resolution would establish “authority to initiate litigation for actions by the President and Department of Justice officials inconsistent with their duties under the laws of the United States.”

It’s unlikely that enough Republicans would join Democrats in supporting the measure, but Schumer intends to put his colleagues on the spot in January, bringing the resolution to the floor when the Senate reconvenes after the holiday recess.

It follows Friday’s long-awaited rollout of materials from the Justice Department in its case against the late, convicted sex offender. That day, Dec. 19, marked the legislation’s deadline for public disclosure — but DOJ has said it would instead slowly release materials over the course of weeks, sparking bipartisan outrage.

The White House on Monday pointed to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s recent interview with NBC News, in which he claimed his department was doing everything in its power to comply with the law.

Asked about potential threats about impeachment proceedings, contempt or criminal referrals, Blanche responded: “Bring it on.”

The White House referred further comment to the Justice Department. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Congress passed legislation last month granting the Justice Department 30 days to publicly release its materials. The bill provided few exceptions for when files could obtain redactions — primarily in instances where DOJ wanted to protect the identities of Epstein’s victims.

The White House and congressional GOP leadership had led a long campaign to thwart passage the bill. However, it ultimately advanced unanimously in the Senate and with only one nay vote in the House: Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), who argued it could jeopardize the privacy of Epstein’s victims and others.

After an initial dump of materials Friday and Saturday, Democrats were quick to blast the administration for failing to release the Epstein files in full and accused the administration of unlawfully redacting information.

Relatively little new information was included in the batches of materials that have been released so far.

Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) — who championed the legislation and led the effort to force a floor vote in the House to release the files — suggested they would urge the House to invoke its long-dormant power to hold Attorney General Pam Bondi in inherent contempt of Congress for her agency’s failure to comply with the law.

On Monday, Khanna posted on X that he, Massie and Epstein’s accusers are eager to see the draft indictment, interviews in which witnesses name other men who might have perpetuated sex crimes, emails from Epstein’s computer and the Epstein prosecution memo.

Congress has adjourned for the holidays having made no tangible progress toward funding the government ahead of a shutdown looming less than six weeks away.

The most conspicuous sign that Congress faces real obstacles before the Jan. 30 funding deadline came late Thursday, when Senate leaders gave up on passing a spending package and sent members home for two weeks, despite working for more than a month to appease senators who had objections.

But the impediments to reaching a deal that can pass both chambers are more extensive, starting with the fact that Republicans and Democrats on both ends of the Capitol have yet to start negotiating the details of the nine pending funding bills. The lack of bipartisan offer-trading is raising the likelihood of another short-term punt — or another shutdown.

“We wasted a lot of time because the Senate’s not negotiating yet,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said in an interview last week. “When they’re ready to negotiate, we can move fast.”

Cole and his counterpart, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), just reached an agreement over the weekend on overall totals for the remaining spending bills Congress needs to pass. Lawmakers already passed three as part of the package that ended the shutdown last month — funding veterans and agriculture agencies, federal food aid and the Food and Drug Administration, along with Congress itself, through Sept. 30.

For more than a month Cole and Collins had been trying to bridge differences on key numbers while Senate leaders tried to advance a funding package that reflects consensus from only their side of the Capitol. Last week’s heave failed, but senators expect to try again in early January.

“We have different dynamics in our caucuses that we need to deal with,” Collins said this month as she left a meeting with Cole.

Democrats have been growing impatient. “They wasted all that time during the summer,” said Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House’s top Democratic appropriator, about House Republicans spending the better part of this year crafting partisan funding bills.

Then Democrats had to wait for their GOP counterparts to strike the “majority to majority” deal on funding totals that finally arrived Saturday.

“Democrats are prepared. We’re ready to move. Let’s go,” DeLauro said.

Even if top appropriators can manage to agree on the nine remaining funding bills, other thorny dynamics threaten to complicate final passage in each chamber. The pitfalls include the mismatch between what appropriators want to spend and the demands of House fiscal hawks seeking flat funding for agencies — as well as the fact that Democrats will need to help pass any spending bills in the Senate, as they acutely illustrated with this fall’s record 43-day shutdown.

The totals top Republican appropriators just agreed upon are not public. But Cole said the deal will ensure overall funding would be below the level laid out in the stopgap funding patch enacted last month.

Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, chair of the House Freedom Caucus and a top Republican appropriator, said last week that he wants funding for the Pentagon and the largest nondefense agencies to be “no more than what was enacted” for the fiscal year that ended in September.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) has the same idea: “I don’t want any spending higher than current-level spending,” he said. “If they’re busting the current levels, then they’re going to have to demonstrate to me why.”

If House hard-liners aren’t appeased when the funding bills come together, they could start making threats to Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP leaders, who already are on the outs with House Republicans over their handling of health care assistance this month.

“You can expect the smoke to start coming up from over that hill and that hill and that hill,” said Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), who chairs the Homeland Security spending panel. “And there might even be some open flame.”

Amodei said some of his colleagues are openly talking about the potential for another shutdown. But many others think it is more likely that Congress is headed for another punt at current funding levels for the remaining nine bills.

Last week, Johnson told his conference in a closed-door meeting that he wants to pass those bills by the Jan. 30 deadline — a goal that many in the GOP ranks consider aspirational at best. One House Republican granted anonymity to describe the private meeting said he turned to one of his colleagues and whispered, “I wouldn’t bet on that on Polymarket,” referring to an online prediction market.

Senate leaders have their own conflicting demands to manage. Fiscal conservatives repeatedly objected to starting debate on a five-bill funding package in recent weeks, citing opposition to earmarks as they also sought promises related to other legislation.

But it was Democrats who blocked movement in the final days before the Senate adjourned Thursday. One late-breaking demand by Colorado’s senators was to reverse the White House’s move last week to dismantle a federal center in the state that supports research in climate and weather science.

Still, following the acrimony of the shutdown this fall, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Majority Leader John Thune are at least projecting a unified front on government funding ahead of the January deadline.

“Both Thune and I are in agreement that we’re going to work through the process and get the appropriations bills done,” Schumer told reporters late Thursday after Senate leaders decided to adjourn without passing the funding package.

Since top Republican appropriators reached an agreement on overall totals after Congress adjourned, lawmakers hope some negotiating can be done before they return to town Jan. 5.

“Staff has been instructed to — whatever they’re doing — take their laptops with them,” DeLauro said.

When Congress reconvenes, both chambers are only scheduled to be in session for three weeks before the shutdown deadline — with the House slated to be out of session the week immediately before.

Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican appropriator, said he was hopeful his party’s leaders would keep lawmakers in town to pass any deal that might come together.

“This is people’s political livelihood on the line,” he said. “We’ve got to get this done. Nobody leaves.”

Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.