New York Governor Kathy Hochul won her first full term in office on Tuesday, defeating Representative Lee Zeldin (R., N.Y.) and dashing hopes that Republicans could take the governorship for the first time in 15 years, according to projections from several election forecasters.
Hochul led Zeldin 54.2 percent to 45.8 percent with 80 percent of the vote counted. The incumbent led by more than 411,000 votes.
Zeldin refused to concede the race early Wednesday morning, telling supporters: “What’s going to happen is in the next couple of hours you’re going to see the race get closer and closer and closer and closer.”
He said he would pull “massive” numbers on Long Island, including in Suffolk County, where election officials had been slow to report results due to a wi-fi outage, according to Newsday.
“We hope as these results come in we will be able to prevail,” he said.
Hochul, the former lieutenant governor, ascended to the governorship in August 2021 after her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, resigned over a sexual-harassment scandal. Zeldin, who was endorsed by former president Donald Trump, served four terms in Congress representing New York’s first congressional district on Long Island. He is an attorney and Iraq War veteran.
The race tightened in the weeks leading up to Election Day, boosting Republican hopes that Zeldin could come from behind and deliver a huge upset in the reliably blue state. Hochul watched her 14 point lead from early October dwindle down to a 7.8 point lead before Election Day.
The incumbent governor spent $18.9 million on ads between Labor Day and Election Day, according to the Cook Political Report, while Zeldin spent $4.4 million in the same time frame. However, Zeldin was boosted by outside groups attacking Hochul; Safe Together New York spent $6.9 million.
The race brought out big names from both parties. President Biden and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton both stumped for Hochul, while Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin spoke at rallies on Zeldin’s behalf.
The Cook Political Report shifted the race from “solid Democratic” to “likely Democratic” late last month, explaining that “fears of rising crime are boosting many Republican candidates across the country, and the issue has particular resonance in the state with the most populous city in America.”
Hochul repeatedly made dismissive comments about crime in the state, including accusing Zeldin of “hyperventilating” about crime and “trying to scare people,” the day before Election Day.
DeSantis, while stumping for Zeldin on Long Island, called the state’s crime problem “totally self-inflicted.”
“You cut police budgets, you do things like eliminate cash bail, and you have rogue prosecutors who won’t even enforce laws that they disagree with,” he said. “Of course you’re going to have streets that are less safe.”
In 2019, New York State passed a bail-reform law that set qualifying offenses for which judges could set bail and hold a defendant in jail. A number of crimes were excluded from the list, including residential burglaries, nearly all felony drug cases, and cases in which the defendant was charged with unarmed robbery while committing the crime with the help of another person.
The 2019 law and its later amendments did not allow the judge to factor the defendant’s likelihood of reoffending or the risk to public safety when determining release conditions.
An August 2022 report from the Manhattan Institute found that by March 15, 2020, just two-and-a-half months after the law went into effect, crime had risen 20.05 percent in New York City over the same period year-to-date in 2019, including a 26.5 percent increase in burglaries, 33.9 percent increase in robberies, 22.9 percent increase in shooting incidents and 68 percent increase in car theft. Only murder and rape decreased, both crimes for which judges were still able to set bail.
Every voter National Review spoke with at the October 29 rally for Zeldin cited crime as a top concern.
Hochul, meanwhile, defended the bail law in September: “I’ve yet to see data that shows a correlation with a net increase in crime and the bail laws. Because it doesn’t exist in any other city.”
She again drew criticism over comments on crime that she made during a debate in October. “Anyone who commits a crime under our laws, especially with the change we made to bail, has consequences. I don’t know why that’s so important to you. All I know is that we could do more. We could do more,” Hochul said when Zeldin pointed out that she had not talked about “locking up anyone committing any crimes.”
Zeldin himself has not been immune to the impacts of rising crime: Last month, two people were shot outside Zeldin’s Long Island home while his 16-year-old daughters were in the house alone. In July, a man attempted to attack Zeldin at a campaign event in upstate New York, jumping on stage and raising his arm toward the congressman while holding a keychain with two sharp points. The pair wrestled to the ground, and audience members jumped in to detain the attacker.
As they watched polls tighten in recent weeks, business leaders encouraged Hochul to shift her messaging from social issues and the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade to fighting inflation and rising crime, CNBC reported. Several donors attempted to persuade Hochul to fire Manhattan’s liberal district attorney, Alvin Bragg.
Hochul, however, has pushed back against calls to fire Bragg, saying in the October debate against Zeldin that it is up to voters to decide the embattled DA’s fate.
Zeldin, for his part, said at the debate that his first initiative if he became governor would be to remove Bragg from office.
One week before Election Day, Hochul seemed to have yielded cries to focus more on the economy and crime, as she spoke on both topics at a private fundraiser on Wall Street, per CNBC.