The Republican candidate for governor met with supporters in Forest Hills last week, underscoring an electorate desperate to blunt the momentum of Democratic Socialists who have gained seats at the city and state levels.
“There is only one person who can stop Zohran Mamdani and that is the governor of the State of New York,” Bruce Blakeman said during his visit to the Congress of Bukharian Jews, referring to the mayor. “Anti-Semitism is out of control,” Blakeman, 71, said. “We have a mayor of New York City who put out a statement just today, on October 7, where he makes a moral equivalence between the attack on October 7 and the Palestinian cause, whatever that cause may be.”
The Bukharian Jewish community numbers around 70,000, living mostly in Queens, with a growing number of families settling in the Long Island suburbs. Largely conservative in regard to social policies and staunchly pro-Israel, they are understandably frustrated with the Democratic Party. This past summer, Bukharian Times publisher Rafael Nektalov and Rabbi Nahum Kaziev of Ohr Natan publicly declared that they were switching their party registration to Republican. They were welcomed to the party by Brooklyn Assemblyman Michael Novakhov and former councilman Ari Kagan, who represent a Russian-speaking constituency in southern Brooklyn that has successfully elected Republicans to city and state offices.
The challenge for the party in Queens is whether Bukharian and Orthodox Ashkenazim could generate the voter turnout needed to flip seats in their part of the city, and whether it is wise to jettison Democratic incumbents who are liberal but otherwise supportive of Israel and who refute accusations of genocide.
“She was the first American official to visit disaster sites in Israel in the wake of the October 7 attack,” Gov. Kathy Hochul’s spokesperson told the New York Post. “She will never stop fighting back against anti-Semitism every time it rears its head and she will never stop standing up for Jewish New Yorkers.”
A visit to Israel in the days following the outbreak of the Gaza war seems like a distant memory, overshadowed by Hochul’s endorsement of Mamdani last year and the addition of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to her reelection campaign. Subsequent accomplishments, such as the buffer law to protect synagogues and schools, security funding, opting the state into federal school-choice scholarships, funding for kosher food pantries, and other Jewish nonprofits, have not silenced Jewish voices critical of her positive relationship with Mamdani.
Likewise, incumbent Attorney General Letitia James often appears at Jewish functions and marched in this year’s Israel Day Parade alongside Hochul, but her endorsement of Mamdani and prosecution of Betar, a nationalistic and rather small organization, while disregarding pro-Palestinian hate groups, have angered many Jewish voters. Her Republican opponent, Saritha Komatireddy, argued that during James’ tenure, anti-Semitic incidents in the state rose by 234 percent.
“I’ll turn that around by prosecuting crime including hate crimes – which disproportionately affect Jewish New Yorkers,” she wrote in March. “Confronting the threat of terrorism, enforcing safe buffer zones around houses of worship, and working every day to protect all New Yorkers.”
A former federal prosecutor, Komatireddy spoke with Bukharian activists about her run, noting that when the mayor refuses to crack down on anti-Semitic incidents and hate groups, the attorney general has the legal tools to respond.
“If the NYPD is told to stand down, or a district attorney is told to go easy, the Attorney General’s hate-crimes authority still exists and I will use it. If a nonprofit that takes public money is bankrolling harassment campaigns, the Charities Bureau can open the books – that’s my office, not his,” she said. “I will judge the Mayor by what he does, not by what he says. But Jewish New Yorkers deserve to know that there is a law enforcement office in this state that will protect them regardless of who sits in City Hall.”
Recent polls have shown Blakeman edging closer to Hochul’s lead. Perhaps he will exceed the margin of Lee Zeldin in the previous gubernatorial election, assist the aspirations of Komatireddy and other down-ballot Republicans, and buck the longstanding trend of midterm elections favoring the party opposing the president.
For the Jewish community, voting for Blakeman and Komatireddy as a protest against Mamdani should not be a standalone goal. In his party-switch announcement, Nektalov said that the Jewish vote must be earned by either party rather than taken for granted by Democrats.
In last year’s mayoral election, Andrew Cuomo struggled to overcome his past overreach during the pandemic, personal scandals, and failure to personally appear on the streets. The majority of Jewish New Yorkers voted for him as a protest against Mamdani, and they came up short. Mamdani’s supporters gloated that the Jewish vote was no longer as important, overshadowed by Muslims and young white progressives.
Were there additional Jewish voters who failed to show up? Perhaps the highly visible leftist Jews on social media are reflective of a troubling shift away from Zionism.
I do not want the Orthodox Jewish vote to be regarded as one of protest. In Blakeman and Komatireddy, we have candidates who stand for something. Leaving a historically dominant party is taking a chance between becoming a kingmaker and losing a voice. It is a risk, and we can take comfort in the fact that there are prominent Jews outside of Orthodoxy who are also making the switch.
“I am so grateful you are running. You are what we need more than anything,” actress Debra Messing said recently at a Blakeman fundraiser. “The decline in this city over the last four years has been so exponential and devastating – economically, socially and on every level. And obviously, we’ve lost so much business here.”
Best known for a sitcom that contributed to mainstream acceptance of LGBT relationships, Messing was a staunch supporter of her party’s liberal candidates. Although she spoke about Blakeman’s policies concerning crime and the economy, her awakening is the result of October 7. Second only to liberal causes, Messing has always been a proud Jew. Seeing her party’s increased hostility toward Israel, she reached the same conclusion as our Bukharian neighbors.
Her endorsement of Blakeman sends a message to Hochul and James that a solidarity visit to Israel, an appearance at the parade, and policies benefiting our community are not sufficient. As they’ve spoken up against other forms of hate, they must speak up against Mamdani’s routine smears of apartheid and genocide. The Jewish vote in this election can force Democrats to confront these slurs as they should have done.
Keeping in mind that we should not generalize, there are elected members of my party who have publicly confronted Mamdani’s anti-Semitism and soft-on-crime policies. In Nassau County, Rep. Laura Gillen represents a swing district. Should her party regain the majority in the Capitol, her voice would stand out in countering the genocide narrative. She would be a true representative of her constituents and as much a kingmaker as this year’s Jewish vote in New York.
By Sergey Kadinsky
