A Plan for a Safer New York and Lower Taxes

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. Well, with us today is the county executive of Nassau County, the safest county in America. And he’s running for governor and he wants to make New York State, I understand, the safest state in America. Well, Bruce Blakeman, it’s Sunday morning. You have maybe six weeks, seven weeks to go to the election. What is going on? What

0:26 are you doing?

0:29 Speaker 2 Well, we are crisscrossing the state. We’re going to every town, every village, every city in New York State, every community. And the one thing that we found is that people are miserable under Kathy Hochul. They’re supporting my campaign because they know my record of cutting taxes, making things more affordable, building better jobs, higher paying jobs, and having safer communities.

0:55 And that’s what everybody wants. Doesn’t matter whether you’re Republican, Democrat, or Independent. So our campaign has caught fire. We are in a statistical dead heat now with Kathy Hochul. So right now, we’re just raising money, rallying people, and we are in the upward projection and trajectory, I should say.

1:19 And she’s in a downward trajectory. Her Unapproval ratings are at record levels, and people don’t like the way she’s mismanaged our state. So they’re ready for change.

1:31 Speaker 1 And you are traveling. I mean, Nassau and Suffolk County are one of the— both of you guys are one of the safest counties around. The five boroughs in New York, well, I mean, we’re waiting to see daily what’s going on.

1:48 Where are you spending most of your time? And I haven’t— And I haven’t seen, you have your lieutenant governor that’s running upstate, but we haven’t heard from him at all. How is he doing upstate?

2:04 Speaker 2 Sheriff Todd Hood is great. He was a hero cop on the Syracuse Police Department. Then after he retired, he decided that he wanted to give back more. He became the sheriff of Madison County. That’s just adjacent to Onondaga County, where Syracuse is located. And he’s just a tremendous asset to the campaign. Tough law and order guy, but a

2:30 reasonable guy, a good guy, a good family man. And yes, I have implanted Upstate New York. This is a big state. It’s nine hours from one end of the state to the other by car. So I have had him going to all of these functions upstate that I can’t get to because it’s such a big state. I go upstate.

2:51 I’m heading upstate tomorrow. But, you know, I am handling mostly the fundraising. And that’s something that we have to do in order to be able to compete. And we are raising the money. We are on television. We’re on social media. We’re on radio. We’re on direct mail. And we have a very, very strong campaign. And because of

3:17 the support of so many people out there, so many of your listeners, John, we’re going to be successful and we’re going to save our state.

3:25 Speaker 1 Understood. And if I asked you for three categories that you, all the people you’re meeting, give me the three categories that people are most worried about.

3:39 Speaker 2 Okay. Number one, taxes. We’re the most overtaxed state in the United States of America. People want more money in their pocket. They don’t want government spending money foolishly. The budget of the state of New York is twice that of the state of Florida. There’s four more million people in Florida. It’s absolutely insane. So that’s number one. Number two,

4:03 utility bills. Our utility bills are 70% higher than the national average. I can cut them in half. We’ve got to bring them down to a reasonable figure. Kathy Hochul has approved 48 rate hikes in her four years as governor.

4:18 That’s one a month. That’s why it’s so expensive to live here in New York. So I’m going to cut the utility rates and safe communities. That’s the third largest issue out there from people who approach me every day.

4:32 They want to be safe in their homes. They want to be safe in their communities. businesses aren’t going to move to New York State if it’s not safe. The rise of anti-Semitism, now the rise of anti-Christian behavior by the mayor of the city of New York, these are all concerns to people. Kathy Hochul endorsed Mondami, Mondami endorsed her.

4:52 People want to get back to American values, and Zoran Mondami is somebody who every time he speaks, he speaks poorly of the greatest nation in the world, the nation that provided the most freedom and the greatest prosperity. So So that’s what we’re up against, and we must defeat them so that we can save our state.

5:12 Speaker 1 Understood. Well, thank you so much for coming on this Sunday morning, and let’s catch up again real soon.

5:19 Speaker 2 Thanks so much, Sean. Appreciate it. Thank you.