“There are some people that are a little left of center. There are some people that are right in the middle, and there are some people like me that are just right of center,” Blakeman said in an interview. “So, I would say that I was just right of center.”

That assessment might seem surprising to those following the New York governor’s race, where Blakeman has not shied away from Trump and his highly partisan brand of politics.

Blakeman launched his campaign with an early endorsement from the president and welcomed him to Long Island on Friday for a tour of a police facility in Nassau County.

“My relationship with President Trump is excellent. I consider him a close friend and ally,” Blakeman said.

On policy, Blakeman avoids the bombast of Trump but still broadly supports his agenda. He opposes the “sanctuary” policies of his Democratic rival, incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY), when it comes to immigration enforcement and often emphasizes the hundreds of illegal aliens removed from Nassau due to his cooperation with federal law enforcement.

Hewing so close to Trump carries risk in a state that former Vice President Kamala Harris won by 12 points in 2024. A Siena poll released this week shows Trump with just 38% support among likely New York voters.

It’s also a departure from how some other Republicans have run their campaigns in the Trump era. Larry Hogan, a centrist who served two terms as governor of blue Maryland, was an avowed critic of the president.

Even Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI), a stalwart Trump supporter during his six years in Congress, wouldn’t say on Wednesday whether he’d welcome the president to Wisconsin as he runs for governor there this cycle.

That dynamic underscores how statewide races have gotten entirely swept up in national politics.

Trump, a Queens native, made inroads in New York in 2024, overperforming for a Republican on Long Island and other vote-rich enclaves — even with immigrant and minority populations that traditionally vote Democrat. Trump’s margin in New York was the strongest a Republican has posted since former President George H.W. Bush narrowly lost the state in 1988 on his way the White House.

But Trump’s approval ratings have suffered a year and a half into his second term and are muddying a race that Blakeman wants to keep squarely focused on Hochul and her management of the state.

Democrats have been quick to paint Blakeman as a “suck up” to Trump who would enable his agenda as governor. They’ve run multimillion-dollar ad campaigns claiming Blakeman will “only fight for Trump” and hope to associate him with tariffs and a war in Iran that have raised the cost of living.

“You have elections which used to be local that are now nationalized,” said Bob Liff, a longtime Democratic consultant in New York. “He’s made his bed, and he’s got to sleep in it now.”

Blakeman’s task will be convincing voters that Hochul, not the White House, is to blame for New York’s problems. He faulted the governor for the affordability crisis, pointing in part to her opposition to new production of “cheap energy.”

He’s also betting that a “law and order” message will be as salient as it was for Republican Lee Zeldin, who came within 6 points of defeating Hochul in 2022, and accused her of being the “most pro-criminal governor in the United States” over her approach to bail policies.

“I’m running on my record as a chief executive, and I’m running against her record as a miserable chief executive, the worst governor in the United States of America,” Blakeman said.

Ryan Radulovacki, a Hochul spokesman, responded that Blakeman has made “crystal clear where he stands: with Donald Trump, far-right election deniers, rogue ICE agents, and anti-gun safety extremists as they make New York families less safe.”

“New Yorkers and their families want no part of Blakeman and Trump’s dangerous MAGA agenda to gut Medicaid, enable ICE’s dangerous tactics, and allow an armed MAGA militia to undermine law enforcement – they want a governor who’ll actually fight to keep them safe,” Radulovacki added in a statement.

There is at least one significant advantage to Blakeman aligning himself with Trump. The president is still popular with Republican voters whose turnout will be essential in places like upstate New York and on Long Island. His visit to Nassau on Friday was geared toward highlighting the low crime rates in his county.

Blakeman is also not the only New York politician making a similar calculation. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), an occasional Trump critic and one of the most endangered House Republicans, stood with the president at a May rally in Rockland County, a right-leaning part of his district.

In the interview, Blakeman argued that his relationship with Trump would help bring resources to the state. He is running at a time of growing tensions between Hochul and the president, who have sparred in recent days over a New York City tax on second homes and the administration’s decision to rescind temporary protected status for Haitian immigrants.

“I think it’s a good thing when the governor of the state of New York can pick up the phone and speak with President Trump and get things done in New York to create prosperity, better jobs, better benefits, and more economic activity,” Blakeman said.

“Whether you like him or not, he loves New York,” Blakeman added of Trump. “He’s a proud New Yorker. He grew up in Queens, and his heart is here in New York. So, I think he will be very helpful in helping me with the programs we need to create better jobs for people, so that our young people will want to stay in the state.”

Blakeman’s candidacy was attractive to national Republicans, in part, because he is well known in Nassau and could help the party flip House seats on Long Island that are currently represented by Democrats.

He entered the governor’s race at the expense of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), a more vocal Trump supporter who ended her campaign in December.

“It’s very important for me that I don’t have a lonely victory, that I have Republican members of Congress that are elected, and state Assembly and state Senate Republicans, as well as local government Republicans,” Blakeman said.

The question is whether Blakeman can himself unseat an incumbent whose approval ratings are sitting in the upper 40s.

Blakeman is well liked in Nassau, one of the most populous counties in New York, and has promoted himself as a centrist in campaign advertising. But polling suggests he is an unknown quantity for 40% of voters and is vulnerable to being defined by Democrats, who have more cash to spend on the airwaves.

As of July, Hochul’s political operation has amassed a war chest that is nine times as large as Blakeman’s.

“It’s not as if a significant number of people upstate knew who he was, and their introduction to him is MAGA and Trump,” Liff said.

The Siena poll had encouraging signs for Republicans. Blakeman leads Hochul by 8 points in the suburbs and 5 points with independent voters. Overall, Hochul is ahead, though, by 10 points — a similar margin to the one she enjoyed at this point in her 2022 race for governor against Zeldin.

Blakeman disputes those findings and says the numbers he’s seen show “this is a single-digit race.”

“Either I’m a little ahead of Kathy Hochul, or she’s a little ahead of me,” Blakeman said.

Zeldin’s performance in 2022 was the closest any Republican has come to winning the governor’s mansion since the 1990s, and Blakeman said he’s turned to him for advice in his own campaign.

But Zeldin, who now leads the Environmental Protection Agency under Trump, was running at a very different moment in New York and national politics. Crime was higher then, and Trump was out of office.

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Blakeman argued that he has a “big advantage” because Hochul, who took over for scandal-plagued Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2021, now has a record to compare against his own.

“When Lee Zeldin was running for governor, he was telling everybody all the bad things that Kathy Hochul will do, but she didn’t have her report card yet,” Blakeman said. “Now she has a report card, and it’s straight Fs.”