Photo: AFP
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman made it official Tuesday morning and announced he is running for governor in New York. The announcement comes one month after Blakeman’s landslide re-election as county executive, but it also sets him up for a Republican primary challenge with Elise Stefanik, who left her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives to take on Kathy Hochul for the Governor’s slot in November. As of today, however, Blakeman may have a bigger issue than stepping on Stefanik’s toes: do New Yorkers outside of Nassau County know who he is? Natalie Migliore took her Beat on the Street microphone to a subway entrance at Rockefeller Center to find out whether New Yorkers are looking eleven months down the road yet. She found that mostly, they’re open to the idea- although she found one man who actually thought she said Bruce Springsteen was running for governor. Sadly, that’s not the Bruce who was “Born to Run” for that job.
Migliore told host Larry Mendte that name recognition was a common problem for Blakeman, but incumbent Kathy Hochul had the opposite problem- too many people remembered her name, mostly for all the wrong reasons. One man told her, “To me she did too much flip-flopping, you know. She was with this MTA thing that, to me, really wasn’t appropriate for the people. Congestion pricing; wasn’t a good look.” Another man was much more concise in his analysis: “She sucks!”
Few commuters, however, felt it was too early to start campaigning for Albany. One told Migliore, “If we could think about things now and put things in perspective and put them in place, so that we do get a decent governor, that’d help us out.” Another commuter simply stated, “You’ve got to start early to know who’s who, so it’s never too early to get that conversation going.”
Photo Credit: Getty Images