'Buffalo Bruce' rushes into Hochul territory

Daily Point

Will voters care who's the bigger Bills fan, Nassau County exec or the governor?

In a bit of preelection taunting, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman went to Buffalo Sunday to watch the Bills play the Jets. The significance? Blakeman, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, was making a point of campaigning on Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s home turf and where she has committed a truckload of taxpayer funding for a new stadium.

It’s like a visiting player celebrating on the opponent’s 50-yard line.

As the Bills played their last regular season home game ever at the stadium, Blakeman and Hochul both played to the crowd to prove their fandom. Hochul made the rounds with local TV stations and took photos with fans. Blakeman posted videos of himself tailgating with the notorious Bills Mafia fan base and then inside the stadium with Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes and social media influencer and former gymnast Livvy Dunne. “You look sharp, man. I like the way you dress,” Blakeman told the bewildered Skenes.

In another post before the game, Blakeman explains his support for the Bills goes back years. “My son Arlen bought me this Bills golf shirt about 12 years ago for Father’s Day. I’ve been a Bills fan for years. Go Bills!” Blakeman told Buffalo Toronto Public Media that Sunday wasn’t his first time going to a Bills game.

Hochul, who grew up minutes from the stadium, was instrumental in securing the $2.1 billion deal for a new stadium. That deal includes $850 million in taxpayer money. Hochul is a lifelong fan of her “beloved Bills.” In a local TV interview before the game, she said the team is “who we are. It’s what we’re made of. It’s that resilience, that grit that defines us.”

Hochul said Jets fans “know where my heart is.”

As for Blakeman? A 2010 New York Post story noted he mistook the Giants for the Jets during a campaign kickoff but quickly corrected himself. And in 2023, he took issue on social media with the Empire State Building being lit up green for the Philadelphia Eagles after they won the NFC championship. “We’re New York ... and that means the New York Giants and New York Jets.”

In a statement to The Point, Blakeman said, "At a Bills game, you can feel what New York should be: proud, united, and hopeful. Fans told me they want safer streets, lower taxes, and a governor who actually gets results instead of excuses.”

Blakeman is working to gain name recognition with upstaters, who tend to vote Republican, while Hochul is trying to persuade red Long Island to vote for her. Will New York football fans root for Buffalo Bruce or Hometown Hochul?

— Mark Nolan mark.nolan@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Lost congressional checks

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Final Point

Candidate's identity struggle on LI shaped his politics

Mathew Shurka, 37, co-founder and chief strategist of the organization Born Perfect, has championed successful legislative changes connected to LGBTQ rights in different states. He helped lead the movement to ban “conversion therapy,” which he was sent to undergo as a youth between 16 and 21, and said it included forced family separation. Shurka, who grew up in Great Neck, is now one of perhaps a dozen Democrats running for the 12th Congressional District seat from which Rep. Jerrold Nadler announced he’s retiring.

This contest has also drawn boldface names as you’d expect in a district that includes the Upper West Side, the Upper East Side, midtown, midtown East, Gramercy and part of Chelsea. One candidate is Jack Schlossberg, a grandson of President John F. Kennedy and son of Caroline Kennedy, and brother of the late journalist Tatiana Schlossberg, who died Dec. 30. Another is Jami Floyd, a former National Public Radio host who has also been an MSNBC legal analyst and has served on a Manhattan community board for four years.

Publicity for Shurka has centered on his opening up about the personal and cultural difficulties of his youthful Great Neck days. He grew up in a close-knit, traditionally Jewish family involved in the community. At one point, as a teen, he was attacked and injured by two other teens, stemming from an ugly feud.

Shurka came out to his father, who “said he loved me no matter what, and that he was going to be by my side always.” But his father also believed that conversion therapy would change his sexual orientation, with the notion that there can’t be romantic love between people of the same gender. Instead, this “cure” became a traumatic ordeal for Shurka that for a long time destroyed his relationship with his family, as the candidate has told it.

Other competitors for CD12 have told their survival stories too. Cameron Kasky, who co-founded March for Our Lives, witnessed the Parkland shooting in Florida as a teen. At 25, he seeks to be the youngest member of Congress.

Also in the progressive swarm is Laura Dunn, a civil rights lawyer who has a reputation for defending women who were victims of assault and has worked to address such assaults in the military. She recalls being assaulted on campus.

The field also includes two Assembly members from the region, Micah Lasher, who had served as Gov. Kathy Hochul’s policy director, and Alex Bores, who co-chairs New York's chapter of the Future Caucus along with Assemb. Ed Ra (R-Franklin Square).

In a statement to The Point, Shurka said: “I’m not a politician or an insider, but I’ve spent 15 years doing the work Congress is supposed to be doing — sitting across the table from people who disagree with me, building coalitions, and passing laws that saved lives.

“I’m going to take that experience and put it to work fixing a broken system and corruption that’s driven up prices and pushed too many people out of the communities they love. ... As the son of an immigrant and two taxi drivers, I saw how hard my parents worked to build a life in New York City — and that experience for people is only getting harder to live here,” he said.

Shurka, by now a longtime city resident, declares on his website: “I love our city — and I’m ready to fight for it.”

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com

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