New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) wants you to know she’s a Buffalo Bills superfan. She wore the hat. She wore the blue-and-white blazer. She stood at the podium on Tuesday at the ribbon-cutting for the Bills’ brand-new, $2.1 billion, 60,000 seat Highmark Stadium, and tried to get the crowd pumped up.
It did not go well.
Hochul kicked things off with an “All right, let’s get this party started, let’s go!” Crickets. Undeterred, she tried a call-and-response, shouting “Let’s go, Buffalo, let’s go, Buffalo!,” and pointing to both sides of the crowd as if she were conducting a marching band. Silence. Actual, near-total silence, from a crowd that had gathered to celebrate the football team they’ve followed through decades of heartbreak.
So Hochul did what every out-of-touch elected official does when a chant flops. She scolded them.
“All right, seriously? You want to win a championship season with that kind of enthusiasm?” she demanded before adding, oddly, “Men and women of labor, you know what I’m talking about.” She tried again. It bombed again. She finally pivoted to “We gotta give this place some good karma, right?”
Kathy Hochul’s Buffalo Bills chant gets met with crickets https://t.co/mWC3OYs4M0 pic.twitter.com/NsLIszTBjd
— New York Post (@nypost) June 25, 2026
Here’s the thing. I live in Buffalo. I’ve been to Bills games. I was at the final game played in the old Highmark Stadium, the one now being torn down, and I froze my a** off doing it. Bills fans are some of the most loyal, easy-to-rile-up fans in professional sports. When two strangers wearing Bills gear cross paths anywhere in the country, they shout “Go Bills!” at each other on sight. In recent years, I’ve traveled to Boston, Florida, Texas, and California, and my son, who owns more Bills jerseys than he probably needs, always gets noticed by a fellow Bills fans who shout “Go Bills!” at him. My son’s jerseys have generated more excitement in airports than Hochul could on the site of the team’s new stadium.
What I’m trying to say is that these are not hard people to get fired up. Getting a crowd of fans at the ribbon cutting for the new stadium to stand in silence while a politician begs for applause takes real effort. Hochul managed it twice in the same speech.
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That kind of public flop doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and the numbers back up what that crowd was telling her. It’s true that Hochul still leads Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman (R-N.Y.) in the race for governor, but her cushion is shrinking fast. A Siena University poll of registered voters released Tuesday has Hochul ahead 47-34%, a 13-point spread that’s down from 20 points back in February.
Blakeman isn’t shy about why. “We’re closing the gap at lightning speed because New Yorkers need real relief from Kathy Hochul’s cost of living crisis, and they’ll get it with my plan to cut income taxes, slash utility bills in half, and make New York affordable,” he said in a statement.
Hochul’s favorability sits at a tepid 45-42%, barely moved from last month, and her job approval is 52-40%. Blakeman, meanwhile, is still a mystery to 64% of voters who say they’ve never heard of him, or don’t know enough to form an opinion. Siena pollster Steven Greenberg called the dynamic telling. “Three-quarters of Democrats continue to support Hochul, and more than three-quarters of Republicans continue to support Blakeman, but now independents favor Blakeman by seven points, after siding with Hochul by five points,” he said.
Greenberg also noted Hochul’s lead in New York City collapsed from 46 points to 29, even as she clings to a narrow edge upstate and in the suburbs. “Is that movement or merely noise?” he asked. “Let’s see what happens next month after the budget and as the campaign unfolds.”
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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