Democrats like Clintons, Biden & Harris ‘pulling fire alarm’ to save Hochul in blue NY
New York’s neck-and-neck race for governor has suddenly gotten the attention of prominent national democrats — for all the wrong reasons.
Party bigwigs appear to be in panic mode, critics note, flooding the 2-to-1 Democratic enrollment Empire State with big names like Bill, Hillary, Joe and Kamala in the final stretch to Tuesday’s election as Gov. Kathy Hochul has rapidly lost ground to Republican challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin.
“New York Democrats are smashing the glass and pulling the fire alarm,” state Republican Party Chair Nick Langworthy said Friday.
“These are all terrible signs for the Democrats,” political consultant Bradley Tusk added.
But pundits also note the call for big guns is a double-edged sword for Hochul and the Democrats, citing Biden’s high unpopularity amid rising crime and historic inflation rates.
“A New York loss would a national, overwhelming Democratic Party embarrassment. It has – for the Democrats – to be avoided at any campaign cost,” political consultant Hank Sheinkopf said of bigwig Democrats campaigning in New York rather than other battlegrounds across the nation.
Biden and Bill Clinton remain popular among key Democratic groups like black voters, Sheinkopf noted, even with the baggage they bring, including the #MeToo taint of Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky affair and connections to wealthy convicted perv Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself behind bars.
“Joe Biden and Bill Clinton stumping for Gov. Hochul shows the importance of her reelection to the party from both a New York and a national perspective,” political consultant Jake Dilemani said.
“If the black vote doesn’t turn out – she’s dead,” Sheinkopf emphasized about the gambit for Hochul.
A presidential visit to Yonkers Sunday is one more sign of how worried Democrats are of an electoral wipeout that could see Republicans flip several congressional seats in New York while winning their first statewide election in two decades.
While this will be a Hochul campaign event for Biden, he has already appeared alongside the governor and other embattled Democrats at two recent “official” appearances in Poughkeepsie and Syracuse as polls show Hochul could lose to Zeldin on Nov. 8.
“This is an act of pure desperation and a sure sign that Lee Zeldin is on the cusp of a historic victory,” Langworthy said.
Clinton, meanwhile, is campaigning alongside the embattled governor in Brooklyn on Saturday, two days after his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Vice President Kamala Harris appeared alongside Hochul in Manhattan.
“Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Bill Clinton? You couldn’t line up three less popular politicians,” GOP political consultant William O’Reilly said.
Polling averages show majority of Americans disapproving of the job Biden and Harris are doing while Clinton has faced renewed scrutiny in the #MeToo era.
These facts have some Republicans bullish that the controversial Democrats could whip up votes for Zeldin as much as Hochul.
“I hope Joe Biden campaigns for the governor in all 62 counties [of New York]. He is a failure of a president and will only remind us of the broader failures the Democratic Party has brought to us,” Staten Island Councilman Joe Borelli, who also serves as spokesman for a pro-Zeldin super PAC, told The Post.
The visit could also try to help endangered Democratic incumbents like Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-Westchester), head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, as he fights back a tough challenge from Republican Assemblyman Mike Lawler (R-Rockland).
But polling in New York suggests all three are still relatively popular in New York, with Biden and Harris making multiple trips in recent months to the state where the Clintons have lived for the past two decades.
A majority of likely voters in New York approve of the job Biden is doing alongside 53% who say they have an unfavorable opinion compared to a negative one, according to an Oct. 18 Siena College poll.
The stateside blitz by national Democrats, which also includes a recent robocall by former President Barack Obama, follows several Zeldin rallies where the Long Island congressman got boosts of his own from political lightning rods like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and upstate New York Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-North Country).
The appearances have helped Zeldin, who recently reported having roughly the same amount of cash on hand as Hochul after being grossly outspent during most of the race, gain national attention in a race where he has campaigned hard on rising crime and rising consumer prices tied to historic inflation levels.
“It is a rescue mission. To save our state. Can you do that?” Stefanik told a crowd approaching 1,000 near Albany on Thursday night as she introduced Zeldin while Hochul rallied with big names of her own to a far smaller crowd in Manhattan.
“We’re all here in this beautiful New York night while we’re here, Kathy Hochul’s rallying with Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris and in her entire crowd would probably fit like over here,” Zeldin said to boos for the Democratic bigwigs.
Zeldin rallies have attracted noticeably larger crowds in recent weeks as his campaign tries to project momentum in a race where Hochul once led by as much as 24 points, according to polling.
Hochul has tried to seize on those appearances with GOP firebrands like DeSantis, Youngkin and Stefanik, the third-ranking member of Congress in her party, to tell her supporters Zeldin is backed by “far-right Republicans” who oppose abortion and gun control — the central planks of her campaign.
Meanwhile, at a Saturday appearance in Orange County Zeldin stood alongside former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who recently claimed “an elitist cabal” controls her ex-party.
