Trump Campaigns for Blakeman in Syracuse, Attacking Hochul on Crime, Energy and Parentage Law

President Donald Trump campaigned in Syracuse on Friday for Bruce Blakeman, the Republican nominee for governor of New York, urging voters to remove Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul on November 3 and pledging to help a Blakeman administration act on crime, immigration enforcement and energy prices almost immediately, according to the New York Post.

Speaking at the Syracuse convention center the Post identified as the OneCenter, Trump said that if Blakeman called for help as governor, he would be in New York within 24 hours, and predicted that crime in the state would fall sharply within two months of a change in Albany. He also asked voters to return a Republican Congress, promising a federal ban on sanctuary cities and states.

Crime and immigration at the center of the pitch

Much of the speech focused on immigration enforcement. Trump said, according to the Post, that New York had in less than two years released people he described as criminal migrants who faced charges or convictions tied to more than 48,000 crimes, a figure he attributed to state policy under Hochul. The Post report did not include independent verification of that total, and US News America is presenting it as the president’s claim. Trump also praised immigration officers involved in Thursday’s shooting in the Bronx of a man he described as a suspected gang member with a long criminal record, and argued that New York politicians had criticized the officers instead of supporting them.

Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, made a parallel case in his own remarks, according to the Post. He promised to sign an executive action declaring that New York is no longer a sanctuary state, blamed cashless bail and sanctuary policies for releasing offenders without consequences, and criticized Hochul over the Bronx shooting. Both men linked the case to a broader argument that Albany’s approach puts residents at risk.

On energy, Trump said New Yorkers pay the nation’s highest electricity bills and claimed Blakeman could cut them by as much as 70 to 90 percent by expanding access to the state’s oil and gas resources. Blakeman told the crowd New York should open itself to hydraulic fracturing and tap the Marcellus Shale. Those promises now become a central test of the Republican campaign: whether voters believe a change of governor can deliver savings of that scale, and how quickly.

A parentage bill becomes a rally line

The rally’s most personal exchange concerned state legislation on surrogacy and parentage. Trump mocked Albany Democrats for a bill that would use terms such as gestating and non-gestating parent in parts of the law and rename paternity proceedings as parentage hearings, joking that children would no longer greet their mothers in the usual way. Blakeman called the proposal an attempt by Albany to take decisions away from parents.

A Hochul spokesperson responded that the governor believes mothers are mothers and fathers are fathers and that no law changes that, describing the measure as addressing technical legal questions around surrogacy and parentage and accusing critics of misleading voters for political gain, according to the Post.

The appearance gives Blakeman the national spotlight he needs but also underlines his deficit. The Post reported that a Marist poll released Wednesday put him 11 points behind Hochul, although a Siena University survey last month had the race within single digits. With the midterm elections weeks away, Friday’s rally was an attempt to turn a statewide contest into a referendum on Albany’s record — and to test whether presidential star power can still move a deep-blue electorate.

Reporting based on coverage by the New York Post.