Sen. Ted Cruz urged New Yorkers to defeat Gov. Kathy Hochul and back Bruce Blakeman, saying the upset would shock the country and reject radical Democrats.
Fox News affiliate coverage captured the Texas Republican on WABC’s “Cats Roundtable,” where he told Empire State voters they could deliver a national message on Nov. 3 by electing Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman over the incumbent Democrat.
Cruz framed the New York governor’s race as a chance to slam the brakes on what he called a leftward takeover of the Democratic Party, and he tied that fight to a competitive Senate battle back home in Texas.
Republicans, including President Trump, have lined up behind Blakeman. Polls still show Hochul holding a comfortable lead in the reliably blue state. Cruz cast an upset as both possible and powerful.
He did not say much about the opposition.
Sen. Ted Cruz said:
"Right now the radicals are taking over the Democrat Party. They don’t love America. They hate America. They’re trying to destroy it. If you want to bring the Democrat Party back to sanity, the only way to do it is for them to get resoundingly rejected."
Cruz zeroed in on the governor’s race as the clearest stage for that rejection. He told listeners a Blakeman win would land far beyond Albany.
Cruz said:
"New York, you got a big gubernatorial race. It would shock the country to see Kathy Hochul defeated. It would be a powerful statement. New York, you can make a statement to the whole country."
That pitch lands as Democrats hope for a blue wave in the midterm cycle. Cruz argued the opposite result is the only path back to a party that, in his words, loves America again. The same fight over the party’s direction has kept national figures in the headlines, including Ocasio-Cortez’s upstate New York tour and the speculation that follows progressive stars.
He also reached for history. Cruz pointed to the GOP’s run of victories in the 1980s and early 1990s, before Bill Clinton’s rise, as proof that a hard electoral loss can force a major party to sober up. He said that is what it will take “if you want to see the Democrat Party come back from crazy town.”
Cruz put his preference plainly:
"I’d like to live in a country where we have two parties that are relatively reasonable, and sane, and that love America."
The senator did not stop at New York. He warned that a competitive Texas Senate race between Attorney General Ken Paxton and state Rep. James Talarico carries national weight of its own.
Cruz said:
"If Texas falls, the whole country falls."
He urged supporters to donate and “help us fight not only to save Texas, but to save the country from this lunacy, from the communists and Islamists that want to destroy our nation.” RealClearPolitics’ latest aggregate showed Talarico with a 2.2 percentage point edge over Paxton, an uncomfortable number for Republicans in a state that has anchored the party’s map for years.
Cruz called the Texas contest frightening even as he sounded optimistic that a lefty insurgency inside the Democratic Party could become a lifeline for Republicans nationwide. That reading of the moment fits a broader GOP argument about incentives: when progressive politics dominate the brand, swing voters and even some Democrats look for the exit. Related friction on the right has also surfaced in Cruz’s own clash with VP Vance over 2028, a reminder that personnel fights and policy fights often run on parallel tracks.
Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, is the Republican vehicle for Cruz’s New York appeal. The party has closed ranks behind him. Hochul still holds the structural edge that comes with incumbency in a deep-blue state, and public polling described in the coverage has her ahead by a comfortable margin.
Cruz’s ask is not subtle. He wants New York voters to treat a governor’s race as a referendum on the national Democratic brand, crime, borders, schools, and the cultural left’s grip on the party’s loudest voices. Scenes that fuel that argument keep piling up, from progressive star turns to moments like Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani at a Ground Zero ceremony that critics say missed the gravity of the day.
For Cruz, the personal history adds a twist. During his 2016 presidential run he took heat for blasting Trump’s “New York values,” then lost the New York primary and the nomination. A decade later he is back on New York airwaves asking the same voters to topple a Democratic governor and validate a Republican county executive. The through-line is institutional, not personal: punish a party he says has drifted into hostility toward the country it seeks to govern.
That posture, stand firm, force accountability, reject the radical lane, has defined much of Cruz’s recent profile, including when Justice Thomas praised Cruz for defending the Court against political pile-ons. The New York message is the electoral version of the same habit: draw a bright line and make the other side pay a price at the ballot box.
The calendar is simple. New York’s gubernatorial election is set for Nov. 3. Cruz wants Blakeman’s name on the winner’s side and Hochul’s tenure ended as a warning shot. He wants Texas Republicans to hold the Senate line against Talarico. And he wants Democratic leaders to read both results, if they break his way, as proof that voters will not follow the party’s most radical faction indefinitely.
None of that is guaranteed. Hochul remains favored in New York. Talarico’s narrow edge in Texas aggregates is real enough to keep Republican strategists awake. Cruz’s wager is that clarity beats comfort, that naming the left’s excesses out loud, on a New York radio show, still moves enough voters to matter.
Voters in New York and Texas will render the verdict. If they side with the radicals Cruz described, the party he criticized will claim a mandate. If they do not, Democrats will have to explain why the country refused the direction their loudest activists demanded.
A party that needs a thrashing to rediscover sanity should not expect conservatives to apologize for delivering one.
