June 13, 2026
FROM GOP CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR, BRUCE BLAKEMAN: When I say I am going to protect New York, I mean all of New York. Right now, our historic Upstate family farms are under attack by Kathy Hochul’s aggressive solar sprawl. Once you let big corporations pave over prime farmland with cold metal panels, that land is gone forever. I refuse to sit back and watch our heritage and our food supply get destroyed. My plan is simple and gets straight to the point. We are drawing a hard line in the dirt to stop these solar land grabs and keep our farms working.
Here is what most people do not know. Kathy Hochul gave her hand-picked state agency the power to override your local town board entirely. Under her law, if your community votes to protect its farmland and says no to an industrial solar project, the state simply overrules you and calls your local zoning laws unreasonably burdensome. Your elected local officials have no recourse. One corporate permit from Hochul’s bureaucrats wipes out decades of local planning decisions. That is not energy policy. That is Hochul taking power away from New York communities and handing it to out-of-state corporations. My plan does not stop there. We are also going to cut your utility bills. Right now, Kathy Hochul’s administration is sitting on a hidden $2.4 billion energy tax fund collected from your utility bills.
On my first day in office, I am going to take that exact money and send it directly back to you to cut your utility bills right in half. We do not need expensive, broken energy rules. We need low-cost power and a state we can actually afford to live in. Stand with our local farmers and help me fight to put New York families first.
