Kathy Hochul and Bruce Blakeman spin from debate to final stretch

The morning after their first and only debate, Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul and Republican rival Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, hit the road.

The Democrat went to Queens; the Republican to Queensbury, in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. And each was happy to expound on how well he or she did at the debate.

"I think it was an opportunity for us to show the really stark, stark differences between our vision of New York State and someone who, in his own words, says he’d bring Trump-style leadership to New York," Hochul said. "Scary."

Blakeman, campaigning with Saritha Komatireddy, the GOP candidate for attorney general, said Hochul failed to defend her record of "misery" of five years in office.

"Every place I travel in this state, everywhere I go, people are struggling," the Republican said, reports my colleague Steve Hughes, who was there in Queensbury.

Blakeman repeated his promise of an income-tax cut and, in a new wrinkle, promised to issue an executive order on his first day in office to remove a ban on natural gas "fracking" upstate.

"We have an emergency situation here," Blakeman said. "Kathy Hochul has created an emergency. We don't have enough energy."

The energy supply question also touches on one of the key differences between the candidates during the debate: their stance on data centers, which are rapidly being built around the nation.

Hochul signed a one-year moratorium on building the facilities in New York, saying the state needed to study the impacts on energy, water and communities. She also said the state’s power grid couldn’t even supply all the 30 pending applications for data centers.

Blakeman said no to a moratorium, that local communities should decide for themselves and that Hochul has taken away that right.

By Yancey Roy

yancey.roy@newsday.com@yanceyroy