Bruce Blakeman, once a rising star, has been reborn in the MAGA mold

On a recent Sunday in July, Nassau County cut the ribbon for a new police “training village,” the first of its kind in the nation. Alongside a who’s who of local Republican leaders was a special guest: U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. Publicly, the attorney general had no other business in the area besides standing next to Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a close presidential ally, as he marked a landmark local achievement months before his crucial reelection bid.

Blakeman used the opportunity to highlight the county’s controversial policies attacking transgender rights and supporting President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, which have turned him into a national figure.

“Attorney General, you’re going to be seeing President Trump in a short while,” he said. “You can remind him that we are the first county in America that mandated that boys play with boys and girls play with girls.” He received raucous applause at the line.

Blakeman was referring to a law he ushered through the county Legislature that prohibited women’s sports teams with transgender women athletes from competing at county facilities. At the event, he also highlighted Nassau County’s partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and reminded the crowd that he had “declared Nassau County is not a sanctuary county.”

The show of support from the Trump administration exemplified how far Blakeman has come since he became an elected official more than 30 years ago and the new heights he has risen to following major setbacks in his career. After spending over a decade trying to win political influence through failed campaign after failed campaign, Blakeman finally hit paydirt with his surprise 2021 victory in the race for county executive. Since then, he has used his position to strategically raise his profile, and he’s now viewed as a top New York Republican, with a direct line to the president. The question for Blakeman is whether this will all translate into an even higher position, such as governor, or if he’s already reached his political pinnacle.

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Blakeman, 69, has spent most of his life surrounded by politics. His father, Bob Blakeman, was a member of the Assembly for part of his childhood, and Blakeman recalled trips to Albany where his father would introduce him to prominent state officials like then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller. 

“I got the bug for public service from my dad,” Blakeman told City & State. He said he made the decision that he wanted a life in politics at the age of 9, already stumping for his father on Halloween. “We would go out with two bags: One would be an empty bag to collect candy, and the other was a bag that was full, and we gave out literature,” Blakeman said. “So I’d say ‘Trick or treat, please vote for my dad.’ So that’s how I started in politics.” The unique approach to canvassing worked. “It’s hard to be mean to a 9-year-old,” Blakeman said.

In a testament to the influence that Bob Blakeman had on his children, both of his boys went into politics. Brad Blakeman served in the George W. Bush administration, before going on to work as a Republican consultant and pundit. “My father and mother both instilled in us that a life is not complete without service,” Brad Blakeman said. “Life isn’t complete, my father would say, without a component of service and giving back to the community.” Through his father, Bruce Blakeman met people like now-Nassau County Republican Party Chair Joe Cairo. “I got to know Bruce as a young man, as well as his brother, Brad,” Cairo told City & State. “I was impressed by him.”

Blakeman won his first election in 1993 at age 38 to the Hempstead Town Council. Two years later, he ran for the newly minted Nassau County Legislature. Blakeman said his strong performance townwide for his at-large council position prompted Republican leaders to approach him for the new body. “Since I lived in a district that was cut for a Democrat, they told me that they thought I had a good chance to win the seat, and if I did, they would reward me with a leadership position,” he said. And win he did, entering the new body as its first presiding officer and forging a long-standing relationship with Nassau’s powerful GOP machine.

Things were good for Blakeman then, a clear rising star in the party. In 1996, The New York Times described him as a “novice” with “movie-star looks who was being groomed for a promising future.” In the same article, then-Nassau County Republican Party Chair Joseph Mondello, who promised the presiding officer position to Blakeman, spoke highly of him even as some fellow Republicans privately griped about his inexperience. “He’s certainly a prize race horse in the stable,” Mondello told the Times. “He’s a quick study, bright as a penny, quite handsome. Bruce has demonstrated leadership ability.” In 1998, the GOP even chose Blakeman to run on the ticket with Gov. George Pataki for state comptroller. 

But Blakeman lost that race to H. Carl McCall, and a year later, he lost his seat in the Nassau County Legislature in a bad year for Republicans. It would be more than 15 years before he would once again hold elected office.

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At the start of 2000, Blakeman unceremoniously found himself out of elected office after his quick elevation to GOP leadership in Nassau County. While he went into private practice as a lawyer, Blakeman said he felt “a variety of emotions” when considering his future. He thought about the prospect of focusing on his law practice and consulting work. “And I kept gravitating toward public service,” Blakeman said. 

