Add up the checks and the picture is stark: $108,000 from the Dolan family straight to Bruce Blakeman’s campaign, another $970,000 to the Nassau County Republican Party, and $2 million from Madison Square Garden entities to a super PAC backing the Republican nominee for New York governor. WIRED, which reviewed city, state and federal databases, reported on October 1. That county party has become Blakeman’s single-largest contributor.
The super PAC, Strong and Safe New York Inc., has raised $5.3 million in all and lists the Garden’s top government relations executive as an officer, WIRED said. That helped offset a 9-to-1 cash advantage that Governor Kathy Hochul’s campaign reported over Blakeman at the last filing deadline in July.
An odd bet in a blue state
On paper, the wager looks strange. Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, trails by nine points or more in most polls, WIRED wrote, in a year when surveys hint at a Democratic wave. Dolan, owner of the Knicks and the Garden, has also backed Hochul in the past, as Politico noted. WIRED argued the spending could pay off for him even if Blakeman loses. “Dolan can step into the breach and become the biggest player in [New York’s] Republican politics, donor-wise,” one veteran strategist told the magazine.
The common ground is surveillance. Blakeman promised last November, after Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race, to build a barrier of license plate readers, facial recognition and video cameras along the city line. “We are installing technology along the border of New York City,” he told Fox News. Dolan’s venues, meanwhile, run camera networks tied to facial recognition. Dolan has said that this is why the Garden is “the most secure venue in the country.”
Dolan’s earlier giving included nearly a million dollars to Donald Trump’s reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee in the 2020 cycle. WIRED described the governor’s race as another level of spending. The closest comparison it offered was the estimated $30 million Dolan’s company spent in 2004 to stop a football stadium on Manhattan’s west side.
Pushback at home
The spending carries risks. According to WIRED, a majority of the City Council now supports a bill to rein in biometric surveillance, and Council President Julie Menin, who decides whether it reaches a vote, is undecided. Albany lawmakers have introduced a bill to end a property tax break worth over a billion dollars to the Garden. The state attorney general’s investigation into MSG’s use of facial recognition is still moving, a source told the magazine.
Brad Hoylman-Sigal, the Manhattan borough president, said of Blakeman and Dolan: “They’re in the same mindset that surveillance is good for business. And I don’t know how that’s a winning political issue.”
Madison Square Garden did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment. The company sued WIRED and the reporter for defamation in July over earlier coverage of its operations, the article disclosed. Representatives for the Hochul and Blakeman campaigns did not respond either.
