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Vote like it’s 1994!
George Pataki, New York’s last Republican governor — who defied scores of polls that year to win election — said Sunday there’s still time for GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman to follow his lead to score the state’s top office.
Pataki said the only poll that counts is the one from the voters at the ballot box Tuesday.
The former gov defied his own odds, defeating three-term Democratic incumbent Gov. Mario Cuomo in 1994 — even though the final six polls preceding the election showed Cuomo ahead, including four by double digits.
“When I was running the first time [for governor in 1994] … the Sunday before the election … the [New York] Daily News straw poll came out, and it had never been wrong, and it showed me losing by 17 points [to Cuomo],” Pataki said on 77 WABC rado’s the “Cats Roundtable” program.
“I was down 17 with two days to go according to a poll that had never been wrong. And I ended up winning by 4. They were off by 21 points.
“If anybody knows to doubt the polls, it’s me because I’ve seen how inaccurate they can be,” Pataki told host John Catsimatidis.
The poll “that had never been wrong’’ had Cuomo up by 14 points.
Blakeman has ripped independent surveys conducted by Siena, Quinnipiac and Marist colleges claiming Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has double-digit leads over him.
Still, demographically, the state is different from what it was in 1994. There are more enrolled Democrats today than there were three decades ago, fewer residents in more conservative upstate New York and more people living in deep blue New York City.
But Pataki has a point: Hochul defeated Republican challenger Lee Zeldin by just 6 points in 2022, despite Democrats having a huge 2-and-a-half-to-1 party enrollment advantage.
Pataki said there’s a big reason for common-sense voters of all stripes to vote for Blakeman, whom he praised for running an aggressive campaign touting tax cuts and slashing utility bills.
If Hochul wins, Pataki said, democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani will be calling the shots in Albany.
“If we keep things the way we are, Mamdani — mark my words — is basically going to be telling the Albany politicians what to do. And that will mean higher taxes and other policies that hurt New York,” Pataki said.
“He’s already saying we need to raise taxes more, we need to spend more on programs that too often just waste all the money and put people into dependency,” he said.
But Pataki said he’s concerned that Republicans in New York unhappy with the status quo in Washington will sit out the election.
That would be a mistake, he said.
“This isn’t about Washington. This is about Albany, and we need change in Albany,” Pataki said.
