Summary
- If elected, N.Y. gubernatorial nominee Bruce Blakeman would have significant influence over Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
- “I don’t have to work with Zohran Mamdani. He has to work with me,” Blakeman said.
- Blakeman would end the Hochul-Mamdani alliance, and his appeal to many New Yorkers doesn’t end there.
What if Mayor Zohran Mamdani only cut ribbons and rode in parades? New York City could do worse than boast a young figurehead with limited powers and abundant pizzazz.
Bruce Blakeman could make this happen.
Fifty-one weeks ago, Mamdani won City Hall. Alas, he has proved himself to be a democratic socialist dynamo, rivaling only Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N..Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for leadership among the leap-off-a-cliff Left.
Nassau County Executive Blakeman is New York’s Republican gubernatorial nominee. If elected, he could slip a leash around Mamdani’s neck and yank him back from the neo-Marxist fringe.
The governor of the Empire State has a surprising level of influence over the mayor of New York, largely due to reforms implemented after Gotham City nearly went bankrupt in the 1970s. The straits were so dire that the Big Apple lobbied President Gerald R. Ford for a federal bailout in October 1975. Ford balked. The next morning, the New York Daily News ran its most famous headline ever: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.”
“I don’t have to work with Zohran Mamdani. He has to work with me,” Blakeman told Fox News Digital. “When I become governor, I’m not going to let him destroy the fabric of New York City. I’m not going to let him destroy the economy of New York City, and I’m not going to let him make New York unsafe. Those are all things he’s doing right now, and I will stop him.”
Blakeman explained how he would manage Mamdani during a July 5 campaign event at The Hampton Synagogue.
“I believe in incremental discipline, like with our children. First, you give them a timeout, then you ground them,” Blakeman said. “I’m going to give Mamdani, the first time, a timeout. Then I’m going to ground him. And the discipline will get stronger and stronger and stronger until he behaves himself.”
Blakeman proposed to use his sway over Gotham’s budget as “leverage against Mamdani and some of his acolytes.”
According to journalist Dan Stark, “Blakeman noted that as governor, he would have the power to remove Mamdani from office. The crowd cheered upon hearing that, though Blakeman noted that the mayor would need to do something egregious even to consider that option.”
Blakeman loathes Mamdani’s plan for five “free,” city-owned grocery stores—at a taxpayer cost of $70 million.
“This unconstitutional subsidy poses a direct threat to long-standing, tax-paying businesses, risking widespread closures and job losses within the community,” Blakeman told the New York Post’s Rich Calder. The Republican standard bearer called Mamdani’s scheme “an incredibly expensive socialist pipe dream that forces local mom-and-pop shops—who already pay astronomical state taxes—to compete against a government monopoly subsidized by those very same tax dollars.”
Blakeman added: “New York runs on fiscal responsibility, free enterprise, and the grit of local entrepreneurs—not bottomless government spending on Soviet-style supermarkets.”
“Blakeman would also be a vital check on Mamdani’s extremism,” the Post noted Oct. 23, in its endorsement editorial. “Not only would he stand up to him on crime and fiscal irresponsibility, Blakeman (himself Jewish) would counter Hizzoner’s nonstop anti-Israel agitation, which only enflames antisemitism.”
Beyond potentially getting Mamdani under control, Blakeman’s supporters see numerous other reasons to champion his cause.
First and foremost is to boot Gov. Kathy Hochul from office. The incumbent Democrat governor recalls one of those old Soviet apparatchiks who loitered around the Kremlin until his ticket got called.
“Number 38? Number 38? Yes, it’s your turn to be General Secretary. Good luck, Comrade!”
Likewise, Hochul happened to be lieutenant governor when Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo tripped over some skirts and stumbled out of office. Hochul plopped into the governor’s chair, and there she has sat, as bland, uninspiring, and nearly as Left-wing as Konstantin Chernenko when he became the USSR’s top dog in February 1984, after former KGB chief Yuri Andropov kicked the samovar.
Stalinist ideas aside, at least Mamdani is charming, magnetic, and (despite his facial hair) handsome. I hate nearly everything he says, but I cannot peel my eyes off him.
Au contraire, Kathy Hochul is defined as −459.67° Fahrenheit, better known as absolute zero. She is not sharp, engaging, or eloquent. Her words land like bricks tumbling from a crumbling brownstone. She is neither funny, nor stylish, nor interesting. She is as generic as a box of baking soda. Kathy Hochzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Sorry! I dozed off while writing her name.
If Blakeman did nothing more than spare New Yorkers four more years of Hochul’s soporific misrule, he would be worshipped from Staten Island to Lake Placid.
The Post said this about Hochul:
Hochul also stands with the far left when it comes to violent illegal immigrants, opting to make New York their “sanctuary.”
And she just can’t stop sucking up to Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his fellow socialists, to the point that some regard him as New York’s real governor.
Not only did Hochul endorse Mamdani; she also handed him a pied-à-terre tax to placate his “tax-the-rich” base along with billions in state support to enable his reckless spending.
Blakeman would cancel the Hochul-Mamdani alliance. His appeal to many New Yorkers doesn’t end there.
“On day one, as governor, I will sign an executive order that we are no longer a sanctuary state,” Blakeman said. Instead, he would help federal officials arrest and deport violent illegal-alien criminals, not least deadly gangs and cartelistas. Under Hochul and Mamdani, they enjoy free-range status.
Blakeman aims to bury cashless bail, which currently speeds arrested lawbreakers back onto the sidewalks of New York, so they swiftly can resume their criminal careers.
Blakeman will push taxes down, rather than up, their default direction in what the late, great New York University professor Herbert I. London called “the Vampire State.” Blakeman would pry the fangs from the necks of single filers who earn up to $50,000 and joint filers who score as much as $100,000. They would pay no state income tax under Blakeman’s proposal. He stresses this point: “I will roll out the biggest middle-class tax cut in the history of New York.”
Blakeman also would halve power bills by unplugging what he calls Hochul’s costly and ineffective “green energy scam” and “science projects that cost billions of dollars.”
Blakeman would junk Hochul’s disastrous congestion-pricing shakedown. It pickpockets motorists who venture below Manhattan’s 60th Street. This force field repels shoppers, diners, and theatergoers who otherwise would drive into town. It also scares away their money.
The Cato Institute released its Freedom in the 50 States Report Card on Monday. Guess which governor Cato ranked No. 50? Two notches below California’s vacuous Gavin Newsom is none other than Kathy Hochul! America’s worst governor earned an Overall Freedom Grade of F and Overall Freedom Score of 0.00. Once again, Kathy Hochul: Absolute Zero.
You can understand why Blakeman’s supporters think New York state literally has nowhere to go but up.
As for Zohran Mamdani, a Blakeman victory could make the warmly collectivist Wunderkind less a mayor and more a grand marshal.
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