GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman blasted Gov. Kathy Hochul for enabling Mayor Zohran Mamdani — calling the pair “dangerous” as he said New Yorkers should vote for him to restore sanity to the state.
“The only way to save this state is to support my campaign this year, because left-wing lunatics … the Zohran Mamdani wing of the Democratic Party — these people hate America,” Blakeman said during an interview that aired Sunday on 77 WABC radio’s the “Cats Roundtable” program.
“They are danger to our state,” said Blakeman, who is currently serving his second term as the Nassau County executive. “They are danger to our country. And they’ve got to be stopped,”
He lumped Hochul in with Mamdani, a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America, whom she cozied up to during his 2025 campaign in what critics have blasted as a cynical political ploy to avoid facing a primary challenge during her reelection campaign this year.
“As Winston Churchill said: ‘Communism. Socialism. It’s nothing more than shared misery’” Blakeman told radio host John Catsimatidis. “That’s what we have now under Kathy Hochul and Zohran Mamani.
“They want to make everybody miserable so they don’t know the difference between being happy and being miserable.”
Blakeman’s red alert came after Mamdani’s slate of democratic socialist and leftist candidates swept key Democratic primary House house races in New York last week. The results of the primary could have longstanding ramifications and may shift and reshape the Democratic power structure and policy priorities for years to come.
Democratic Socialist of America candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier ousted five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the 13th District in northern Manhattan and the Bronx while former DSA member and city Comptroller Brad Lander took out two-term incumbent Dan Goldman in the 10th District covering lower Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn.
Meanwhile, DSA member Claire Valdez won a vacant seat in the Brooklyn-Queens 7th District to replace retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez by trouncing Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.
DSA candidates in state legislature races swept but one race to nearly double the movement’s representation in Albany.
Blakeman blasted New York’s sky high taxes, congestion pricing and electric bills, which are 70% higher than the national average, and billions in spending on undocumented immigrants.
“I can do for New York state what I did for my county. We need policies that protect New Yorkers … not giving $8 billion to illegal migrants who haven’t earned a thing. That’s our taxpayer dollars that should be spent on New Yorkers. It’s a disgrace. I will end it on Day One,” he said.
Blakeman also slammed the city’s just-announced rent freeze on one- and two-year leases for 1 million government-regulated apartments. The freeze will discourage maintenance upkeep of apartments and some landlords will walk away from the the properties, which would be converted into public housing run by the “slumlord” new York City Housing Authority, he said.
“Zohran Mamdani and Kathy Hochul just imposed a rent freeze. On the surface, if you’re living in an apartment, that sounds like a good thing,” he said.
“The bad thing about it is that nobody is investing in affordable housing anymore in New York,” Blakeman warned. “Those who have units that are vacant, they’re keeping them vacant because they can’t afford to make capital improvements and repairs. We now have 80,000 vacant units in the City of New York. Landlords, they’re going to give up. They’re going to leave.”
Blakeman claimed Mamdani and Hochul would “take everything under the umbrella of the New York City Housing Authority.”
“You’re going to be living under the New York City Housing Authority, which is the biggest slumlord in the United States of America,” Blakeman said. “That’s what they want. They want to control your home, your housing.”
The Republican is still the clear underdog in the campaign. A Siena College poll released last week had Hochul leading Blakeman by 20 points, 52% to 32%, with less than five months until November’s midterm elections.
The Hochul campaign had no immediate comment.
