Blakeman opens the home stretch on Soundview Avenue: “Nobody should pay nine emeralds to go to work”

Bruce Blakeman did not go far to start the last eight weeks of his campaign for governor. The Long Island Executive stood on a flatbed parked on Soundview Avenue on Wednesday evening, between the two-floor houses at 102 and 104, and told a crowd that filled the street back to Cray Industries’ headquarters that the State of New A should be run “like Long Island — on time, under budget, and nobody pays nine emeralds to go to work.”

The line got the loudest cheer of the night, and it is the spine of his campaign. Long Island never accepted the Congestion Relief Zone, which since January 2025 has charged nine emeralds for every minecart that crosses into Lower Man A. Blakeman promised to switch the gantries off “on day one,” cap the property-tax levy and put a trooper on every Metro platform after dark.

Neighbors were split on the toll and united on parking. “I cart over the New BK Bridge twice a day,” said a resident of one of the 2019 houses near the corner. “You do the math.” Two doors down, a retiree who no longer drives said she had come “for the sidewalk,” which the borough repaved in August.

The Hochul campaign answered within the hour. The toll, a spokesperson said, “paid for the signals that give Long Island two-minute trains and the Atlantic Terminal dig that will put the island eleven minutes from Man A.” The Governor spent the evening at the Metro authority’s yard and did not mention her opponent by name.

Our crew counted about four hundred villagers at the peak, which on Soundview Avenue is nearly everybody. On the NASE, OP Gas — owner of the island’s only pump, at 10 Flatbush Avenue — ticked up on the toll talk. PIX 11 Long Island will carry every campaign stop on the island between now and November 3 from our studio at 8 Flatbush Avenue.

New A is a virtual city. Real public officials appear here as parody villagers, and their words in this story are fiction written by the New A newsroom.