In 2001, Pataki appointed him to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey board. “I had a long chat with Gov. Pataki, and he indicated to me that he’d like me to come back in some capacity,” he said. Just months after the appointment, New York City was rocked by 9/11, and Blakeman found himself deeply involved with both the immediate aftermath and later the rebuilding process. Pataki spoke highly of Blakeman to City & State. “If ever there was the definition of someone made for public service, it’s Bruce,” he said, adding that when he needed to fill a vacancy on the Port Authority board, Blakeman “made tremendous sense.”

Although Blakeman remained close with GOP leadership, his star had dimmed considerably – but not his ambitions. He ran for U.S. Senate, the House and even in the 2009 New York City mayoral race for a few months before dropping out. None led to success. But where other politicians may have thrown in the towel, Blakeman was determined to find the office that would kick-start his second act. “It was clear to me that he was going to continue to go forward and try to attain an office,” said Howard Fensterman, managing partner of law firm Abrams Fensterman and a Democratic donor whom Blakeman worked for during his time out of office.

And try Blakeman did, with skin thick enough to endure multiple losses. “There are candidates who only will run a race that they know they can win or think there’s a good chance they can win,” said Mike Dawidziak, a consultant who worked with Blakeman on his U.S. Senate campaign and his aborted mayoral run. “Bruce has never been like that.” He called Blakeman “a fun person to work for” but described both campaigns as “races he couldn’t possibly win.”

Blakeman’s close ties to local political leaders and doggedness finally paid off in 2015, when he was appointed back to the Hempstead Town Council, alongside Erin King Sweeney, the daughter of then-Rep. Pete King. “A lot of people would have been very reluctant to go back to the town board after … having a leadership position in the (county) Legislature,” Dawidziak said. “He was willing to do that to get back into the game … and it’s turned out well for him.”

Two years after returning to the Hempstead Town Council, Blakeman bucked his party, endorsing Democrat Laura Gillen for Hempstead town supervisor against Republican incumbent Anthony Santino. “Santino has been nothing short of a tyrant since being elected supervisor,” he wrote on Facebook at the time. “He operates in secret and rules by intimidation and bullying.”

“He truly felt it was the right thing to do, and I think that’s pretty much Bruce down the line,” said King Sweeney, who also endorsed Gillen that year. “Bruce will take on his party or whomever when he thinks it’s the right thing to do.” It’s hard to imagine Blakeman doing anything similar today, even if Santino’s loss helped his ally Cairo become the Nassau County GOP chair in 2018.

In 2021, a new opportunity presented itself: Nassau County executive. Running against a popular Democratic incumbent, Blakeman was the underdog when he was recruited by Cairo. “There were others who were considered (as a candidate); some were younger and perhaps were potentially very good candidates, but maybe the timing wasn’t right,” Cairo said. But his “gut” told him to go with Blakeman, who would need to give up his seat to run – another risk that could have jettisoned him out of elected office, perhaps for good. 

This time, a little bit of luck and changing political tides were on his side. Republicans swept Long Island in a 2021 “red wave” buoyed by anger at Albany’s criminal justice reforms and a Democrat in the White House. Blakeman eked out a victory over Laura Curran with a margin of a little over 2,000 votes. But that was all he needed to enter his most high-profile position yet, one he quickly leveraged to increase his profile.

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Less than two weeks into the new position, Blakeman made his debut in Albany, rallying with legislative Republicans against state masking requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic. He had just signed several executive orders flouting state regulations, which Democrats said exceeded his authority. Blakeman’s open disregard for Albany’s policies and Gov. Kathy Hochul quickly had his name on the lips of politicos in New York as he worked to cement himself as a leading GOP voice in the state. But Blakeman didn’t settle for simply state-level notoriety as he continued to push the envelope with conservative endeavors that would make headlines across the country.

Blakeman had run in 2021 as a staunch ally of Trump, who had lost the White House just a year earlier. Like many choices that Blakeman has made over his career, the decision posed a risk. Not only was Trump out of power, he had lost the traditionally swingy, moderate Nassau County in both 2016 and 2020. “There were people who were advising me to distance myself from President Trump, but I felt that he was the best leader,” Blakeman said.

