Nassau County Executive and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman’s campaign mailed New York City homeowners fake tax notices designed to look like official government mail—then used them to solicit campaign donations.
The mailers are labeled a “memorandum of tax assessment” and tell recipients: “According to our records, you own a secondary property that has been identified as subject to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax.” The header carries the disclaimer “Not official government business,” and the bottom reads, “Paid for by Blakeman for New York,” according to letters obtained by City & State and NBC New York.
Despite those disclaimers, the letters mimic the city’s Department of Finance format closely enough that at least one Queens couple who received one initially panicked, according to reports. The couple owns only a primary residence and isn’t subject to the tax, which applies to second homes worth $5 million or more.
Tucked into the same envelope: a fundraising pitch. “I’m writing you as the Republican Nominee for governor of New York because on day one of my administration, I will move to ELIMINATE this ridiculous tax,” reads a letter signed by Blakeman, which asks recipients to “join my team with a $50 or more contribution.”
Election attorney Sarah Steiner told City & State the mailers are legal despite their misleading design. “Sadly, lying and misleading are not necessarily illegal,” she said. “This is manipulative scaremongering.”
The stunt mocks the city’s own rocky rollout of the tax. In July, New York City’s Department of Finance released a public tax roll listing some 950,000 homeowners who could be eligible for the surcharge—but the list mistakenly swept in hundreds of thousands of primary residences. Only about 17,000 owners actually received official notice from the city. A Staten Island judge later paused the rollout after homeowners sued. The case is still pending.
Asked about his own campaign’s mailers, a Blakeman spokesperson did not address their design and instead blamed Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mamdani, both Democrats, in comments sent to media: “Kathy Hochul and Zohran Mamdani owe New Yorkers a tremendous apology—for making New York even more unaffordable with another tax and then botching its rollout so badly that they published the wrong addresses on the city’s official website.”
Hochul’s campaign shot back, with spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki telling NBC New York that Blakeman had sent “fake government tax documents” to “shake New Yorkers down for donations to his Trump lovefest campaign.”
The mailer stunt comes as Blakeman trails Hochul by double digits in recent polling. An Aug. 21 survey from Concord Public Opinion Partners had Hochul ahead 50% to 34%, and an early-August Siena University poll showed her leading 49% to 39%.
