If Lee Zeldin Wins

[Bismarck]

If Zeldin pulls off the upset and becomes New York governor does he instantly become a top tier presidential candidate for 2024 or 2028?

[Roll Roons]

2024 would likely be too soon, but he would for sure be a top-tier candidate in 2028 assuming he wins reelection.

[Skill and Chance]

Depends- does he win by somehow getting rural Plains county R margins out of Upstate or by getting over a third of the vote in NYC?  If it's the latter, he has national prospects.  If it's the former, he's a fluke.

[Vosem]

2024 would likely be too soon, but he would for sure be a top-tier candidate in 2028 assuming he wins reelection.

Romney didn't run for reelection in 2006. 2024 is indeed probably too soon, but winning NY-Gov as a Republican makes you a top-tier candidate for the next several cycles. Romney quite seriously considered running in 2016 and polled ahead of Trump in NH, and that was 14 years after his MA-Gov victory; a Zeldin who wins this cycle could be a contender for any of 2028/2032/2036.

Depends- does he win by somehow getting rural Plains county R margins out of Upstate or by getting over a third of the vote in NYC?  If it's the latter, he has national prospects.  If it's the former, he's a fluke.

I almost want to reverse this. Getting a third of the vote in NYC is flukish and would be unrepeatable in a presidential campaign. But if he wins by getting bonkers, double-digits-better-than-Trump base numbers, it would be much easier for him to suggest to donors and such that he could win a national landslide.

[TodayJunior]

Not for 2024, but a victory like that this year would trigger a landslide that would cause the current party to crash and burn, then rebuild in a different form. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind that in the short-term. Dems desperately need to pivot back to being the party of the working class. Do not let the republicans outflank on that. They’re on the thinnest of ice.

[If my soul was made of stone]

I really really do not want the era of New York Governors automatically becoming Presidential hopefuls back. Horatio Seymour, Sam Tilden, Charles Evans Hughes, Thomas Dewey, no thank you.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I really really do not want the era of New York Governors automatically becoming Presidential hopefuls back. Horatio Seymour, Sam Tilden, Charles Evans Hughes, Thomas Dewey, no thank you.

Hughes would have made a great President.

[Schiff for Senate]

2024 would likely be too soon, but he would for sure be a top-tier candidate in 2028 assuming he wins reelection.

Hardly a sure bet. Of course, his winning in the first place is highly unlikely, but even if he somehow did win (which he won't, of course, but let's entertain the idea that he does), 2026 will still probably be an uphill fight (particularly if there's a Republican in the White House). If Zeldin won in 2022, maybe it might make sense for him, depending on the circumstances, to retire in 2026 and plan out a 2028 run for president, rather than running and quite possibly humiliating himself and losing (and if he does win, then running for president at the same time as serving as governor of the 4th most populous state is all the more hectic anyway).

[Make America Grumpy Again]

DeSantis/Youngkin would be a stronger ticket. Zeldin's a Generic R and is only doing as well as he's doing because Hochul is extremely unpopular Upstate.

[bagelman]

Depends- does he win by somehow getting rural Plains county R margins out of Upstate or by getting over a third of the vote in NYC?  If it's the latter, he has national prospects.  If it's the former, he's a fluke.

The latter scenario was clearly the more likely result to have happened in a Zeldin victory scenario. However Zeldin's good performance was largely the result of issues specific to New York, and specifically to downstate New York. National prospects are possible if crime sweeps the nation, otherwise less so.