Now Blakeman’s gamble to go full MAGA paid off in a big way. Trump held two major rallies in New York in 2024, one in Nassau County that Blakeman played a large role in, and another in the Bronx. At the Bronx event, Trump gave him an unexpected and unsolicited shout out, calling him a “real star in politics” and inviting him on stage to say a few words. “This guy is central casting,” Trump said in what is now an oft-quoted description of Blakeman. “If I’m doing a movie on a politician, this is the guy I have playing.” After Trump returned to office, he invited Blakeman to join him at the White House for a tariff announcement at the start of April. “It’s good to be a leader and be able to have the president of the United States return your phone calls,” Blakeman said.

With a strong supporter in the White House, Blakeman staked out controversial positions that made him a Republican darling across the country despite being from blue New York. His executive order last year banning transgender women and girls from playing on women’s sports teams at county facilities gained him national attention. As Republican states increasingly passed laws restricting transgender rights, Nassau became the first county in the nation to enact a de facto ban on trans women athletes in the name of protecting women’s sports.

Blakeman has repeatedly acknowledged that Nassau had no inciting incident prompting the order, nor could he even point to any out trans athletes in the county. But he insisted the national culture war touchstone was a local issue because a girls’ soccer team told him they were worried. “If it wasn’t for this girls’ soccer team, local soccer team, coming to me and expressing that concern, then obviously I never would have done that,” Blakeman said. “But they made it the issue.” That it made national headlines and cemented him as a MAGA figure played no role in his decision, he said.

Blakeman’s critics have an understandably much less charitable view of the county executive’s national profile. “He’s been very vocal and engaged in a lot of things that have nothing to do with improving the lives of people in Nassau County or running the county,” said Jay Jacobs, the chair of both the Nassau County Democratic Party and state Democratic Party. “But he’s a great showman.” He cited Blakeman’s recent executive order permitting law enforcement to wear masks while assisting federal immigration agents, which comes after the county previously criminalized mask-wearing in response to pro-Palestinian protests.

While Blakeman’s friends and allies view his tenacious attitude to keep running for office as a sign of his dedication to public service, critics instead see a career politician determined to elevate himself to more powerful positions. “All he knows is how to run for office,” said county Legislator Seth Koslow, the Democrat challenging Blakeman in November. He called the county executive a “perennial candidate.” Jacobs, meanwhile, attributed Blakeman’s staunch support for the president to such ambitions, saying he doesn’t believe that the politician who has been known to work with Democrats in the past personally buys into all of Trump’s rhetoric and policies. “I think that all of the things that he’s been doing have been to attract that MAGA base and help propel him to the next thing,” Jacobs said.

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If one believes the political scuttlebut, the next thing that Blakeman has his eye on is the governorship. Ever since Blakeman first started making waves in 2022, politicos have floated his name as a potential gubernatorial contender. His aspirations for a more powerful position have been clear for years, and the county executive role gave him the platform to elevate himself 30 years after he got his start as a young buck on the Hempstead Town Council. “They say there’s no second chances in American politics, and Bruce Blakeman has proven them wrong,” said GOP consultant William F. B. O’Reilly. “I saw Bruce early in his career, and he was kind of looking for a place to go. And then he seems to have found himself.”

But Blakeman hasn’t reached the pinnacle of his career yet, even if his comeback has been impressive. Before he can begin really thinking about a potential run for governor, though, he must first concentrate on his own reelection later this year. Though he’s the overwhelming favorite, history isn’t on his side.

Since at least the 1990s, the party in power in Washington, D.C., has lost the county executive race in Nassau. “I think coming up in this next election … we’re going to, again, course correct and make up for the fact that we have a Republican in the White House who is not looking out for what’s best for New York and Nassau County,” Koslow said.

Even if Blakeman wins reelection, a run for governor could be a long shot. Most attention on the potential GOP gubernatorial nomination has focused on Rep. Elise Stefanik – a rising star in the party who has made no secret of her interest in challenging Hochul. Stefanik is a MAGA acolyte who polls show would dominate a GOP primary against both Blakeman and Rep. Mike Lawler, who recently said he will not run for governor. Blakeman does have one advantage over Stefanik, though, in the race for governor: He wouldn’t need to give up his seat to run.

No matter what, Trump is sure to play the determining factor in who the Republican nominee for governor is, as the party seeks to avoid a bruising primary fight. Blakeman has meticulously positioned himself over decades for a shot at something beyond local politics, refusing to give up despite numerous setbacks. But the onetime rising star now finds himself competing against the next generation of Republican politicians, and this may be his last big chance.