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Bruce Blakeman’s announcement that he is running for governor against fellow Republican Elise Stefanik caught many by surprise, not least of which was the White House.

Days before the Nassau County executive said he would challenge Stefanik, President Donald Trump called Blakeman to discourage him from running, according to three sources with knowledge of the conversation. Trump told Blakeman such a campaign would be a waste of time and resources because polling indicated Stefanik was the favorite to face Kathy Hochul in November.

On Tuesday morning, Blakeman announced he was running anyway, complicating what Stefanik believed would be a cakewalk to the nomination. The result leaves Trump with two of his allies running against each other in his home state. “He’s great, and she’s great,” Trump told reporters on Monday when asked about the matchup. “They’re both great people.” Privately, according to sources, Trump has said while he’s confident Blakeman would lose a primary, he doesn’t want to attack Blakeman publicly.

“President Trump was clear in the remarks he made yesterday, and no one should pretend to speak for him,” said Chris Boyle, a spokesman for Blakeman, on Tuesday.

Blakeman’s willingness to buck Trump’s wishes has caused exasperation among Republicans who remember that Lee Zeldin in 2022 had to spend much of his campaign’s money on winning a relatively uncompetitive primary before going on to lose in November. “He ran a hell of a race against Kathy Hochul. As close as anyone’s come in generation,” says one plugged-in New York Republican operative. “Can we say for sure that, if not for the primary, he wins? No, we can’t say that, but boy, he’d have had a better shot.”

It’s also another hiccup for Stefanik, who has long been considered a rising star within her party. As a loyal Trump ally in the House, she was initially nominated to be United Nations ambassador this year, only to have the nomination pulled from her because Speaker Mike Johnson worried what a vacancy would do to his slim majority, especially if Republicans lost her seat in a special election. Stefanik had even given up her position in House leadership and on committees in preparation for the U.N. job and had to fight to get them back. Last week, she ripped Johnson in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Stefanik’s hope to avoid a messy fight against Blakeman lies with New York’s complicated process to make it onto the ballot in the first place. It would require Blakeman either to get the support of 25 percent of attendees at the party’s February convention, which would be packed with Stefanik allies, or to get 15,000 valid signatures from registered Republicans across the state to qualify for the ballot. Even then, Blakeman would still have to fund a statewide campaign and build up his name outside his home base of Long Island.

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