Hochul swipes back at Blakeman blaming her for rising NY costs as new poll hints govs race is tightening

Gov.Kathy Hochul took a jaunt to her GOP gubernatorial challenger Bruce Blakeman’s Long Island home turf Monday — swiping back at his attacks as a bombshell new poll showed the race tightening.During back-to-back appearances in Nassau and Suffolk counties, Hochul cast a Blakeman campaign mailer that blamed her and socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for “sky high taxes, rising utility bills and out of control crime” as pure fantasy.“That’s interesting — because it’s not based on fact,” she claimed, as she announced a new $100 million grant package for law enforcement tech in Freeport.The Democratic governor instead blamed Blakeman’s fellow Republicans in Washington, DC, for driving up costs by backing President Trump’s war in Iran and tariffs.She also said the Trump administration’s recent move to block federal disaster funds for New York’s response to devastating blizzards during February was “political.”“They think it’s hurting me, but it’s backfiring,” Hochul insisted.But a recent poll shows Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, trailing Hochul by just 6 points in the governor’s race.Hochul leads 47% to 41% among likely general election voters with 12% undecided, according to the new survey conducted by the firm co/efficient for the right-leaning Coalition to Protect Nassau Taxpayers.The firm accurately predicted in 2022 that the race between Hochul and then-Long Island Republican Rep.

Lee Zeldin would be closer than public polling had anticipated.She ended up winning by 6 percentage posts — the same spread that co/efficient had between the candidates in its September 2022 polling.The new poll’s findings clash with other public surveys showing Hochul is up by a comfortable double-digit margin or as much as 20 points.But it also hinted that Blakeman could capitalize — if he’s not already — on voters’ worries about rising socialism.The survey found that 55% of voters were very concerned or concerned abo...