Blakeman's turn to try a county-to-state transition
New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman during the only scheduled debate ahead of the November New York gubernatorial election at the Spectrum News NY1 studios on October 13, 2026. Credit: Getty Images/Pool
The elected post of county executive in New York State has never before been a steppingstone to the governor's mansion.
Not even close.
But Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman and his supporters seek to change that Tuesday in his bid to upset incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Consider the pattern.
In 2018, as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ran for and won his third term, the Republican nominee was Marc Molinaro, at the time the Dutchess County executive. Molinaro got only 36% of the statewide vote that year. This occurred during what proved to be the second of Molinaro's three terms in the county job.
The previous statewide contest in 2014 featured Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino as the GOP nominee. He garnered 40% of the vote on Election Day against Cuomo, who won his second term that year. Astorino served two four-year terms as executive, from January 2010 to December 2017.
Four years earlier, in what proved to be the first election of Cuomo, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy announced he'd quit the Democratic Party and would run as a Republican for governor. The dramatic effort failed. At that point he still needed a Wilson Pakula authorization for the GOP line and didn't receive enough weighted convention votes to reach the required 51%. Carl Paladino of Buffalo became the nominee and lost to Cuomo.
Nassau County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi took a shot at the top prize in 2006. He ran and lost against Eliot Spitzer in the Democratic primary, who won his ill-fated term as governor that year. (That was Suozzi's first failed bid for governor; as a congressman he lost the 2022 primary to Hochul.)
Four consecutive statewide elections, four suburban county executives in the mix. None came close to success. A politician's popularity and familiarity in one of 62 counties don't easily extend to the rest of the state. Localities still have their own character.
Forty years ago, the affable Westchester County Executive Andrew O'Rourke took on what proved to be the impossible task of unseating Gov. Mario M. Cuomo seeking his first reelection. At first Cuomo was iffy about debating O'Rourke, so the Republican carried around a life-sized cardboard cutout of the Democratic incumbent and called into a live radio show featuring the governor. They eventually debated, once, that October.
O'Rourke lost to Cuomo 65%-32%. By the way: In third place, with 3%, was Nassau County District Attorney Denis E. Dillon, who ran on the anti-abortion Right to Life line. Unsurprisingly, both O'Rourke and Dillon returned to their elected countywide jobs after the statewide loss, having retained them while campaigning all through 1986.
That's the history, in a nutshell, of local officials who try leaping to the top of the state.
— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com
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