Bruce Blakeman and Kathy Hochul social media tacts diverge in hope for viral boost

ALBANY — Transit labor activist Tramell Thompson, better known to his more than 200,000 social media followers as @progressiveaction, supports Bruce Blakeman, posting videos where he talks enthusiastically about and interviews the Republican gubernatorial candidate on his plans to improve the MTA.

The two had lunch together in March, Thompson said, and they discussed him being added to the campaign’s payroll. He declined.

"I think that this race is so important that I think the truth is more important ... than the money," Thompson, 45, told Newsday, adding that he didn't want to appear influenced by taking money and wants to simply share information with his followers on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

Many state and national campaigns are turning to influencers and content creators with large social media followings to help get their message to voters, according to campaign consultants, hoping to catch some of the social media virality that propelled New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to victory.

Whether these influencers are paid is largely based on the word of campaigns and influencers, because in New York, at least, social media figures don't have to disclose if a candidate is paying them. Campaigns are required to disclose their expenditures, but in many instances they pay what's known as a "media buyer" that coordinates everything from television ads to social media posts, meaning the influencers themselves aren't necessarily disclosed.

Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, has embraced using networks of social media influencers and content created by artificial intelligence to grow support, according to a Newsday review of social media platforms. In contrast, incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul has focused largely on videos touting her record, testimonials from lawmakers, including Mamdani, and humanizing anecdotes from family members.

Blakeman’s campaign did not respond to questions about whether it has paid social media influencers, while Hochul's campaign said it does not pay them.

How campaigns use social media has changed from even a decade ago. And as the use of influencers grows, the ever-evolving world of social media falls into ethically murky areas, good government and social media experts said, because it isn’t as regulated as traditional commercials and isn’t always covered by campaign finance laws. Voters, as a result, might not know whether an influencer is being paid for posting testimonials for or against a candidate.

"There’s no one-size-fits-all, here’s how you reach the voters now. You’ve got to do everything you can do," Michael Dawidziak, a veteran GOP strategist, told Newsday. Where campaigns used to be able to place an ad on television or in a major newspaper, the audience is more fragmented now, he said. "More people are seeing ads on social media than are seeing them on television."

Hochul's campaign

The Hochul campaign largely isn’t using social media influencers, according to a Newsday analysis of posts. Hochul campaign spokesman Ryan Radulovacki said it is not paying social media influencers. 

She is, however, benefiting from Mamdani, who handily won the mayoral race last year in a field with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo due largely to his use of social media platforms. Mamdani's posts included first-person accounts talking directly to the camera, man-on-the-street style interviews of voters, singing parodies and even doing the polar plunge fully suited.

Mamdani on Oct. 15 posted a video slamming Blakeman and touting Hochul’s record with his 1.3 million followers on X, 12.5 million on Instagram and 3.7 million on TikTok.

"When it comes to your healthcare, Bruce doesn't think a trillion in cuts went far enough. Bruce would rather send that money to ICE so they can kidnap your friends, family and neighbors," Mamdani said in the post. "I’m voting for Gov. Hochul because she’s the real deal for New Yorkers."

Blakeman's campaign

Blakeman campaign spokeswoman Madison Spanodemos said in an email: "Social media gives us an opportunity to make people happy again by showing them that better days are ahead when Bruce Blakeman is elected governor."

Ilysa Steinberg, known to her more than 35,500 Instagram followers as @askilysa, stood with Blakeman in an April post saying "Please Save New York from Spinning out of Control." Among photos of luxury events with decadent flowers and catered food are photos of Blakeman shaking hands at a beach barbecue event over the summer. 

Between May and September, the Blakeman campaign paid nearly $250,000 for campaign consulting to Ask Ilysa, LLC — an event planning business founded by Steinberg that serves the Hamptons and New York City, according to campaign expenditure reports. Steinberg, who posted that she's part of the campaign team, did not respond to requests for comment.

Manhattan content creator Lisa Fields Lewis, a mom who posts political content and videos supportive of Israel, has multiple posts encouraging her more than 19,500 Instagram followers to vote for Blakeman, who she says is a "moderate, common-sense Republican" focused on safety who will stand up to democratic socialist Mamdani.

The registered Democrat told Newsday she wasn’t paid for posting about the Nassau County executive. "I will publicly support candidates who align with my values and my priorities," Fields Lewis said. "No agenda, no money, nothing."

Blakeman has also been endorsed by Brilyn Hollyhand, a 20-year-old Republican political commentator based in Alabama who has been compared to conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. Hollyhand told Newsday he wasn’t paid to post in favor of Blakeman or any other candidate or cause to his more than a million followers across his social media accounts.

Another supporter is Alexandra Fasulo, a former social media intern for Republican legislators in Albany and a controversial figure in the fight over the use of solar panels on farmland whose reach includes over 1.1 million followers on TikTok.

Blakeman's campaign has also embraced the use of artificial intelligence, posting AI-generated videos including depictions of Hochul as homeless, sleeping on the subway or wading through trash in the city.

Going digital

There’s a lot of money going into social media, said Zoe Tzanis, a graduate research fellow with the Communication Technology Research Lab at the University of Pittsburgh. "It’s where people are and it’s where you can do really, really tailored, niche advertising."

While a campaign could buy a spot on television and reach, for example, all the people watching a certain sports game, social media creators allow them to target 18- to 24-year-olds who like pickleball, she said.

It’s a complicated industry, however, with no uniformed definition of who is an influencer, making it difficult to regulate with campaign disclosure laws, Tzanis and creator groups said.

Any major campaign "worth its salt" is using coordinated messages on social media and "may have a dedicated staffer whose entire role is to reach out to social media influencers," said Evan Roth Smith, a founding partner of Slingshot Strategies, a Brooklyn-based political consulting firm.

Some label themselves as influencers, content creators, activists or independent journalists, and their followers range from tens of thousands to millions.

Rynn Reed, founder and executive director of Creator Congress, an organizing space for progressive content creators, said influencers typically are trying to sell a product, while content creators post about what’s important to them. 

Proposed legislation in New York, following laws passed in California and Texas, would require social media influencers to disclose if they’re being paid by a candidate.

"If you’re spending campaign contributions on an influencer or TV ad, it’s essentially the same thing," said Blair Horner, senior policy adviser with the New York Public Interest Research Group, a good-government group. "The viewer should know that it’s a campaign ad."

'Manufactured by money'

"What’s really scary here is that when political campaigns pay influencers and we don’t know about it, what happens is it appears as though there is a large organic mass of people who support a candidate," Tzanis said. "There’s a sense of consensus that is on our screens that is not real. It is manufactured by money."

And when social media figures are paid by media buyer companies, they don’t always show up in the camping filings. Both Hochul and Blakeman used campaign funds for media companies that do work with social media, but it’s unclear what work they did for each campaign. Requests for comment to numerous companies paid by the campaigns were not returned.

Reed agreed there needs to be some sort of regulation, but said money doesn’t necessarily influence what a creator posts.

"Ninety-nine percent of the time I have not seen it change someone’s view," Reed said. "Many creators are actually just working class folks who just started to do this."

For Thompson, it's not about being an influencer, and he doesn't consider himself a content creator, he said. "I just use the internet as a tool to get my messages out there."