Republican gubernatorial nominee Bruce Blakeman is closing his campaign against Gov. Kathy Hochul with a 30-second digital ad warning that the Democratic incumbent will work with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to raise taxes by billions of dollars if voters give her a full term on Nov. 3.
“Kathy Hochul made New York unaffordable — taxing paychecks, toll and fare hikes. The nation’s highest taxes,” the ad’s narrator says, according to the New York Post. “Now, Hochul is planning with Mamdani massive new tax hikes for their socialist agenda: higher income taxes, property taxes, higher taxes on farms, small businesses.”
The spot also accuses the pair of “giving millions to illegals” before ending on a single line: “Hochul raised taxes before, she’ll raise them again. Only your vote for Bruce Blakeman will stop them.”
The ad leans on the governor’s own record. Hochul has twice raised the payroll tax on corporations in the New York City region to fund mass transit, backed the $9 congestion pricing toll to enter Midtown Manhattan to help bankroll the MTA, and earlier this year authorized a new tax on luxury second homes in the city to support Mamdani’s budget.
Mamdani’s political allies have pushed for far more. The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America supports raising taxes by $32 billion on high earners and corporations to pay for universal child care and other social service programs.
Hochul insisted during the candidates’ only debate, on Oct. 14, that she would not raise state income taxes, and she has said she cut income taxes for middle-class New Yorkers to their lowest rate in decades.
Blakeman is offering the opposite pitch. The Nassau County executive has promised to eliminate state income taxes on the first $50,000 of income for single filers and the first $100,000 for married couples, a $34 billion plan he says would be covered by economic growth and by cutting state spending on migrants in the country illegally.
Asked about taxes Tuesday, the Hochul campaign did not address the question directly and instead went after Blakeman’s record in Nassau.
“Only a ‘MAGA all the way’ perennial candidate like Bruce Blakeman could expect you to believe he’d cut property taxes after raising them twice, or do anything about utility costs when he’s defending Trump’s record-high gas prices and fighting to let data centers jack up your energy bills,” a Hochul campaign spokesperson said. “Governor Hochul stands up to Trump’s attacks on this state, has invested $4 billion into public safety, and cut middle-class taxes to historically low rates – just one week to go until we don’t have to hear any more lies from Blakeman.”
Blakeman is trying to close a gap that a Quinnipiac University poll earlier this month put at 14 percentage points. He has dismissed the surveys as “phony.”
Early voting runs through Nov. 1, and Election Day is Nov. 3.
