Hochul makes 3-stop tour across Long Island, a sign the suburbs are in play in governor's race

Gov. Kathy Hochul made a three-stop tour of Long Island on Monday — discussing law enforcement grants in Nassau, storm damage funding and a new Long Island Rail Road rail yard in Suffolk — weeks after a poll showed her slightly behind gubernatorial Republican rival Bruce Blakeman in his home turf in Nassau.

“I cherish these communities,” Hochul told Newsday after one of the announcements. “Long Island is an extraordinary place. I come here to show my love for it all the time.”

Four years ago, however, Long Island voters overwhelmingly chose Republican Lee Zeldin, then representing New York's 1st Congressional District while running for governor, over Hochul, and have continued to mostly elect Republican lawmakers to local offices.

“Part of it was, I was governor less than a year at that point. People did not know me,” said Hochul, about her showing against Zeldin on Long Island in 2022. “Now I’ve had the chance to do so much more, deliver for Long Island.”

Hochul’s public schedule Monday began around 8 a.m. with a brief interview with a Long Island radio station, announcing in Freeport $100 million in grants for local police statewide and a visit to Smithtown where she presented Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine, a Republican, a check to help with damages from a 2024 storm. While in Smithtown, she also signed a bill clearing the way for the possible purchase of private property to be transformed into a new rail yard for the Port Jefferson LIRR branch. In between stops, Hochul also visited Newsday’s editorial board.

In Blakeman, Hochul faces another Long Islander in her reelection bid but this time with national political headwinds at her back, experts say, as President Donald Trump’s approval ratings continue to decline. Long Island and its healthy population of swing voters are once again thrust into the spotlight during a highly competitive midterm election year.

Whether this is the start of Hochul placing a greater footprint on Long Island remains unclear. And so far, Long Islanders have not thrown their support fully for Hochul.

According to a Siena poll released last month, Blakeman leads Hochul, 44% to 39% in Nassau but Hochul leads 49% to 40% in Suffolk. Still, experts say Blakeman is likely to win Nassau, where he is the county executive, and Suffolk, where there is strong Republican support.

Hochul’s stepped up visibility could help chip away at Blakeman’s margins, and those of congressional, state and local candidates down the ballot, political experts say. Hochul, who has a $20 million funding edge, has been investing in electing Democrats up and down the ballot, a campaign aide told Newsday on Monday when asked about future visits. The “Cost of Blakeman Tour” launched in April in Mineola.

Hochul’s proxy battle

Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, said on Long Island Hochul is not only running against Blakeman but the Nassau County Republican Committee.

“It would be a shock if the candidate of one of the most powerful — if not the most powerful — and effective local organizations could not help him carry his home county where he won by a good 10 points only a year before,” Levy said, noting he’d have the resources and support of the Republican clubs in Suffolk as well.

Blakeman was elected to his second term as county executive in November 2025, bucking a longstanding trend in which Nassau voters elect a county leader from the opposite party of the sitting president. Trump won both Nassau and Suffolk counties in 2024.

In the 2022 gubernatorial race, Hochul got 44% of the Long Island voted compared to Zeldin’s 56%.

Learning from ‘mistakes’

Michael Dawidziak, a political consultant based in Suffolk, said smart campaigns always “learn from their mistakes.”

“One of the things that Kathy Hochul may have understood from four years ago is that Long Island is a deeply purple area,” Dawidziak said. “There are a lot of votes here that are always up for grabs and always in contention for a Republican or a Democrat.”

There are 616,967 active voters not enrolled in a political party in Nassau and Suffolk counties, out of 2,080,417 active voters, according to state Board of Elections data, representing 29% or about a third of all active voters.

Dawidziak said Hochul needs to cut down Blakeman’s majority on Long Island and if there’s one thing she can do to win votes it would be to assure residents Albany will not supersede local zoning laws, which many believe helps to maintain the character of suburbia.

“Just as Blakeman is never going to win New York City, he would love to cut down her majority there. The same goes for Long Island,” Dawidziak said. “Chances are she’s not going to win Long Island or really do well here but it can cut down on his chances of winning.”