Lee Zeldin supporter choked by man at Kathy Hochul rally days before midterms

New York gubernatorial race remains competitive as Hochul struggles with crime concerns

The New York gubernatorial election is getting ugly in the final hours of the race and now a supporter of Republican Lee Zeldin has been attacked after she crashed a rally held by Kathy Hochul, the Democratic incumbent.

Video of the incident was first posted on Twitter by an independent journalist. In the video, a group of people are seen arguing and physically fighting as a speaker is heard addressing the Hochul rally; a group of Mr Zeldin’s supporters are apparently trying to push their way into the crowd. Two people, a man and a woman, are seen restraining a third woman who is briefly grabbed by the neck by the larger man and then released.

Shortly after, the restrained woman breaks away and gives the woman restraining her moments ago a hard shove.

The argument then deescalates from physical violence, at least according to the video, while supporters of Mr Zeldin continue to attempt to enter and ostensibly disrupt the rally.

“I never wanted to get physical with anyone, I was just there peacefully just holding my sign, and you know, they didn’t want to hear what I had to say,” the woman who was grabbed by the neck, who did not give her name, later says.

The New York gubernatorial race has become surprisingly competitive in recent weeks as Democrats face the prospect of Mr Zeldin ousting the incumbent Kathy Hochul amid a wave of concerns about the handling of crime in New York state, and particularly in the New York City area. Insistences from experts and left-leaning activists that crime remains worse in red states have fallen on deaf ears as the city in particular saw crime spike by nearly a third over the last year. Well-publicised crimes including violent attacks on the city’s renowned subway system have also led to some feeling less safe.

Progressives, in particular, have angrily countered that shootings and murders overall are actually dropping across the city, with data backing up those assertions, and have argued instead that the media has played a role in ginning up fears of crime that benefit Republicans in an election year.

An average of polls analysed by FiveThirtyEight indicates that Ms Hochul remains about 7.8 percentage points ahead of her opponent as she seeks her first full term in office; she was previously the state’s lieutenant governor and was elevated to the office of governor following the resignation of Andrew Cuomo.