Hundreds of New Yorkers are flocking to DC for Donald Trump’s inauguration — with the fired-up GOPers even talking about winning the governorship again for the first time in a generation next year.
About 300 members of the New York State Republican Party on Sunday filled The Mayflower Hotel in the nation’s capital, where top party leaders and elected officials delivered giddy and fiery speeches about the Queens native’s historic comeback and the GOP’s return to the White House.
State GOP Chairman Ed Cox celebrated the end of the decade-long Democratic era that included the three combined presidential terms of Barack Obama and Joe Biden and the House speakership of Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
But Cox said Republicans can’t rest on their laurels.
“We have to fight, fight, fight, to help the president move his agenda forward,” Cox said during the state party’s pre-inaugural celebratory breakfast at The Mayflower.
Lee Zeldin, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency secretary-designee and the GOP’s 2022 candidate for New York governor, said he’s thrilled about being given the opportunity to push through the 47th president’s agenda.
“Donald Trump was elected president because he understood this moment. He’s ready to meet this moment and prepared to lead this country to greatness,” he said
Zeldin and other leaders said Republicans in New York must build on Trump’s victory and make more inroads in the Empire State.
It was no coincidence that the two people who spoke back to back at the breakfast after Zeldin — New York Rep. Mike Lawler and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman of Long Island — are two top Republicans eying a run to try to topple Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2026.
Former three-term Gov. George Pataki was the last Republican to win the statehouse back in 2002.
Lawler said New Yorkers should be proud that New York- bred Trump is back in the White House.
“Floridians think Donald Trump is theirs, but we know that Donald Trump is a New Yorker through and through,” he said of the president-elect, whose Mar-a-Lago estate is in Palm Beach.
The Hudson Valley congressman mentioned the hard work ahead for the GOP-led Congress to help approve Trump’s agenda to improve the economy and secure the border.
Lawler also drew laughs when he did a Trump impersonation, recalling how the incoming president wants to “kill congestion pricing” — a new Hochul commuter tax — and lift the cap on state and local tax deductions on federal tax returns. The New York GOP House delegation recently met with Trump, and they discussed those issues.
Lawler then focused on the 2026 elections and said Hochul is ripe for defeat.
“Kathy Hochul is the most inept and incompetent governor in the entire country,” Lawler said.
Blakeman said Trump’s sweeping victory cannot be overstated.
“They tried to put him in jail. They tried to kill him,” Blakeman said, referring to prosecutions and assassination attempts against the president-elect.
Blakeman, an ally of Trump, said his policies are in sync with the 47th president, including when it comes to cracking down on illegal immigration.
The Nassau County executive said Trump is interested in strengthening the GOP in New York, mentioning the president-elect’s campaign events at the Nassau Coliseum and Madison Square Garden last year, adding, “It’s time to take our state back.”
Blakeman also has attended other recent inaugural festivities, including the America First Policy Institute gala Saturday night at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel — formerly the Trump International hotel — where he mingled with collegiate swimming champion and anti-trans-in-female-sports activist Riley Gaines and football great Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Georgia in 2022.
Many New York business titans are in DC attending high-dollar events — among them billionaire mogul and WABC radio owner John Catsimatidis, who will be at four different inaugural balls.
“We’re about to save America,” Catsimatidis said.
The entire GOP House delegation will be in DC by late Sunday and Monday.
“There’s a lot of excitement and energy. People are ecstatic that President Trump is returning and will undo the mess that Joe Biden created,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn), the lone Republican in New York City’s congressional delegation.
