Hello, I’m Nick Langworthy, Chairman of the New York Republican Party.
But, I’m speaking to you today first and foremost as a father and as a New Yorker.
The truth is, you certainly don’t need Kathy Hochul--or even me for that matter--to tell you what the state of our state is.
You know in your bones that New York is broken.
A dangerous combination of incompetence and extreme leftist ideology is destroying what used to be the greatest state in the country.
Your wallet, your safety, and your freedoms have all been hit with a two by four and every time you try to get back up, the state issues another blow.
Whether it’s in Washington or here in New York, the number one ingredient missing from our leadership is just good old-fashioned common sense.
You’re not alone when you read the paper or watch the news and ask yourself, “what the heck are they thinking?”
It might make you mad. It might make you frustrated. But for too many New Yorkers, it’s made you feel hopeless.
If I had a dollar for every person who has said to me that “New York is a lost cause,” I’d be a rich man.
That hopelessness has led to a catastrophic population loss.
Right before Christmas, the census data confirmed what we already suspected, that once again, New Yorkers are leaving, but what’s different now is they are leaving at a historic rate--faster and in greater numbers than ever before.
We lost more than 350,000 residents last year alone and more than 1.5 million since Democrat governors have been running this state.
That is a damning indictment on our leadership.
What could speak louder than people packing up their homes, leaving their jobs, families, and friends to get away and start over somewhere else?
The people that have left have broken up with New York and the ones remaining are thinking about leaving this toxic relationship all the time.
And let’s be clear: the people who are leaving aren’t moving to other Democrat-dominated states like California or Washington.
They are moving to quote “red” states like Florida and Texas…or in other words: free states, prosperous states and growing states.
States that show respect for hardworking, law-abiding taxpayers and don’t kowtow to the radical leftist mob.
They are trading decline and corruption for opportunity and freedom.
Our people are our greatest assets.
Families are being broken up with grandparents being forced to Facetime with their kids and grandkids.
We are educating our children only to watch them leave and provide their talents to businesses in other states.
But who can blame them?
Their alternative is to stay in the highest taxed state in the nation where property taxes and income taxes are a crushing impediment to leading a middle-class life.
Did you know that today 1 of every 3 New Yorkers is on Medicaid?
A third of our population is stuck trapped in government dependency under Democrat governors because that’s the trap they have created to keep themselves in power.
It’s the driving cause of our high property taxes, where in most counties the entire tax levy goes solely to Medicaid, and then some.
When you couple New York’s high cost of living with the skyrocketing inflation thanks to Biden and national Democrats, leaving is not a choice, it's the only thing left to do.
People who did everything right still can’t afford to pay their bills here.
And if that on its face isn’t maddening enough, when you look at who IS being treated as a priority by our governor: it’s criminals, it’s lobbyists and it’s people in this country illegally.
Democrats’ deadly bail reform law has resulted in nearly 3,500 cases where criminals who were released without bail went on to commit violent felonies.
Think about that--that’s 3,500 victims of serious crimes. 3,500 lives forever changed.
It’s getting worse by the day. The new “woke” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg just announced the only crimes he’s basically prosecuting for any jail time at all are murder and deadly assault.
And you can commit a slew of other crimes, including resisting arrest from a police officer, and not be prosecuted at all.
That’s it--just charges dropped and on your merry way.
And what’s even more stunning is that Kathy Hochul thinks that’s perfectly acceptable.
There is no regard for how these crimes affect victims and society at large.
The complete breakdown of our criminal justice system courtesy of New York Democrats should anger everyone, regardless of your party affiliation.
Andrew Cuomo may have left in disgrace, but the policies that destroyed our state under his watch are in full force.
The cozy corrupt cabal in the halls of the capital is still intact.
For the last seven years, Kathy Hochul sat in the shadow of Andrew Cuomo.
Her office... just steps from his.
She was his loyal lieutenant who said nothing and did nothing to challenge him--even in the face of blatant corruption and gross incompetence.
She might not scream and threaten like Cuomo, but she is no less of an operator.
You’d have to be, to remain in his orbit for as long as she did.
You know what they say…lie down with dogs and wake up with fleas.
Kathy Hochul turned a blind eye to protect her own power and now there is nothing this accidental governor won’t do to keep it.
That’s not integrity, that’s complicity.
