Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman exchanged sharp attacks and carefully worded arguments Tuesday night during an hourlong debate hosted by Spectrum News NY1.
The two candidates clashed over immigration, sexual-assault laws, taxes, public safety, energy policy and New York’s business environment.
Here’s a closer look at some of the most notable claims made by both candidates.
The claim: Local agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement allow “rogue agents roaming the streets” — Hochul
Hochul made the accusation while criticizing Blakeman over Nassau County’s so-called 287(g) agreement with federal authorities, named for a provision of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.
Our verdict: Mostly false. Nassau County’s agreement with ICE previously allowed county police officers to serve as deputized federal agents and enforce certain immigration violations, before Hochul signed sanctuary legislation earlier this year. Nearly a dozen other New York municipalities also maintain working arrangements with ICE, but those partnerships are narrowly focused on permitting correctional facilities to check detainee names against a federal database.
The claim: The 2,000 correctional officers dismissed during last year’s walkout were engaged in an illegal strike — Hochul
Asked about her response to the 2025 crisis involving staffing levels in New York’s prison system, Hochul said the approximately 2,000 correctional officers she fired had broken the law by leaving their posts. She added that she would “sure as hell fire them” again if thousands of officers staged a similar walkout.
“They walked out the door and shut it,” the governor said, later adding, “You violated the law. Shame on you.”
Our verdict: Half-true. New York’s Taylor Law prohibits public-sector unions from striking while a contract remains in effect. However, many of the correctional officers fired by Hochul were not supposed to be terminated and were eventually reinstated.
Of the 2,000 officers dismissed, 848 had returned to their jobs by November 2025, according to a Department of Corrections and Community Supervision spokesperson who spoke with The Post at the time. Many said they had been on previously approved medical leave and were mistakenly included in the governor’s mass firings.
The claim: Allowing fracking would cut utility bills by 50% — Blakeman
Blakeman said he “would extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale,” the expansive rock formation beneath much of upstate New York, as a way to reduce the state’s sharply rising energy costs.
Our verdict: Highly unlikely. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo banned hydraulic fracturing through an executive order in 2014, and the state Legislature codified that prohibition in 2021. Even if Blakeman wins an upset victory on Nov. 3, reversing the policy would likely require overcoming a Democratic-controlled Legislature and significant opposition to such a controversial move.
The claim: Hochul once had the NRA’s endorsement and opposed driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants — Blakeman
Blakeman raised the issue after Hochul criticized his votes to increase property taxes while he served as a Nassau County legislator in 1998 and 1999. He argued that Hochul had also shifted positions since representing a district in Western New York in Congress from 2011 to 2013.
“You didn’t want to give illegal migrants driver’s licenses [back then], now you’re giving it to them,” Blakeman said. “Property taxes? You’re going to talk about something I did 28 years ago.”
Our verdict: True. During her unsuccessful 2012 congressional campaign, Hochul received an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association. At the time, she also publicly opposed then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s 2007 executive order allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses without demonstrating legal residency.
A year earlier, Hochul highlighted the position in a campaign advertisement, saying, “I led the fight against giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses.” She later won a surprise special election to succeed former Rep. Chris Lee, a Republican who resigned after sending provocative emails and a shirtless photograph to a woman he had met on Craigslist.
The claim: Hochul says President Trump is blocking her energy projects
Hochul was asked by moderators early in the debate about what she was doing to alleviate New Yorkers’ energy costs – which are about the third highest across all US states – and she quickly blamed President Trump, accusing him of blocking initiatives to build new power plants and citing the war in Iran for high bills.
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“You know what the real problem is? I’ve got Donald Trump standing in the way of my energy projects,” she said.
Our verdict: Half true. President Trump has resisted wind farm development in New York and across the country, offering energy companies billions of dollars to buy back their contracts as part of a mission to keep fossil fuels at the center of US energy infrastructure.
Hochul is not blameless for the energy costs, however. Some of her own clean-energy initiatives — like the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act — policies have arguably driven customer rates up by forcing providers to spend more money complying.
That bill was passed in 2019 while Hochul was lieutenant governor and mandated the state’s electricity generation be 70% zero-emissions by 2030 and 100% green by 2040.
The claim: Blakeman wants “data centers everywhere” across upstate New York.
While trading barbs about data center policies – including Hochul’s one-year statewide construction moratorium she signed in July – the governor accused Blakeman of wanting to blanket upstate in polluting industries, lumping in data centers during her diatribe.
“It feeds into your vision for upstate New York, because you also want oil rigs, and gas rigs all over New York,” Hochul said. “You want to see data centers everywhere. You want smokestacks everywhere.”
Our verdict: Half true, but definitely half false. Blakeman has expressed enthusiasm about data centers – calling them the “fastest growing industry in the world” during the debate – but has been adamant local communities be the ones to choose whether they are built.
He explained that three months ago in a WGRZ-TV interview, where he said upstate data centers could “create prosperity, new jobs, and rebuild infrastructure in a lot of these communities, and repopulate some of these communities.”
“If we make it so it’s a win-win, then we can put these data centers in places where people actually want them,” he said. “There are communities in this state, and I’ve travelled to them, where people want them if there’s an economic benefit.”
Blakeman also supports bringing fracking to upstate – likely the Dickensian “smokestacks” Hochul described – but has also said they should be rolled out in similar community-forward approaches.
The claim: Hochul cut tax rates for middle class New Yorkers to lowest levels in 70 years.
During a sparring session about income taxes – where Blakeman repeated his banner campaign promise to cut them – Hochul insisted she’d already done that during her term.
“I’ve cut middle class tax rates to the lowest level they’ve been in 70 years,” Hochul said, before Blakeman countered that income taxes had gone up by $8 billion under her watch.
Our verdict: Half-true, half false. Hochul did lower rates on middle income earners – 5.30% for single-filers earning $13,900 to $80,650, and 5.80% for those earning $80,650 to $215,400 in 2026 — but that only tells half the story, as those cuts were covered by steep increases on the wealthy in a Robin Hood-esque switch.
She helped raise income taxes on wealthy residents making more than $2 million when she was lieutenant governor under Gov. Andrew Cuomo April 2021. Billed as “temporary” tax increases set to expire in 2027, rates were raised to 9.65% for those making more than $2 million, and 10.3% and 10.9% for people making $5 million and $25 million.
Then when the 2027 expiration date neared, Hochul extended the rates through 2032.
The Claim: New York has “the fastest growing economy in the United States of America
Hochul rebuked Blakeman’s citing of studies that placed New York as last in the nation for economic outlook by claiming New York in fact had the “fasted growing economy” in the country, saying “we are exploding.”
Our verdict: Technically true, but only for a brief period and it masks broader structural challenges.
The US Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that New York State had the highest increase in gross domestic product between the 1st and 2nd Quarter of 2026, a 4% jump or nearly double the national GDP 2.2% increase.
However, New York suffers from a stagnant population and has the highest tax burden of all states in the US. It also has the second highest government spending after oil-rich Alaska, per the Citizens Budget Commission, which Blakeman highlighted during the debate.
