With Elise Stefanik, the six-term Republican member of the House of Representatives from upstate Schuylerville, suddenly deciding that she would not run for governor of New York this year, the race became a three-way contest.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, after a big re-election win in November, is now the presumptive Republican nominee. He was sworn in last week to a second term as county executive, with his eye on seeking to become the state’s governor. “I’m on a journey. I don’t know where the path will end,” he said.
Earlier this month, at the annual Long Island Association Breakfast, Blakeman spoke of a “listening tour” of the state he undertook to gauge support for being the GOP nominee for governor. Although “here on Long Island, people are generally happy,” he said, he found in his “travels around the state” that there are regions where people “aren’t very happy. They’re miserable—they feel that the state government has let them down.”
Blakeman, formerly presiding officer of the Nassau County Legislature and a Hempstead Town councilman, is significantly behind incumbent Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul, according to early polling.
If Blakeman, an attorney from Atlantic Beach, is elected governor, it would be a geographic rarity in New York State politics. Since the office of governor was created in 1777, the only individuals who have held the position with residential ties to Nassau and Suffolk counties were Hugh Carey and Theodore Roosevelt. Carey, while maintaining a home in Brooklyn, also had one on Shelter Island, and Roosevelt, a Manhattan native, lived at Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay while serving as president.
Blakeman is a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, who has said he has given Blakeman his “Complete and Total Endorsement” for the GOP nomination for governor.
Hochul also attended the Long Island Association event. There, she criticized Blakeman for having Nassau County coordinate with ICE in federal immigration enforcement efforts. She also took aim at his launch of a program for deputized, armed Nassau County civilians to function as a reserve force—Hochul labeled it a “militia”—with a mission that includes assisting ICE alongside local police.
Hochul, who is seeking a second term as governor, is being challenged by her lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, who is running against her in a Democratic primary. According to polls, Hochul is well ahead of both Blakeman and Delgado.
In the 2014 New York gubernatorial election, Governor Andrew Cuomo selected Hochul as his running mate for lieutenant governor. She had previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives. The pair was re-elected in 2018. Hochul ascended to the governorship in 2021 when Cuomo resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment.
Hochul, of Buffalo, became the state’s first woman governor and chose Delgado in 2022 to replace Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin, who resigned after being federally indicted on corruption charges. That case was dropped last year following the death of a key witness.
Hochul and Delgado, of Rhinebeck and also a former member of the House, ran together in 2022. Their political relationship later soured, with Delgado announcing last year that he would not run with Hochul in 2026 but instead challenge her for the Democratic nomination for governor.
Delgado’s primary campaign website states: “Born and raised in Schenectady, Antonio Delgado is the son of working-class parents who taught him the value of hard work and perseverance. A Colgate graduate, Rhodes Scholar, and Harvard Law alum, Antonio has dedicated his life to leading with love and working to improve the lives around him.”
In an interview, Delgado charged that Hochul has been “capitulating to Trump.” He faulted Hochul, for example, over the state’s reversal on a pipeline pushed by the Trump administration—previously rejected by the state—that would carry fracked gas from Pennsylvania into New York.
Many of Delgado’s criticisms focus on environmental and energy policy. He said Hochul has not sufficiently implemented the New York State Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019, which aims to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions and emphasizes green, renewable energy.
Delgado also differs with Hochul on nuclear power—a dominant issue on Long Island for decades, dating back to the Long Island Lighting Company’s effort to build seven to eleven nuclear power plants, beginning with Shoreham. Due to grassroots and governmental opposition, including from Governor Mario Cuomo’s administration, the Shoreham plant never went into commercial operation, and the broader plan collapsed.
Last year, Hochul began calling for new nuclear power generation in New York State, pushing for the state to become a center of a national nuclear power revival.
In her “State of the State” address last week in Albany, Hochul announced: “Last summer I took the bold step of greenlighting the first nuclear power project in a generation… At the time, we set a goal of building one gigawatt of nuclear power,” the equivalent of one large nuclear plant. “But if there’s one thing I believe, it’s this: go big or go home. So I’ve decided to raise the bar to five gigawatts. That’s more nuclear energy than has been built anywhere in the United States in the last 30 years.”
Delgado argues that nuclear power is a “distraction” from green, renewable energy sources led by solar and wind, which he says are more economical and faster to deploy in the face of climate change. Blakeman, meanwhile, is also a supporter of nuclear power.
Hochul, however, has retaliated against Delgado. As WCBS-TV chief political correspondent Marcia Kramer has reported, Hochul has “banished him from his office… in the state Capitol in Albany,” taken away his New York City offices, and reassigned much of his staff.