Gov. Kathy Hochul on early Wednesday morning became the first woman ever elected governor of the state of New York, holding off a spirited challenge from Republican Lee Zeldin in a race that drew tens of millions of dollars in spending and appearances from some of the top names in politics as polls showed it drawing closer in recent weeks.
The win entitles the incumbent Democrat to a full four-year term in the office she ascended to in August 2021, when former Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned amid a sexual harassment scandal.
“Tonight you made your voices heard loud and clear," Hochul said on Tuesday night before the Associated Press called the race, pausing for applause before adding, "And you made me the first woman elected to be the governor of the state of New York."
However, she later added: "I’m not here to make history, I’m here to make a difference."
The Associated Press called the race for Hochul just before 1 a.m., showing the Democrat had a 53% to 46% lead over Zeldin, according to preliminary results from the state Board of Elections. Her victory also sealed a full term for her lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado. Zeldin, meantime, has not conceded.
“We still have a lot of work to do,” Zeldin said Tuesday night. “The first step is watching all these votes come in.”
Hochul pledged to govern with "strength and compassion" as well as make the state a place "where families can raise their children." Following the roughly nine-minute speech, an explosion of confetti rained down on the crowd of cheering supporters.
Hochul, 64, faced what became a tougher-than-anticipated challenge from Zeldin, a conservative congressman from Long Island who had been running for governor since well before Hochul took office. Zeldin decided not to run for re-election for his House seat so he could run for governor.
During a brief speech, Zeldin touched on his key campaign points: reversing recent changes to the state’s bail laws, removing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, bringing fracking to the state, and getting rid of any COVID vaccine mandates. He thanked his family, staff and supporters, which he said include both Republicans and Democrats.
“We all united as New Yorkers because we are committed to saving our state,” he said.
New York state is home to twice as many Democrats as Republicans, and no Republican has won statewide office since 2002. But a series of public polls showed Zeldin aggressively closing the gap against Hochul in recent weeks, with some showing her leading in the single digits.
The Democratic governor ran a campaign based on her record in office as well as her support for abortion rights in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision earlier this year. She went to lengths to highlight Zeldin’s ties to former President Donald Trump, including his votes to object to the results of the 2020 election in two states.
She pivoted more to the issue of public safety in the campaign’s closing weeks to counteract Zeldin, who ran on a consistent, tough-on-crime message for the entirety of his 19-month campaign. Public polling showed that public safety and crime were among the top issues on voters’ minds heading into Election Day.
The Democratic governor raised more than $48 million for her campaign since taking office, a massive war chest that allowed her to air near-constant television advertisements touting her record and criticizing her Republican challenger. The rapid fundraising helped her easily win a Democratic primary in June against New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Rep. Tom Suozzi, while state Attorney General Letitia James dropped her bid for the gubernatorial nomination in December after a brief campaign.
Zeldin’s supporters, however, funded a pair of super PACs that aired frequent ads criticizing Hochul’s record on crime, an effort that drew $10 million from cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder alone. The independent effort — which is facing legal scrutiny for its close ties to the Zeldin campaign — evened out the spending in the campaign’s final stretch.
Zeldin, 42, ran a campaign that focused heavily on rising crime in New York City and other cities throughout the state, often holding campaign events at the site of violent incidents in the five boroughs the day after they occurred.
He pledged to implement a state of emergency on crime on his first day in office, a move that would have allowed him to temporarily suspend the state’s recent criminal justice reforms, including a 2019 measure that ended cash bail for most misdemeanor and nonviolent felony charges.
But his positions on abortion and the 2020 election were out of step with many voters in heavily blue New York — and Hochul sought to exploit them early and often.
In their lone debate last month, Hochul highlighted Zeldin’s support of the Life at Conception Act — a federal bill that grants personhood rights at the moment of fertilization — and his votes against certifying President Joe Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania and Arizona on Jan. 6, 2021, just hours after the U.S. Capitol insurrection.
She also ran advertisements highlighting their divergent positions on gun control, with Hochul shepherding a series of tough measures through the state Legislature earlier this year that banned guns in so-called “sensitive” locations like the New York City subway system and Times Square — a law subject to a pending challenge in federal court.
In the last full week of the campaign, some of the Democratic Party’s biggest names traveled to New York to stump on her behalf, including President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Bill and Hillary Clinton. They rallied in Democratic strongholds like Manhattan, Brooklyn and southern Westchester County, which marked an attempt to run up the score in those deep-blue areas to propel Hochul to a statewide win.
Zeldin welcomed Republican heavy hitters like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who rallied for him in Suffolk and Orange counties, respectively.
Contributed reporting by Samantha Max.
