Thursday, October 1, 2026
New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, is the odds-on favorite to win re-election in November in this very blue state. But her Republican opponent, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, is running a very spirited, hard-fought campaign.
Hochul’s Republican challenger four years ago, Lee Zeldin, came within 6 percentage points of knocking her off. This year is bound to be a much tougher test for the Republican challenger, given that President Trump’s approval ratings hover in the mid-30s and that in most midterm elections, the party controlling the White House suffers.
It won’t be enough for Blakeman to simply bash New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani or the dangers associated with the Democratic Socialist platform. Blakeman needs something bold to set him apart, and to give state residents something to vote for.
That something should be a promise to impose a cap on state spending.
Blakeman could have a field day noting how hypocritical our state leaders have been in imposing spending and tax caps on local governments and schools while conveniently exempting themselves from those same restrictions.
The most convincing statistic of all? Had the state imposed a cap on itself in 2012 (as it did for lower-level jurisdictions), when its budget was $132 billion, that budget today would be over $100 billion smaller than the $277 billion spending plan Hochul and the Legislature ushered through in June.
The state cap limits spending and tax increases to 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower. Had the cap applied to state spending, it would only have grown to $174 billion today.
The cap wasn’t a silver bullet, but it was fairly successful on the local level. Before 2012, school budgets on Long Island were growing at an average of 6 percent a year. After the cap was implemented, the average rate of increase shrank to about 2 percent. That equated to enormous savings for taxpayers of over $25 billion through 2019.
As noted in a Center for Cost Effective Government report, spending caps work because they force prioritization. Each year, every special-interest group under the sun appears before state and local governments to lobby for more money. When there’s no cap, it’s easy for officials on both sides of the aisle to cave and add all those groups to the pot. The cap gives officials the excuse to tell some of those organizations that they just don’t have the room this year, and they’ll have to come back during the next budget cycle.
Of course, there’s always a safety valve, allowing the cap to be pierced with a super-majority of support, but that’s not as easy as you might think.
Spending caps have worked not only in New York, but in states across the country. States with caps spend less, have lower tax rates and are more competitive for their businesses and residents.
The property tax cap was created largely because it was a major issue in the gubernatorial campaign in 2010. Four years earlier, then Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi ran for governor talking about a cap, but it got little traction. After the real estate collapse of 2007, however, and the economic pain felt by homeowners, the cap became a centerpiece of the 2010 campaign.
I made it part of my platform in my very short-lived run for governor. After I failed to secure the Republican nomination, the Democratic candidate, Andrew Cuomo, absorbed the issue into his campaign. After he won the general election, it became something of a mandate from the people, and it paved the way for this otherwise contentious issue to pass in the 2011 legislative session.
Were Blakeman to make this his top priority in this fall’s campaign, it would not only gain him extra buzz, but would also provide the mandate that would be needed to help get the concept passed in 2027.
We know that Hochul will never embrace a cap on state spending given the pressure from her left flank. There’s an opening for Blakeman here. He shouldn’t waste it.
Steve Levy is president of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He has served as Suffolk County executive, as an assemblyman and as host of the podcast “On the Right Side,” and is the author of “Solutions to America’s Problems” and “Bias in the Media.”
