Bruce Blakeman is running for governor of New York. But his first big television ad campaign is slated to air 1,000 miles away — in Florida.
Mr. Blakeman, the Republican Nassau County executive, shelled out close to $25,000 on Thursday to reserve airtime on Fox News in West Palm Beach between Christmas Eve and the new year, according to booking records.
In a statement, his campaign said the spending was aimed at New Yorkers who had left for Florida in recent years, “driven out by high taxes, rising crime and chaos.”
But it was not hard to guess which specific former New Yorker Mr. Blakeman had in mind: President Trump, who plans to spend the holidays at Mar-a-Lago, his beachfront club.
The 30-second ad includes photographs of the two men together and argues that Mr. Blakeman’s electoral success in a suburban swing county makes him — not Representative Elise Stefanik — the strongest Republican candidate to flip the Democratic state in next year’s midterm elections.
Both Mr. Blakeman and Ms. Stefanik, the presumed front-runner for the nomination to run against Gov. Kathy Hochul, are close Trump allies and have both already privately tried to persuade him they are the better candidate.
“On an election night, when so many New York Republicans lost, Bruce Blakeman won a stunning landslide victory,” a narrator says in the ad, before reciting Mr. Blakeman’s record cutting taxes, expanding the local police force and saying “men have no place in girl’s bathrooms.”
“Like President Trump, Blakeman is a strong executive who gets things done.”
The ad is also slated to run on Fox News and Newsmax stations back home across New York this week. In total, Mr. Blakeman is on track to spend a little over $200,000 on the ads.
Mr. Blakeman is far from the first candidate or advocacy group who has used Fox News to reach Mr. Trump, a regular viewer. But his decision to spend so early in the race, just days after he declared his candidacy, underscores the president’s ability to make or break Republican candidates even in a left-leaning state.
Mr. Trump has made it clear that he is not pleased about the showdown between two of his allies — though he did not try to dissuade Mr. Blakeman from running — but he has yet to take sides.
“They’re two fantastic people, and I always hate it when two very good friends of mine are running, and I hope there’s not a lot of damage done,” he told reporters recently.
Ms. Stefanik had her own moment with Mr. Trump last week, when she joined him in the Oval Office to honor the 1980 U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team that won the gold medal in Lake Placid, in her district.
A spokesman for Ms. Stefanik declined to comment on Mr. Blakeman’s spending.
Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government.
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