Bruce Blakeman chose a curious moment to accuse Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) of abandoning volunteer firefighters.
On Monday, the Republican nominee for governor issued a statement faulting Hochul for failing to act on a bipartisan bill that quadruples the state income tax credit for volunteer firefighters and ambulance workers. The governor had signed it two days earlier at the Hempstead Fire Department, squarely inside the Nassau County that Blakeman runs as county executive, according to amNewYork, which first reported the misfire. At the same event, Hochul handed the department a $1 million check for new radios.
In his now-deleted statement posted to his X account on Monday, Blakeman cast Hochul as indifferent to first responders, saying she “turns her back” on “the heroes who run into burning buildings” and claiming she was “nowhere to be found” as volunteer departments struggle to recruit and retain members.
How did Hochul’s camp respond?
Hochul’s reelection campaign seized on the blunder. In an email, the campaign said Blakeman’s new strategy was to “lie his ass off,” then wryly observed that the bill’s popularity was probably why the governor signed it over the weekend.
The campaign’s jab let Hochul keep her own distance. The governor has largely declined to engage Blakeman directly as she holds her polling lead, CBS New York reported. At a Monday event touting the city’s 2-K childcare expansion alongside New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, she never mentioned her opponent and declined off-topic questions. Blakeman, meanwhile, spent the day riding the subway and reprising the charge from his firefighter statement, calling Hochul “pro-criminal” after a fatal weekend shooting in a Manhattan station.
What does the new law do?
The measure had hardly languished in obscurity. It sailed through the Assembly 133-0 in May and cleared the Senate in June, though it reached Hochul’s desk only on Oct. 16. In August, state Sen. Pam Helming, a Canandaigua Republican, joined fire officials at the Chili Fire Department outside Rochester to urge Hochul to sign it, WHEC reported. The governor said that same day she would be “looking closely” at the bill.
The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Monica Martinez (D-Brentwood) and Assemblymember Karen McMahon (D-Amherst), marks the first increase to the credit in nearly two decades, raising it from $200 to $800 for eligible individual volunteers and from $400 to $1,600 for eligible married couples filing jointly. Hochul signed the bill with an agreement to amend it, and according to her office, the expanded credit applies starting in tax year 2027 and volunteers can claim either the credit or a qualifying local property tax exemption.
Blakeman’s own messaging made the case for the law he accused Hochul of ignoring. His campaign pointed to data from the Firefighters Association of the State of New York showing the state’s volunteer firefighting ranks have shrunk by a third over two decades, a loss of roughly 20,000 volunteers, according to the bill’s sponsor memo. That is precisely the attrition the credit aims to reverse.
The stumble arrives at a precarious point for Blakeman, who trails Hochul by nine points among likely voters, per the latest Siena poll. His campaign is also running on fumes; he had just $178,000 on hand entering the race’s final month, compared with more than $18 million for Hochul, City & State reported. That was the smallest sum any gubernatorial candidate has held at that stage.
