Gov. Kathy Hochul was on course for re-election Tuesday, defeating Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, to secure a second full four-year term.
The Associated Press called the race for Hochul just five minutes after polls closed at 9 p.m. The announcement came as Mayor Zohran Mamdani praised the governor at New York Democrats’ election night gathering at the Hilton hotel in Midtown.
Hochul is likely to face immediate pressure from the party’s left flank — including Mamdani and his Democratic Socialists of America allies — to embrace their “tax the rich” agenda when the new legislative session begins in January.
The socialist mayor endorsed Hochul and campaigned alongside her in New York City during the final days of the race, seemingly giving the incumbent a late boost among his supporters.
Unlike several months earlier, Hochul declined to take a firm position against tax increases. She also sidestepped questions about whether she would provide Mamdani with additional state support next year, after helping him during his first budget with measures that included a pied-a-terre tax on luxury second homes in New York City.
Blakeman made the issue a central campaign theme. On Friday, he signed a “no new taxes” pledge and challenged Hochul to make the same commitment.
Throughout the campaign, the Long Island politician and ally of President Trump repeatedly criticized Hochul over New York’s soaring cost of living, as well as Democratic policies on energy and immigration.
Blakeman’s message, however, failed to win over the broad coalition of independent voters and disaffected Democrats he needed in a state where 48% of registered voters are Democrats.
Polling showed Hochul gaining ground in the final weeks before Election Day. Blakeman’s strongest showing — a nine-point deficit for Hochul in a Siena University poll conducted in September — was followed by a 14-point Hochul lead in a survey released by the pollster last week.
Yet the same poll found that just 41% of New Yorkers believe the Empire State is moving in the “right direction.” That figure was nearly unchanged from the 39% recorded when Siena asked the question in October 2022, one month before Hochul won her first full term.
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That year, Hochul faced an unexpectedly strong challenge from then-Long Island Rep. Lee Zeldin, defeating him by only six percentage points.
Blakeman’s campaign failed to build comparable momentum. He lacked name recognition outside Long Island, while Hochul repeatedly sought to link him to Trump.
After Trump’s 2024 victory underscored Democrats’ vulnerability among voters frustrated by the high cost of living — including in affluent, heavily Democratic states such as New York — Hochul centered her re-election platform on “affordability.”
Free “rebate” checks, no-cost school meals and billions of dollars in child-care subsidies formed the foundation of Hochul’s campaign, along with initiatives such as a ban on cellphones in schools.
She also focused on several of the year’s most prominent issues, including data centers and the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts. Her response included a hastily assembled one-year moratorium on new data centers and approval of a series of sanctuary-state measures intended to resist Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Several controversies from Hochul’s first five years in office failed to resurface as major campaign issues. They included allegations of bid-rigging involving an $11 billion home-care program, the resignation of her press secretary amid sexual harassment allegations and a number of disputed state contract awards.
The victory capped four years of difficult — and at times notably awkward — political maneuvering by Hochul, who assumed the governorship after Andrew Cuomo resigned amid a sexual misconduct scandal in 2021.
Hochul, who was widely blamed — including by senior Democrats — for the party’s losses in the 2022 midterm elections, had to navigate Trump’s return to the White House, Mayor Eric Adams’ turbulent tenure in New York City and the emergence of Mamdani.
Her uneasy and, at times, divisive endorsement of Mamdani after his primary victory over Cuomo last year helped establish a public truce between the two politicians. That relationship ultimately assisted Hochul in fending off a left-wing challenge from her estranged lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado.
Hochul eventually selected former City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams as her running mate for lieutenant governor.
The four-year term secured by the pair will run through 2030, marking over nine years since she first took office. Should she complete the term, Hochul’s tenure would be roughly as long as Cuomo’s 10 years and eight months in office.
The Buffalo-area native is the the first upstate Democrat to serve as governor since Grover Cleveland in 1885 and the first female governor – or first “mom” governor, as she’s often called herself.