New York state Republicans are looking to unseat an incumbent governor who started his re-election campaign with a $30 million funding advantage and a 30-point lead in the polls over their candidate.
Still, party leaders believe Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino represents their best chance for victory in nearly a decade.
Tony Sayegh, a Fox News commentator and Republican strategist, said Gov. Andrew Cuomo is vulnerable and will be contending with anti-incumbency, anti-Democratic rage trickling down from the federal level.
“The issues are lining up,” he said. “The candidate, Rob ”¦ is outside of the mold of the evil Republican caricature that a lot of Democrats try to portray.”
Sayegh said Astorino has charisma and is on the right side of issues like the Common Core curriculum, which he wants to repeal. Astorino also has garnered attention for his stance on an affordable housing settlement in Westchester, in which the county executive has clashed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
During Astorino”™s administration, the county tax levy has not increased. As for campaign fundraising, Sayegh said that Republicans don”™t need to attempt to go blow-for-blow against Cuomo, whom he said has overseen a continued decline in New York state and mishandled a recently-dissolved ethics commission.
“We”™re not going to need nearly as much to go after it than he”™s going to need to defend it,” he said of the governor”™s record.
Astorino is hoping his choice for lieutenant governor will improve his chances at least slightly. The state Republican Party”™s nominating convention kicked off Wednesday at the Westchester Hilton in Rye Brook, and Astorino announced his choice for his running mate just one day ahead of the event in a video on his website, robastorino.com.
Christopher Moss, sheriff of Chemung County and a vocal critic of Cuomo”™s gun control law called the SAFE Act, will share the ticket, Astorino said.
“I wanted an Albany outsider as a running mate to help me clean up this state and move it back into the winning column, and I got one,” he said.
The Astorino-Moss ticket is set to get the official nomination Thursday.
Early in Astorino”™s campaign, he has focused on portraying New York state under Gov. Andrew Cuomo as anti-business, tangled in bureaucratic red tape and rife with government corruption. To win election, not only would he need to neutralize overwhelmingly Democratic New York City but also convince voters to pull the plug on a governor after one term. An elected New York governor hasn”™t lost a first re-election bid since the 1950s.
Republican Party leaders on Wednesday nominated John Cahill, who was an aide to former Gov. George Pataki, to run for attorney general against incumbent Eric T. Schneiderman. Onondaga County Comptroller Robert Antonacci received the nod to run against incumbent state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
State Democrats will hold their nominating convention on Long Island a week after the Republican convention. Cuomo will find a new lieutenant governor candidate prior to the convention, after current Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy said he wouldn”™t seek re-election this year.
