Blakeman Runs on Affordability. Nassau’s Taxes Say Otherwise

Bruce Blakeman is touring New York preaching affordability. He's the County Executive of one of the most expensive places to live in the United States. Even a Beatle — Blakeman's ex-wife is married to Paul McCartney — could tell you the math doesn't work.

Can't Buy Me Love. Or a House in Nassau County.

Bruce Blakeman stood on the steps of New York City Hall this spring and declared himself the affordability candidate for governor. It takes a certain audacity. Blakeman runs Nassau County — a place where the median property tax bill is nearly $15,000 a year, roughly four times what the typical American homeowner pays. If Nassau County is the affordability model for New York, then a yacht is the model for budget travel.

Here in Western New York, we know something about affordability. We also know something about politicians who discover a crisis only when it's useful. Blakeman didn't make Nassau affordable. He made it a campaign prop.

The Long and Winding Road of His Tax Record

Blakeman's website boasts that as County Executive he never raised property or sales taxes "by a single penny." But Blakeman's Nassau career didn't start in 2022. As the county legislature's first Presiding Officer, he served exactly four budget cycles — and voted to raise taxes in two of them, back to back. A 3.6% hike in 1998, then a 9.4% hike in 1999, the largest Nassau had seen since 1991. His response to constituents at the time? He reported that commuters told him they "expected the worst and it wasn't as bad as they thought."

Apparently it was worse than they thought, because in November 1999, Nassau County voters fired Blakeman and flipped the entire legislature to the Democrats. The affordability candidate was voted out of office over taxes.

With a Little Help from His Friends

And who's bankrolling the affordability tour? Among others, partners at a real estate development firm who gave Blakeman's campaign a combined $54,000 after receiving tax breaks in Nassau County from a board whose members are nominated by the County Executive - Bruce Blakeman. His campaign insists the board is "independent." Sure.

So tax relief in Nassau is real if you're a developer who writes checks. If you're a homeowner, you get property tax bills that rank among the very highest in the nation and a county executive who left town to lecture the rest of the state about costs.

Help! (He Needs Somebody)

Blakeman promises that as governor he'll cut your taxes and slash your utility bills in half. Not by a third. Not by 40%. In half — a nice round number. But he offers no plan, no legislation, and no math. When your signature affordability proposal sounds like a late-night infomercial, voters are entitled to check the receipts. We did. The receipts say 9.4%.

We Can Work It Out

One more thing New Yorkers deserve to know before November. Donald Trump handed Blakeman his "Complete and Total Endorsement" in December, declaring him "MAGA all the way" and boasting that Blakeman has "been with me from the very beginning." That loyalty matters, because Trump has a New York problem no president can fix: his 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records — doctoring the books to bury a hush money payment to an adult film star before the 2016 election. They are state convictions, the first ever against an American president, and no presidential pardon can touch them. Trump has spent every day since trying to erase that verdict — appealing, litigating, and rewriting the story of a jury of twelve New Yorkers who heard the evidence and convicted him 34 times over.

Don't take our word for how badly Trump wants his record scrubbed — look at what his allies have already tried. In 2023, House Republicans, led by Elise Stefanik and Marjorie Taylor Greene, introduced resolutions to expunge Trump's two impeachments, as if a vote in 2023 could un-ring a bell from 2019 and 2021. It failed, because history doesn't work that way. But it told us everything about the assignment: when Trump wants his record cleaned, his loyalists reach for whatever eraser they hold.

And only one office in America holds the eraser for those 34 felony convictions: the Governor of New York. Trump knows it. Blakeman knows it. So here's the question every reporter in this state should be asking the man Trump anointed "from the very beginning": Governor Blakeman, would you pardon Donald Trump? He owes New Yorkers an answer because a governorship shouldn't come with an IOU attached.