Gov. Kathy Hochul has a Bronx problem. At a Bronx diner where Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman was campaigning, voters including a registered Democrat said they are done with her and with what the Democratic Party has become, Fox News Digital reported.
The sharpest words came from one of their own. Former Democratic Bronx Assemblyman Stephen Kaufman rallied with Blakeman at the Crosstown Diner and went straight at the people now running his party.
“They’re not Democrats. They’re socialists and communists,” Kaufman said. “They’re just not Democrats, they’re not moderates.”
Kaufman charged that the Democratic Socialists of America are tightening their grip on the party and warned that Democrats are “rapidly becoming a house of hatred” with no room left for moderates. As for Hochul, he said she has moved steadily left to keep that wing happy. “Every time she has a problem, she goes crying to the hard left. She’s totally controlled by them,” he said.
Voters at the diner agreed. “It’s not your Democratic Party anymore. It’s not your grandfather’s Democratic Party. It’s become the Democratic Socialist, a.k.a. Communist Party,” said Lisa, a resident of the Bronx’s Throggs Neck neighborhood.
Another Bronx man said the socialists had branded homeowners like him a problem. “The socialists here literally said we’re land-hoarding if we only have a single-family home or a four-family home and that we were a problem… Kathy was all in support and quiet about it. She didn’t defend the homeowners,” he said.
A third voter was blunter. “I’m a registered Democrat. Ask me if I vote that way,” he said.
Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, says this is happening everywhere he goes. “Every time I go out and meet the people, another Democrat comes up to me and says, ‘Bruce, I’m a lifelong Democrat. I’ve never voted Republican in my life. We’re voting for you,’” he said.
The anger is about money as much as ideology. Blakeman said Hochul has “raised utility rates 48 times” and said cashless bail “make[s] it easier for criminals to operate in our neighborhoods.” “I have her report card and it’s straight F’s,” he said. Kaufman put the count of electricity rate increases at 42 and blamed Hochul for blocking gas lines and closing power plants.
Blakeman is promising the opposite. He said he has “not raised taxes a penny in five years” in Nassau County and has cut taxes by $150 million. “I will cut taxes. I will cut utility bills. And I will make for safer communities just like I did in my own county as county executive,” he said.
The DSA takeover these voters describe is not imaginary. Mamdani won City Hall, and Fox noted that DSA-backed candidates have since knocked off Democratic incumbents in congressional primaries in New York and beyond, including Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado.
A handful of voters at one Bronx diner is not a poll. But when a former Democratic assemblyman calls his own party “socialists and communists” nine days before the election, Hochul has a warning sign she cannot wave away.
Source: foxnews.com
