Republican Bruce Blakeman is picking up lifelong Democrats in the Bronx who say Gov. Kathy Hochul and their party left the middle class behind for socialist politics.
At the Crosstown Diner in the Bronx, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman stood with former Democratic Assemblyman Stephen Kaufman and heard what many New York Democrats once kept quiet. Voters told him they are done with the party's direction, and some said they are ready to back a Republican for governor.
Fox News Digital reported the scene as Blakeman, already endorsed by President Donald Trump, works to unseat Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul in a state long dominated by her party. The opening he claims is not abstract. It is taxes, utility bills, public safety, and a leftward pull that local Democrats say no longer speaks for their neighborhoods.
Blakeman described the pattern he says now greets him on the trail.
"Every time I go out and meet the people, another Democrat comes up to me and says, 'Bruce, I'm a lifelong Democrat. I've never voted Republican in my life. We're voting for you,'"
He framed Hochul's record as the reason those conversations keep happening, tying higher costs and cashless bail to everyday strain in places like the Bronx.
"Kathy Hochul has raised taxes. She's raised utility rates 48 times. Programs like cashless bail make it easier for criminals to operate in our neighborhoods. So now I have the evidences. I have her report card and it's straight F's,"
Blakeman pledged to reverse that course and pointed to his own tenure in Nassau County, where he says he has not raised taxes a penny in five years and has cut taxes by $150 million. "I will cut taxes. I will cut utility bills. And I will make for safer communities just like I did in my own county as county executive," he said. "I'll take my record, compare it to hers."
Kaufman, a former Democratic Bronx assemblyman, did not soft-pedal the charge while rallying beside Blakeman. He accused the Democratic Socialists of America of gaining real influence and said Hochul keeps moving further left to keep that wing satisfied.
"They're not Democrats. They're socialists and communists,"
He added that the faction is "just not Democrats, they're not moderates," and warned that Democrats are "rapidly becoming a house of hatred" that shuts out moderate voices. On household costs, Kaufman put the burden on Hochul's energy choices.
"The electricity rates have skyrocketed. She's had 42 increases over time. She wouldn't permit building of gas lines. She's closed utility plants. All she does is move harder and harder to the left. Which don't represent people in this neighborhood,"
"Every time she has a problem, she goes crying to the hard left. She's totally controlled by them," Kaufman said. The utility-increase figures he and Blakeman cite differ, and both are campaign claims rather than an independent audit laid out in the reporting. Fox News Digital reached out to Hochul's office for comment; no response was quoted.
Lisa, a resident of the Bronx's Throggs Neck neighborhood, told the outlet the break feels cultural as much as economic.
"It's not your Democratic Party anymore. It's not your grandfather's Democratic Party. It's become the Democratic Socialist, a.k.a. Communist Party,"
An unnamed Bronx man described pressure over housing stock and said homeowners got no defense from the governor. "The socialists here literally said we’re land-hoarding if we only have a single-family home or a four-family home and that we were a problem... Kathy was all in support and quiet about it. She didn’t defend the homeowners," he said.
A registered Democrat put the ballot choice in plain terms: "I'm a registered Democrat. Ask me if I vote that way." He added, "I vote to what affects me, my community, the people I live with. I vote who's going to help the middle class."
Blakeman is betting that frustration over affordability, crime, and the party's leftward shift can peel off voters who once treated Republican statewide candidates as nonstarters. The same reporting places that local anger against a wider backdrop already visible to New Yorkers: democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani became mayor; DSA-backed Melat Kiros defeated longtime Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado; and self-described democratic socialist Janeese Lewis George captured the Democratic mayoral nomination in Washington, D.C. Kaufman and the Bronx voters treat those gains as proof the socialist wing has moved from the margins into real power, especially in New York.
Hochul, for her part, has publicly pushed budget items that include safety barriers around places where people gather to pray and a pied-à-terre tax on luxury secondary homes in New York City valued at $5 million or more. None of that answers the diner-table indictment over rates, bail policy, and who holds the party's steering wheel. Blakeman also appeared at a May 10 rally in Queens aimed at combating antisemitism, another marker of the lane he is trying to occupy with voters who feel abandoned.
New York remains a Democratic stronghold on paper. The Crosstown Diner is not a paper stronghold. It is where lifelong Democrats said the party left them, named the costs they pay, and listened to a Trump-endorsed Republican promise tax relief and safer streets.
When working-class Democrats start calling their own party communist and shopping for a county executive who never raised their taxes, Hochul's problem is not messaging. It is the record voters say they already live with.
