As the presumptive Republican nominee for governor of New York, Bruce Blakeman could be expected to find flaws in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s State of the State address.

Appearing in the state Capitol on Wednesday, a day after the annual address, he criticized the Democratic governor’s record on crime, complained about taxes and derided her child care agenda as a New York City giveaway.

But perhaps the starkest difference between them was in their stances on the killing of Renee Good by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis last week, which Hochul has portrayed as an outrage.

“When you look at both videos, it looks like the individual that was shot, that person was engaged in trying to run down the ICE officer,” Blakeman told reporters in Albany, New York, with the caveat that he would like to see a full investigation.

And he mused that a similar incident, which he said had resulted from a lack of respect for law enforcement, could happen in New York City, now being led by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist..

Message Shows Differences Between Blakeman and Hochul

It was a striking message that underscored the differences between the visions of the state offered by Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, and Hochul before the 2026 midterm elections.

On Thursday, Hochul said Blakeman’s comments were “disgusting.”

“He thinks that a woman standing up with her voice — not threatening, but saying something to an individual carrying a gun with a mask on — who is clearly not a threat — he thinks that the murder of her was justified?” she said.

“I think everybody in the state should know that.”

Officials in Minnesota have characterized the narrative that the ICE agent was acting in self-defense, which has been advanced by the Trump administration, as “propaganda.” Videos of the incident show Good turning to drive away from the agent who killed her, not toward him.

Blakeman’s remarks came as he made his first trip to Albany as a candidate for governor. The visit was somewhat ill-timed: Scheduling conflicts (his own inauguration) kept Blakeman away from the Capitol on Tuesday; by the time he arrived in Albany, most of the Legislature had left for the weekend, leaving a single Republican Assembly member to stand by his side.

Blakeman announced his intention to run for governor last month, leading to a tense behind-the-scenes dance among state Republicans, a vast majority of whom had already committed to supporting Rep. Elise Stefanik. But his candidacy received a boost from President Donald Trump, who undermined Stefanik’s bid by declining to endorse her. Shortly after, she announced that she would not run for governor, or seek reelection to Congress.

On Wednesday, Blakeman, a staunch Trump ally, made his loyalty clear. “I support a lot of his policies, if not all of his policies,” he told the reporters gathered outside the press room on the third floor of the Capitol.

That seemed to include the president’s cutting and withholding of billions of dollars in city and state resources.

Trump Said He Will Withhold Funds

Trump said Tuesday that he would withhold all funds from states such as New York that contain so-called sanctuary cities, where local law enforcement officers are largely barred from helping federal immigration authorities. It was the latest in a series of Trump administration threats to cut funds for infrastructure, health care, social services and counterterrorism.

Asked about the cuts Wednesday, Hochul took a hard line. “This is just a threat to intimidate states like New York into bowing into submission, and that is something we’ll never do,” she said, noting that the state already cooperates with immigration authorities on criminal investigations.

But Blakeman disagreed, arguing that the president was right to withhold the funds.

“The problem is not with President Trump,” he said. “The problem is with the mayor and the City Council. You want to be a sanctuary city, you want to violate federal law, there are consequences.” He added later that he didn’t “want to put any shackles on ICE.”

Even so, Blakeman veered from the president’s insistence that prices have been falling and affordability is not an issue.

“It’s grocery bills, utility costs, rent, property taxes, and paychecks that don’t go far enough,” Blakeman said in a statement. “Families don’t need more rhetoric — they need results.”

And while Hochul has put forth a slate of programs, from energy assistance and auto insurance reform to universal child care and free school lunches, Blakeman said she had not done enough, and he promised to cut taxes if elected governor.

Blakeman is expected to replicate the strategy that his fellow Long Island Republican Lee Zeldin used to come within 6 percentage points of the governor’s mansion in 2022, prioritizing affordability issues and crime.

But on that front he may well face challenges: Crime in New York is down from its post-pandemic peak, when Zeldin was running. Hochul appeared at a news conference last week to trumpet a 20% decline in murders in the city. The decline came amid a 3% drop in major crime categories (the one exception was reported rapes, which increased partly because of a new broader definition of sexual assault).

Perhaps the most surprising area of conflict between Blakeman and Hochul involved a topic on which they ostensibly agree.

Hochul, a die-hard fan of the Buffalo Bills, ran into Blakeman at a game this month, he said, and leveled a serious insult.

“The governor saw me in a Bills golf shirt and said that I was a new Bills fan,” he said.

In fact, he said, the shirt was a Father’s Day gift from his son some 12 years earlier. “I’ve been a Bills fan for a long time,” he insisted.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Grace Ashford and Kristi Berner/Graham Dickie
c. 2026 The New York Times Company