Lee Zeldin Visits Kathy Hochul Country

The rally gives voice to loathing every time the governor’s name is mentioned. Some 700 people—retired cops, small-business owners, healthcare workers, homemakers, sales reps—are present. Most are locals. Raucous and indignant, they wave placards that say “Zeldin/Save Our State.” Save it from what? I ask a dozen of the attendees before the rally kicked off.

All say they need saving from bad economic conditions, high taxes and crime. Ten of them cited the case of

Adam Benefield,

a man who allegedly shot his wife dead in front of their children in Buffalo on Oct. 5. The day before the shooting, he’d been in court after an arrest for misdemeanor domestic-abuse charges. He hasn’t entered a plea, and the judge released him on his own recognizance because state law prevented him from setting bail. “Benefield will cost Hochul the election,” a housewife says.

Nick Langworthy,

the state Republican chairman, is running for New York’s 23rd Congressional District, a solidly Republican open seat to the south of here. As the warm-up act before Mr. Zeldin’s appearance, he delivers an old-fashioned provincial stemwinder, pacing the stage, bellowing his words, calling for responses from the crowd. He describes Ms. Hochul, who succeeded

Andrew Cuomo

after his August 2021 resignation, as an “accidental governor” whose “time is up.” He is unworried that New York hasn’t elected a Republican governor since

George Pataki

won a third term in 2002. He says Mr. Zeldin is “unleashing new votes.”

In an interview afterward, Mr. Langworthy says Mr. Zeldin has spent “the last year and a half crisscrossing the state with his message of restoring safety and opportunity to New Yorkers.” It has resonated “across the political spectrum, particularly in New York City, where crime is the No. 1 issue, even among Democrats.” He says Mr. Zeldin has “spent a lot of time building relationships in the Asian and Hispanic communities that have been particularly affected by crime rates.”

Siphoning urban votes from the Democrats would seem to be the key to a Zeldin victory. New York City cast 38% of the statewide vote in 2018 and 35% in 2020, says Washington Examiner columnist

Michael Barone,

a former editor of the Almanac of American Politics. Mr. Zeldin needs to get “up toward 40% of the city vote to win statewide,” Mr. Barone says. Only one poll, by Quinnipiac, shows him in the vicinity—at 37%.

Mr. Zeldin’s math differs a little. “If you get less than 30% of the city vote,” he tells me, “you can’t win this race. If you get 35% or more, it starts to become really difficult to lose the race.” His team has “consistently seen our polling for a while now in the low 30s, which is fantastic.” He says he’s made gains with Asian- and Dominican-American New Yorkers, but adds that his campaign is also “focused on getting the highest turnout possible throughout the reddest election districts,” such as Staten Island and the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Mr. Zeldin’s opponent may be his trump card. Ms. Hochul has run a lackluster campaign, seemingly oblivious to crime until a very recent—and unconvincing—pivot, in which she portrays herself in campaign ads as a crime-fighter. It would be fair to call her the weakest incumbent governor seeking election in New York since

Malcolm Wilson

in 1974. Wilson, who ascended to the governorship when

Nelson Rockefeller

became

Gerald Ford’s

vice president in 1973, managed less than 42% of the vote against Democrat

Hugh Carey.

“This is a Democrat town we’re in right now,” Mr. Zeldin says of Kenmore, “and we’re going to beat Kathy Hochul in this county. We’re actually going to win the town of Hamburg, where she grew up.”

He derives this confidence, he says, not only from his campaign’s polling, but from the evident support he’s received upstate for his promise to end the prohibition on fracking that Mr. Cuomo imposed in 2014. “I strongly support the state reversing its ban on the safe extraction of natural gas,” he says. It would “create jobs, generate revenue, revitalize communities, and lower energy costs,” and the Southern Tier, just north of Pennsylvania, is “desperate for it.” He’d need help to keep that promise, though, since the Legislature codified the ban into law in 2020. “I want to see New York as a state that’s exporting energy to other states,” Mr. Zeldin says. “I’d love to see our state exporting energy to other countries.”

New York is “filled with a tremendous amount of resources and opportunity that right now is going deliberately untapped,” he says. “The same people who advocate for a ban on the extraction of natural gas in New York will cheer on

Joe Biden

when he runs off to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela for oil after cutting off Russian imports.” And pro-fracking Pennsylvania—where the average oil-and-gas worker earns more than $100,000 a year—is “barely scratching the surface compared to the potential that can be unlocked here in New York.”

Mr. Barone adds further context to Mr. Zeldin’s plaint. “Upstate,” he says, “has real grievances against city domination. They’re stuck with high taxes, and these fracking and pipeline bans.” Mr. Cuomo took upstate New York for granted, moving left to protect himself against primary opposition. “Suddenly thrust into the governorship,” Mr. Barone says, “Hochul seems to have done the same on issue after issue, leaving her suddenly vulnerable. Has Lee Zeldin persuaded upstaters that Hochul is a traitor to her home region?” If so, he may have a clear shot at upsetting her.

Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at New York University Law School’s Classical Liberal Institute.