Bruce Blakeman is running for governor of New York. The Republican County Executive of Nassau County in Long Island seeks to replace leftist progressive Kathy Hochul at the seat of the state’s power in Albany and one of the major problems he sees is how the state tax policy is on the verge of hollowing out revenue and bleeding New York of their high-earning, job-creating class.

The Post Millennial spoke to Blakeman about what he wants to do for the state and why he thinks progressive thinking and policies has New York entirely on the wrong track. 

TPM: Why is a billionaire’s tax bad for New York City and bad for the state?

BLAKEMAN: Rich people have options. And if you continue to tax them, they will leave. And they will take their capital with them and they will take valuable jobs with them. They will hurt the middle class. First of all, the top one percent of wage-earners: they pay 50% or more of the taxes. So if they leave, the burden is going to be put on the middle class. And they will leave if you over tax them.

That’s number one. Number two, think about the carpenter, the plumber, the waiter, the waitress, the store owner, the dry cleaners, the pharmacy, the cleaning service. They depend on these rich people for their livelihood. So this will hurt the small business owners. So it’ll hurt middle class taxpayers and small business owners. And yes, while it sounds great, let’s tax the rich, the fact of the matter is they will go to Miami; Boca Raton; Palm Beach; Charleston, South Carolina; Scottsdale, Arizona; Aspen, Colorado. They have lots of options. They don’t need a second home in New York City. So it’s very, very foolish. It’s very short sighted. And while it may sound good, it would actually be a disaster for the economy of New York City and New York state. 

TPM: There was this recent video where Mamdani went to Manhattan and made fun of Ken Griffin’s multi-million dollar penthouse. In response, Griffin said he’d take his $6 billion Citadel project out of New York. Do you think he will take his project and leave?

BLAKEMAN: Well, why wouldn’t he, if he’s going to be attacked for being a New Yorker and being successful? Kathy Hochul and Zohran Mamdani, they vilified people who are successful. We should encourage successful people to come to New York because they pay the taxes. They’re the job creators. They create prosperity and economic development, and economic activity. This is the most overtaxed state in America. We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. The budget of the state of New York is twice the amount of Florida, and Florida’s got more people. The city of New York has a bigger budget than the state of Florida, and they’ve got 1/3 the population. They need to stop the fraud, the waste and the abuse and giving billions of dollars to people who just arrived here, rather than spending it on New Yorkers. 

TPM: It seems like it doesn’t matter how much money progressives get in their pockets, they never manage to actually fix the problems they’re intending to solve. New York City spends an insane amount on education and somehow it’s still not enough for students to achieve. Why is it that despite all of the money and despite increases in tax revenue, progressives can’t fix the problems that they’re trying to solve?

BLAKEMAN: You can solve the budget problem in New York City in one day. Make it no longer a sanctuary city. Don’t give free housing, free transportation, free food and a free cell phone to people who are not New Yorkers. They’re not Americans. They just arrived here. They haven’t earned a thing. This is our taxpayer dollars that they’re wasting. So you could do that right away and that would cure the budget gap. 

But you’re absolutely right. It’s a spending problem. It’s fraud, waste, and abuse at every single level. The quality of services aren’t good. It’s not like they’re delivering Tiffany services. They’re delivering subpar services at a Tiffany price. So, we’ve got to get our spending under control, get our priorities straight and stop taxing people to death.  

By the way, our utility charges are 50% higher than the national average. Why is that? Kathy Hochul runs the utilities in this state. Why is it that we’re 50% higher than the national average? It’s because of the green energy scam, taxes on your utility bills, excessive delivery charges, and the idea that we can go all electric in the next 10 years, which is crazy. Kathy Hochul wants to take gas out of our homes. It’s a cheap way to heat them. People like gas stoves rather than electric stoves. Why should she be making those decisions? It’s all about controlling every aspect of our life, and they do it by increasing taxes, by increasing spending and by increasing control over your individualism and your freedom.

