While Kathy Hochul held a large lead on the Democratic side, four Republican candidates were jockeying to get their message out there even on primary day. NBC New York’s Andrew Siff and Melissa Russo report.
New Yorkers are casting votes in a governor’s race Tuesday that for the first time in a decade does not include the name "Cuomo" at the top of the ticket.
Tuesday's elections cover New York’s statewide offices and state assembly races, but primary contests for U.S. House seats and the state Senate will be held on Aug. 23. Those were delayed because of a redistricting lawsuit that led a court to throw out new political maps.
The most prominent name on the ballot is Gov. Kathy Hochul. She hopes to become the first woman to win an election to the New York governor’s office this fall, but first she needs to overcome challenges from New York City’s elected public advocate, Jumaane Williams, and U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi, a moderate from Long Island.
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If Hochul wins, the Democrat from western New York will enter the general election campaign with a big advantage, running as the incumbent with a heavy fundraising advantage in a state that has more than twice as many registered Democrats than Republicans and has not had a GOP governor in 16 years.
Her prospects are expected to be even stronger after the U.S. Supreme Court last week overturned the Roe v. Wade decision establishing abortion rights. She has made bolstering abortion rights a key plank of her campaign, while three of the four candidates on the Republican side are anti-abortion.
Hochul, who was Andrew Cuomo’s lieutenant governor for six years, promised to restore New Yorkers’ faith in its government after stepping into the office last summer, but she hit a stumbling block in April, when her handpicked lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, was arrested in a federal corruption probe.
Benjamin pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing. Hochul pointed to the short time frame she had to pick a No. 2 and said she had been assured that any questions previously raised about Benjamin’s campaign fundraising had been resolved.
Since taking office in August, Hochul has sought to step out from Cuomo's shadow, promising a clean break from his administration. She has said she was not close to the former governor, who has denied wrongdoing, and was not around to witness any alleged misbehavior.
Still, Cuomo’s presence loomed over her campaign early on when he began making public appearances this past spring, criticizing Hochul and Democrats in Albany over their approach to crime and suggesting he might run for his old job. Despite suggesting he might run as an independent, the former governor ultimately did not file to run.
Williams, a progressive running to Hochul’s left, said Hochul is either “consistently shamefully out of the loop, or shamefully enabling through her inaction.” Suozzi, running to Hochul’s right, says she’s not being tough enough on crime, suggesting she should have gone further to harden the state’s bail law.
Suozzi, a centrist who has not shied away from embracing Cuomo, was the only Democrat on the debate stage to say he would accept the former governor’s endorsement and said he was still “very popular” despite his “baggage.” He also has echoed Cuomo’s comments calling for Hochul to toughen the state’s bail laws.
"If the politicians don't do what the people want, you throw them out of office," Suozzi said Monday. "People are afraid where they live, so crime is a big issue."
Hochul has focused her campaign on steps she took to bolster abortion rights and moves to toughen the state’s gun laws after a racist mass shooting in Buffalo.
Suozzi and Williams have criticized her for her endorsement a decade ago from the National Rifle Association and over her plan to spend more than $1.1 billion in state and county funds on building and maintaining a new stadium for her hometown Buffalo Bills.
Suozzi opted to run against Hochul instead of running what was expected to be a tough reelection race for his House seat this year. He made one unsuccessful run for governor before in 2006, but lost the Democratic nomination to Eliot Spitzer.
Williams, the most unabashedly progressive in the race, is often seen wearing a “Stay Woke” button on his lapel. He has been arrested several times for civil disobedience at demonstrations against immigration enforcement and police misconduct.
He serves as a public ombudsman in his role as public advocate and in 2018 put up a surprisingly strong challenge against Hochul in the lieutenant governor’s race, which he lost by 7 percentage points. Williams has said he'd invest $10 billion in community programs to stop gun violence.
"We've seen it work. We haven't been able to get the funding we need to structuralize it," Williams said while campaigning with victims' families and police groups.
If elected, he would be the second Black man to serve as governor after Gov. David Paterson took over in 2007.
On the Republican side, Rep. Lee Zeldin is considered the front-runner in a crowded field that features Andrew Giuliani, the son of New York City’s former mayor Rudy Giuliani; Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino; and businessman Harry Wilson.
Former Vice President Mike Pence has endorsed Zeldin, who also enjoys the backing of the state GOP and Conservative Party, but former President Donald Trump has stayed out of the race. Zeldin, an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel who has represented eastern Long Island in Congress since 2015, is a staunch ally of Trump and was among the Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 election results.
His most high-profile challenger is the 36-year-old Giuliani, whose father has frequently campaigned for his son. Though Rudy Giuliani was once hailed as a national hero for leading the city through 9/11, he’s become a deeply divisive figure in New York for his work to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The younger Giuliani often repeated his father’s baseless claims that Trump won the 2020 election. Giuliani has never run for public office but worked as an aide in Trump’s White House and then as a commentator on the conservative network Newsmax.
He first gained public attention as a child when he stood next to his father at the elder Giuliani’s 1994 mayoral inauguration, mimicking his gestures and repeating some of his words. His antics as a 7-year-old were parodied on “Saturday Night Live" by Chris Farley.
"On day one, I will sit down with (Andrea) Stewart-Cousins and (Carl) Heastie, and tell them I need a full repeal of bail on my desk or I am not signing your top priorities," Giuliani said Monday.
In addition to his time in local office, Astorino is a conservative former radio show host and radio executive. Wilson served as a U.S. Treasury Department advisor under former President Barack Obama, and is the most moderate of the GOP field. He was the only candidate of the four Republicans who said he supports abortion rights.
"It is not enough to just nominate a politician who will just say no to the other side, like any other Republican would," Wilson said.
