DeFrancisco, a Republican Stalwart in Albany, to Run for Governor

ALBANY, N.Y. — The Republican Party hasn’t won a statewide election in New York since 2002, and even the party’s biggest boosters seem well aware of the troubles they face in staving off a third term for Gov. Andrew Cuomo this fall.

But the contest gained some intrigue on Tuesday with the entry of John A. DeFrancisco, a state senator, into the thin Republican field, introducing a hard-punching, wisecracking and little-to-lose conservative into what has been a decidedly sleepy election cycle.

DeFrancisco, 71, will formally announce his candidacy in his hometown, Syracuse, but was already presenting his candidacy as a crusade to return the state to past prosperity.

“I’m not sure who first said it, but ‘It’s the economy, stupid,'” the senator said Monday, after a brief session in Albany’s upper chamber, adding that he was running in the face of the assumption in many quarters that Cuomo’s re-election is a near certainty. “I believe that sometimes you’ve got to take the hard road in order to do what’s right.”

Where the spirit is willing, of course, the electorate may be weak. With Democrats holding more than a 2-to-1 advantage in voter registration, New York is a profoundly blue state; Democrats have dominated in statewide races since former Gov. George Pataki, a Republican, won an election, despite scandals engulfing some of Cuomo’s predecessors.

Beyond the demographic challenges, Republicans are also dealing with an incumbent governor who is approaching the race with a campaign war chest of some $30 million, and a popularity rating that has seemingly recovered from a subway-related swoon last summer.

Such factors apparently scared off several possible Republican candidates last year, including two who have been past victims of the long Democratic winning streak: Rob Astorino, the former Westchester County executive who had lost to Cuomo in 2014, and Harry Wilson, a wealthy turnaround expert, who had been beaten in a run for comptroller in 2010 by Thomas DiNapoli.

Add to that a particularly treacherous terrain for Republicans in the age of Donald Trump, particularly in New York where polls show more than 60 percent of voters in the president’s home state view his presidency unfavorably.

The roster of declared candidates for the Republican nomination, to be determined late spring, thus far has been lesser known, including Brian Kolb, Republican minority leader in the Democrat-dominated Assembly, and Joel Giambra, the former Erie County executive.

And while DeFrancisco is hardly a Kardashian, the senator has been a steady, and often spiky, presence in Albany for a quarter-century, often jabbing Democrats, and some members of his own party, as well as keeping up a lively banter on the Senate floor.

DeFrancisco has indicated he will give up his Senate seat, and his departure gives Democrats another district to target as they try to secure a bulletproof majority in that chamber. (Republicans currently hold power by dint of an arrangement with nine Democrats, including the renegade Independent Democratic Conference.)

Republicans, predictably, reject that notion.

“We are absolutely confident that we will win the 50th district Senate seat and grow our majority across the state in November,” said Scott Reif, a spokesman for the Republican Senate majority.

To win statewide, however, Republican strategists estimate that their candidates need to garner at least 30 percent of the vote in New York City, and reaching that number may be a challenge for anyone, let alone a candidate without ample financial backing.

“It really comes down to money: Who has the ability to pay for New York City broadcast television?” said William F.B. O’Reilly, a Republican consultant in New York. “Without it, it would be very difficult to reach that number in the five boroughs.”

While it is a fraction of the governor’s stockpile, DeFrancisco has nearly $1.5 million in two separate campaign accounts, according to Board of Election records. No matter the nominee, it seems that the 2018 race will be sharply divided between downstate — where the bulk of the voters, and millions of Democrats live — and upstate, which has been losing population for years, but continues to maintain deep red pockets of political conservatives. Kolb hails from outside Rochester; Giambra is from the Buffalo area.

Cuomo, who is said to harbor national political ambitions though he denies such plans, has made a point of repeatedly saying that he has turned around the upstate economy, an assertion that economists have questioned.

And DeFrancisco seems intent on drawing attention to the disparity between Cuomo’s rhetoric and the reality in many cities in the state’s central and western regions.

“You got to be in a situation where people stop leaving the state of New York, and that there’s jobs here, in order for people to want to stay,” he said.

As for the governor’s advantages at this point, DeFrancisco was typically blunt.

“OK, maybe I can’t raise that kind of money, but does that mean that Andrew Cuomo has the job for life? That because it’s a tough go, that no one should run against them? Because it’s a fait accompli?” he said. “I don’t believe that.”