Kathy Hochul greets Bill Clinton on stage at a Get Out The Vote rally on November 5, 2022 in New York City.
Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP Photo
For his part, Zeldin held campaign rallies across the Hudson Valley on Saturday, concluding with an event with Tulsi Gabbard, the former Hawaii Democratic congresswoman who left the party last month and has been hitting the campaign trail for Republicans across the nation.
Zeldin said Friday that his campaign’s polling last week found the race to be neck-and-neck, and, “We’ve just felt growing momentum every day since. We’re going to win this race on Tuesday as long as we get our supporters out.”
New York has twice as many Democrats as Republicans, and no GOP candidate has won statewide in two decades. But Zeldin has hammered on the state’s crime issues and high cost of living, making him the party’s most competitive candidate for governor since George Pataki retired after three terms in office in 2006.
“We’re greatly concerned about safety on our streets, on our subways,” Zeldin said. “Republicans and Democrats and independents have decided that enough is enough. They are tired of the pro-criminal laws that have been passed up in Albany. You have weak district attorneys who are refusing to enforce the law, and they want to support our men and women in law enforcement.”
Much of the battle has been waged in New York City, where Zeldin is hoping to win more than 30 percent of the vote and then cruise in the suburbs and upstate. Hochul is pushing for a strong Democratic turnout in the heavily blue city as a way to drive turnout, win a full term and become the first woman elected governor in New York history.
Hochul, along with many of Saturday’s speakers, largely stuck to describing a foreboding future where the GOP and Zeldin are in charge, rather than detail what another term under her leadership would look like.
She cast the Republican Party as rife with extremists, election deniers, white supremacists and opponents of abortion rights and seemed to acknowledge recent polling that had shown the race to be far too close for many Democrats.
“I’m a street fighter. I love to fight. And do you know what I love the most?” she asked. “I love being underestimated.”
With the election only days away, most voters have already made up their minds about who to support, according to political consultant Basil Smikle Jr., which is why Saturday’s rally appeared to be more about goosing turnout.
“[Clinton] is still a very strong leader in the party and good on the stump. He sort of grounds [Hochul] in the party leadership of past and present,” Smikle Jr. said. “On top of that, he still is very popular with a number of older African American Democrats at a time when all Black voters — the base of the base — need to come out.”
Hochul’s campaign struggled to resonate with Black voters earlier in the cycle. And citywide elected officials who assumed office with the support of Black communities, such as Mayor Eric Adams or Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, have made scant appearances on the campaign trail.
Adams — who has lately toned down his criticism that Albany inaction on bail reform is contributing to crime — took to the stage to praise his relationship with the governor.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re from Buffalo, N.Y. or Buffalo Avenue in Brownsville,” he said of Hochul, who is from Buffalo. “You have an authentic governor that is committed to uplifting the people of this city and state.”