Rep. Lee Zeldin took 30% of the NYC vote.
Obviously, a win is a win, and Gov. Kathy Hochul deserves New Yorkers’ goodwill as she prepares to begin her own full term in office. But look closely at the New York City results. GOP candidate Lee Zeldin did astoundingly well, and that’s with all his MAGA baggage. It’s a lesson for Hochul: She’d best heed what moderate swing voters told her Tuesday night on crime control and job growth.
With 97% of the vote in, Zeldin did what few people thought was possible a few months ago and came quite close to doing what a Republican state candidate needs to do to win statewide — winning 35% of the local vote.
Zeldin took 30% of the Gotham vote — 514,175 votes, to be exact, compared with Hochul’s 70% (1,180,993 votes).
No one would argue that Hochul didn’t landslide New York City, as per usual in a city with a 7-to-1 ratio of registered Democrats vs. Republicans.
But Zeldin’s 30% vote share was twice that of the Republican candidate’s share four years ago. In 2018, GOP candidate Marc Molinaro got just 15% of the city’s vote, 318,000 ballots.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in New York Post