TPM: Yeah, I think that’s 100% right? And we I think about New York City, what’s important to people in the city, its quality-of-life issues. You don’t want bugs in your apartment, you don’t want rats in the street, you don’t want trash everywhere. You want things to be clean and safe. And the more progressive control comes in, the less you get those things, and the less you get your freedoms. What happens if Kathy Hochul gives in to Mamdani to raise all of these taxes? 

BLAKEMAN: It’s not an if, we know it’s gonna happen just like congestion pricing. Kathy Hochul has done more U-turns than a cab driver. She promises one thing before the election, and then she does something completely different. She’ll do or say anything to get elected. Look what she did with congestion pricing, which is nothing more than a tax on the middle class. She said before the election, ‘we’re gonna put it on pause,’ and then after the election, she took it off pause. And now we have to pay for the privilege of driving on public roads that we already pay for with our tax dollars. 

TPM: Do you think Mamdani is actually going to be able to raise property taxes? You have people in standalone homes in the outer boroughs who are already paying something like 19% in property taxes and if Mamdani gets his way they’ll be hovering around 30%. What happens to those property owners if they can’t afford their property taxes? 

BLAKEMAN: Zohran Mamdani and Kathy Hochul have a history of saying one thing and doing something else. Mamdani said he was going to make New York City more affordable, then he proposes raising property taxes by 9.5%, which would be devastating to middle class families, especially in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and parts of the Bronx. This will make it less affordable to live in New York.

He also wants to institute an estate tax, which I call a death tax. If the value of your estate is more than $750,000, the city and state would be able to swoop in and take everything that you’ve worked for away from your children and grandchildren and deny them an inheritance.  

You worked hard, you created this prosperity, and now they’re just going to take it away from families. People will have to sell their homes. They’ll have to sell their small businesses just to pay the taxes. So, this is the worst tax on the middle class. Everything that Kathy Hochul and Zoran Mamdani do makes us less affordable, increases taxes and takes away property rights.  

They don’t want you to own property. They don’t want your kids to own property. They don’t want your grandchildren to own property. They want to take it away and control your kids and your grandchildren’s lives in Albany and City Hall, and our freedom is at stake here. And if anybody feels differently, look at every socialist regime. It’s been an economic failure. It’s brought misery. Winston Churchill said that socialism is nothing more than shared misery. And these are socialists. I think Mamdani, he’s probably a communist. 

TPM: Lee Zeldin made inroads in New York when he ran for governor and got pretty close to winning. How can you build on that success? What’s the gap that needs to be filled in order for conservative leadership to take the state back?

BLAKEMAN: I have a big advantage that Lee Zeldin did not have. We’ve now got four years of misery by Kathy Hochul she’s got a record of failure. Now, when Lee ran four years ago, he said she was going to do everything that she did, and he said she was going to destroy the economy of the state, and she did, but she didn’t have the record.  

Now, take my record. I haven’t raised taxes in four years, seven bond upgrades, four budget surpluses. US News and World Report says I’m the safest County in America. I have a record of achievement, a record of success, and a record of making people happy, versus Kathy Hochul, the highest tax state in America, utility fees that are 50% higher than the national average. How do you explain that?  

She is the most pro-criminal governor in the United States of America. So, when people compare my record with hers, I’m very confident that we’re going to win. 

Right now, our polling is 10% better than Lee’s was four years ago, 10% better. We’re in single digits now. She’s attacking me every day. She’s spending a million dollars attacking me this week on media, and you know, she wouldn’t be attacking me and spending all that money if it wasn’t a close race. So we’re neck and neck, and on election day, I am very confident that I will win, and on January 1, I’m very confident that I will be the next Governor of the state of New York.

TPM: Mamdani will still have three years left in his term. How will you work with him? Will it be a war? Will there be compromise?

BLAKEMAN: That’s up to him. I have said it over and over again, I’m willing to work with anybody that wants to make New York more affordable and a safer place to live, but if he’s going to destroy the economy of New York City, or he’s not going to enforce the law, then I’m going to go head to head with him, and I have a lot of power as governor, and I will use that power so it’s completely up to him on what kind of relationship he’s going to he’s going to want to have with me as governor.