Bruce Blakeman Takes on Gov. Hochul

**Brigid Bergen** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergen, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom sitting in for Brian today.
This November isn't just about the congressional midterm elections. New Yorkers will also be electing or reelecting their governor.
Governor Kathy Hochul is facing a challenge from Republican Bruce Blakeman, the current Nassau County executive, and the results of a poll of likely voters released on Wednesday are raising some eyebrows. Hochul's in the lead and by 10 points, but expectations were for an even bigger margin. And President Trump will be visiting Nassau County this afternoon for a joint appearance with Blakeman. To talk about the governor's race and how it's shaking out, I'm joined by my colleague Jimmy Vielkind, New York State Issues Reporter for WNYC and Gothamist, based in Albany, and by a former colleague, Bahar Ostadan, now Nassau County Government Reporter for Newsday. Hello and welcome back to the show, Jimmy and Bahar.

**Jimmy Vielkind** (1:08)
Hi, Brigid.

**Bahar Ostadan** (1:10)
Hi. Thanks for having me.

**Brigid Bergen** (1:11)
Well, let's get right to it, Jimmy. Do you think most of the Democrats involved in this race are saying, oh, double digit lead, that's great, or only 10 point lead, that's not so great? And vice versa for Republicans?

**Jimmy Vielkind** (1:26)
I think that this was a moment of maybe pause and reflection, but I actually don't think it went either way.
If you stack back and think about this, all signs are that this is going to be a Democratic year across the nation. I always think about politics as sort of a tidal metaphor. Right now, the tide in this year seems to be pulling to the left. We know that President Trump is broadly unpopular. We know that there is the historic trend of the party opposite the one that controls the White House gaining power, gaining seats in midterm elections. That's happened pretty consistently over US history with only a few exceptions.
And so you have that tide going this way in a way that was very different than 2022 when Hochul ran for her first full term as governor. And then the other thing is you just have to look at, you know, how high up the, on a high ground is your house building with this tide coming in. In New York, there are twice as many enrolled Democrats as Republicans. Democrats control all the statewide offices. Democrats control the state legislature. They control the whole state government. And so that means that they have a lot of the trappings of incumbency, a lot of things that go along with them in terms of structural advantages. So Democrats I'm talking to, you know, they say, oh, 10 points. That's not great. That's not bad.
But as of now, there doesn't seem to be too much of a panic or a strong reaction. The Republicans did say that, like, yeah, this shows the race is not a runaway.

**Brigid Bergen** (3:00)
It's interesting. So not a lot of hand ringing among the Dems. But it also makes me wonder, Jimmy, we've seen polling in other parts of the country show one thing ahead of an election and then some slightly or extremely different results after the vote. And I wonder if there's any caution that either side is bringing to this poll. Just, you know, is that just a Midwest thing? Or, you know, is the is there challenges associated with polling and understanding where voters' hearts and minds are these days?

**Jimmy Vielkind** (3:34)
Oh, I think polling has gotten increasingly, increasingly difficult because, in part because the electorate has been so fickle. So this Sienna poll is based on a likely voter model, which Sienna calculated according to poll spokesperson Steve Greenberg, by looking at recent gubernatorial elections and kind of figuring out, well, how much of the vote generally comes from New York City? How much of it generally comes from Democrats and Republicans? And so, they've developed a likely voter turnout model. We saw very clearly in the last elections in New York City in 2025, that those likely voter turnout models are great and passed as prologue until it's not, right? Zeran Mamdani snuck up in the polls because of this surge of young voters that came out. So, what are we going to see in this election?
There aren't many signs of a surge of young voters focused on the gubernatorial election. Will there be a surge of suburbanites who are concerned about some of the policies that have been enacted by Democrats? Will there be a surge of people who are just so angry at Donald Trump, who are concerned about tariffs, concerned about the war in Iran, et cetera, that come out that happens in an unpredictable way?