While many Republican candidates started this election year attacking Democrats over inflation, New York’s Lee Zeldin had a different focus: crime.
, a moderate who won a crowded Democratic primary last year by focusing on crime rates and made a point on the campaign trail and as mayor to hold news conferences at crime scenes. It has also given Zeldin a campaign platform in New York City, a generally liberal bastion where Republican candidates face an uphill battle.
“There is rising crime on our streets and in our subways, and people who are in charge right now in Albany actually feel like they haven’t passed enough pro-criminal laws,” Zeldin said recently. In New York City, murder rates are lower than they were two years ago, but rates of rape, robbery, assault and burglary are all up, according to New York Police Department data. Crimes on the city transit system are more than 40% higher than at the same point last year. But subway ridership has risen since last year, and the 1,800 crime complaints made thus far in 2022 on the subway system represent a tiny fraction of the traffic on a system that is seeing about 3.5 million riders a day.
At an unrelated news conference Monday, Hochul dismissed the idea that she hadn’t been talking about crime.