BUFFALO, N.Y. — NBC News and the Associated Press have declared Gov. Kathy Hochul the winner in the New York governor's race.
Hochul was going up against U.S. Rep Lee Zeldin. Both made their final pleas to New York voters last weekend.
Hochul declared victory and spoke to her constituents before midnight. Zeldin has yet to comment.
Zeldin spoke to his supporters just before midnight and told them the race was too close to call. "This race will get closer and closer as the night goes on," he said. He urged people to wait until all votes are counted.
“Tonight you made your voices heard loud and clear. And, and you made me the first woman ever elected to be the governor of the state of New York. But I’m not here to make history, I’m here to make a difference," Hochul told supporters Tuesday night.
“I have felt a weight on my shoulders to make sure that every little girl and all the women of the state who’ve had to bang up against glass ceilings everywhere they turn, to know that a woman could be elected in her own right and successfully govern a state as rough and tumble as New York.”
Hochul, a Buffalo native, had been expected to win in a state where there are more than twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans. New Yorkers haven’t elected a Republican as governor since Gov. George Pataki won a third term in 2002. But Zeldin made the race competitive, closing in on Hochul in the final weeks and appearing to spur her to speak more about public safety.
“It’s been a battle where we’ve been focused on ideals. We’ve been bringing our message without apology or regret,” Zeldin said at his election night party Tuesday. He took the stage before The Associated Press had called the race.
Zeldin's run for governor included a man who wandered on stage with a weapon during a Rochester-area campaign stop and, more recently, two people being shot outside his Long Island home.
On Wednesday afternoon, Zeldin conceded in the race for governor, congratulating Hochul on his Twitter.
Though Hochul has been governor for a year, she is not as well known as her predecessor.
A former congresswoman, she served as Cuomo’s lieutenant governor before taking over in August 2021 and has tried to cast herself as a fresh start from Cuomo. He resigned amid sexual harassment allegations, which he denies.
Hochul’s campaign fundraising brought in more than $50 million, about double what Zeldin reported, but outside groups spent heavily in the race — especially two outside groups boosting Zeldin that took in about $9 million from Estée Lauder heir Ronald Lauder.
Zeldin is an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel who has represented eastern Long Island in Congress since 2015 and was a vocal defender of Trump during his two impeachments.
As a gubernatorial candidate, Zeldin tried to sidestep his ties to Trump, appearing with the former president at a closed-door campaign fundraiser but not at any public rallies, as candidates elsewhere have done. He brushed aside questions from reporters after Trump endorsed him, saying “it shouldn’t have been news” because the former president had backed him previously.
Instead, Zeldin focused almost exclusively on sending a message that violent crime is out of control, casting blame on policies passed by Democrats in Albany who control the Legislature, along with Hochul and Cuomo.
The issue became personal for Zeldin in the final month of the election, when two teenage boys were wounded in a drive-by-shooting in front of his Long Island home.
He has called for toughening the state’s bail laws and declaring a crime “emergency” that would allow him to suspend laws that curb solitary confinement in jails and that stopped automatically treating 16 and 17-year-olds as adults in the criminal justice system.
Hochul meanwhile, poured blame on Republicans and conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court for opposing gun control measures. She led an effort to tighten licensing rules for semiautomatic rifles after a racist mass shooting killed 10 Black people at a supermarket in her home town of Buffalo last spring.
Hochul was dogged by an early scandal in her administration, when her first lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, was arrested in April. Benjamin, who was accused of funneling state aid to a supporter in exchange for campaign contributions, denied wrongdoing but resigned. His arrest has not been raised on the campaign trail since Hochul handily won the Democratic primary in June.
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