And she continues to remain complicit as she and other Democrats from Biden’s DOJ on down who are giving Cuomo a free pass from prosecution.
She refused to even do her own internal investigation into Cuomo’s deadly nursing home order.
Without the political pressure to impeach or prosecute, Democrats are hoping you forget all about the stain of the Cuomo-Hochul administration, and Cuomo, once again, is allowed to evade accountability for his crimes.
In the less than 5 months since she ascended to governor, Kathy Hochul has taken more than a few of the tricks she’s learned from her tenure in the Cuomo Administration.
In her first major decision where she selected her lieutenant governor--the person who if history repeated itself would have a realistic chance of becoming governor themselves--she chose a corrupt scandal-scarred, “defund the police” radical.
He fits in well along with the Cuomo cronies she has chosen to keep employed.
She is already running an administration less transparent than the Prince of Darkness himself by hiding her meetings with the lobbyists and special interests she has raised more than $10 million from in the last three months.
Failing to disclose these meetings isn’t just unethical, it’s in direct violation of the law.
Corruption isn’t the only hallmark of the Cuomo-Hochul administration.
We know far too well that incompetence has been just as big a factor in New York’s demise and nowhere is that more on display than in the state’s woefully pathetic covid response.
We are in a crisis of Hochul’s own making as we are facing massive testing and staffing shortages.
She was warned about the Omicron wave and did nothing, while continuing to implement her dangerous and wrongheaded vaccine mandate on healthcare and hospital workers that is not supported by science.
The people we celebrated last year with a parade in the canyon of heroes were summarily fired at a time when we continue to need them the most.
Patriotic New Yorkers have had to go to court to sue the state for freedoms that they are entitled to under our Constitution.
It’s wrong. And it’s a gross abuse of power.
To this day, our state’s most vulnerable citizens--seniors and children--continue to be impacted the worst.
Elderly New Yorkers who are at highest risk of serious illness and death are being forced to wait hours in the cold to try and get a test.
Children continue to endure altered learning environments that will mean another year of stunted growth and development.
Small businesses are struggling to keep up with the ever-evolving list of arbitrary rules and mandates.
We are nearly two years into this pandemic and neither Joe Biden nor Kathy Hochul has given us any new tools to fight this and they can’t even properly manage basics like testing.
Kathy Hochul likes to call herself a “Joe Biden Democrat”....and on that, we happen to wholeheartedly agree.
They are both in over their heads and incompetent.
To cover up this painfully obvious fact, they stoke fear and division while failing to offer any real solutions to fix our problems.
There is no vision.
To fix New York, we need a fresh start. We need to take a bottle of bleach to the halls of Albany and clean house.
We don’t need to settle for Cuomo’s Number Two.
We need bold leadership and someone with the courage to stand up to the extremists who want to make New York a socialist sanctuary for criminals.
For years the left has been trying to scare New Yorkers into keeping the same, failed Democrat status quo.
Meanwhile, our neighbors in Massachusetts, Vermont and just south in Maryland have wised up and elected Republican executives.
New Jersey came extremely close to doing the same last fall.
In that same election, New Yorkers from every corner of the state threw out local Democrat leaders. From the suburbs of Long Island to the city of Buffalo, New Yorkers rejected socialism and rejected the direction of our country and state under Democrat control.
But, that must only be the beginning.
Democrats control everything from Washington to Albany and the results you can see for yourself.
From our wallets to our safety, as we go about our daily lives, we are seeing the consequences of this election.
People must remember that you get the government you vote for.
Any grievance you have with your state government, must be addressed at the ballot box this November.
This is the year for real change. For a new dawn for our state.
This is the year we say: enough is enough.
This is the year New Yorkers stop saying things are hopeless and start fighting back.
Finally, for those of you who don’t trust us Republicans to deliver - you don’t have to take my word for it - just look around at the common sense leadership offered by Republican executives around New York State.
From Staten Island and Nassau County to Dutchess, Onondaga and Chemung counties and beyond, Republican leaders are delivering smart, honest and effective government. It can be done if enough people are willing to stand up and take a hammer to the status quo.
If you won’t do it for you, do it for the next generation.
Do it to become a part of the greatest comeback story in our nation.
Do it to remind the politicians in charge that they work for YOU.
Do it… to save our state.
Thank you and may God bless you all.
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