by Michael Goodwin
Rational and well-informed New Yorkers have long known there are good reasons to make Bruce Blakeman our next governor.
And now comes more, thanks to Gov. Hochul’s decision to pull back the covers on her views of Mayor Mamdani and Israel.
In a long interview with Politico, the governor admitted what has become maddeningly obvious: There are no big differences between her and the socialist antisemite in City Hall.
“We’re aligned on so many issues,” she said of Mamdani, “and I need the mayor to be successful . . . So I’ve developed a very positive relationship with him.”
That “very positive” relationship essentially consists of her using billions and billions of state tax dollars to fill the city’s budget deficit and help fund Mamdani’s exorbitant list of free things.
His thank you comes in the form of their joint appearances in her re-election campaign.
The mayor’s attacks on Blakeman and his fawning over Hochul are payback for her funneling gobs of state dollars to him.
What she wants is for his legions of anti-Israel and anti-American comrades to vote and give her four more years.
The arrangement reveals her blatant use of state money to buy votes from his radical supporters.
A not-so-small secondary effect is that she implicitly pledges her support for his continuing anti-capitalist, anti-Israel agenda.
The good news is that the obvious pay-to-play arrangement presents sensible voters with a way to punish both participants simultaneously.
The sickening pact turns a vote for Blakeman into a vote against both Hochul and Mamdani.
Two birds with one stone.
A Blakeman victory would usher in dramatic changes for 20 million residents statewide.
The new governor could tighten Albany’s criminal-coddling policies and end the nation’s most punishing tax-and-spending regime, which are sparking an enormous outflow of residents to more sensible states.
Partnership from hell
City dwellers and businesses would reap additional benefits, with Blakeman blocking the tax and spending hikes in Mamdani’s 2027 playbook.
But if Hochul is re-elected, she will give Mamdani what he wants and help impose more destructive policies on Gotham.
The sinister and flawed pied-à-terre tax she pushed through the Legislature would be mere warm-up if he helps carry her to victory.
The partnership from hell explains Blakeman’s sweeping pledge to end Hochul’s tax-and-spending reign of error, while also slicing sky-high utility bills in half.
As the experienced GOP nominee notes, her green scams and bans of new natural gas production have driven up utility costs in New York to 70% above the national average.
In effect, utility bills have become a back-door tax collecting scam, where the state grabs ever more money as its reward for driving up home and business energy costs.
Blakeman’s crusade on the subject has touched a nerve, with Hochul trying to get back in voters’ good graces with a sudden fondness for “energy rebates.”
In truth, they are nothing more than a partial refund of the piggy-piggy taxes the state grabbed.
Regarding Israel, Hochul claims in the Politico interview that her few differences with Mamdani include “approaches to the Jewish community, Israel and all that.”
“All that” turns out not to be such a big difference at all. Mamdani says Israel should not exist as the Jewish homeland, accuses it of genocide and is the first mayor in six decades to skip the annual Salute to Israel Day parade.
Hochul’s record shows she parts company on those extremes, but doesn’t dare criticize him.
And she has her own very strange way of supporting America’s most important ally in the fight against Islamic terrorism.
In a bizarre passage, she tells Politico, “I went to Israel right after Oct. 7. I saw a lot of pain there. But I actually cautioned the government there, in private conversations, not to overreach. The world is with you when it comes to the brutal assault by a terrorist organization known as Hamas on innocent Israeli people. An overreach could change that dynamic, and that’s what’s happened.”
