Rulings on abortion and guns shape the final weekend of campaigning before Tuesday’s primary.
A pair of seismic rulings by the Supreme Court jolted the race for governor of New York on Sunday, as Democrats and Republicans made final pitches to an electorate that found itself at the center of renewed national debates over guns and abortion rights. All three Democratic candidates for governor fanned out Sunday morning to Black churches in Harlem and Queens, Manhattan’s Pride March and street corners across the city to denounce the rulings and promise an aggressive response.
“We’re going to pass a law that’s going to say, you can’t bring a weapon into this church on a Sunday,” Gov. Kathy Hochul, the Democratic front-runner, assured congregants at Greater Allen African Methodist Episcopal Cathedral of New York in Jamaica, Queens.
“I don’t want those guns on subways, either,” she added. “I don’t want them in playgrounds. I don’t want them near schools.”
The Republican candidates, who mostly lauded both rulings, generally stuck to other messages with broad appeal to a state where both abortion rights and gun control are popular — attacking Ms. Hochul for New York’s rising inflation and elevated crime rates. But in at least one episode, the abortion issue was hard to avoid. Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, said that he was slapped in the back by a grocery store employee referencing abortion on Sunday afternoon while he was campaigning for his son, Andrew, on Staten Island.
“The one thing he said that was political was ‘you’re going to kill women, you’re going to kill women,’” said Mr. Giuliani, who said he understood the remark to be a reference to the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade on Friday. The police, who did not confirm the abortion remark, said a suspect was in custody but had not been charged. The younger Mr. Giuliani was not on hand. Equal parts exuberance and frustration, the final pitches roughly hewed the battle lines that were drawn months ago in races that have been punctuated by violent tragedies — like the racist attack at a Buffalo supermarket in May — and buffeted by quality-of-life concerns. Only this time, the fights played out in the shadow of the Supreme Court decisions issued in recent days on abortion rights and New York’s ability to regulate firearms. The rulings have injected a fresh dynamic into the races and appear to have given Democrats a new sense of urgency. Ms. Hochul, the state’s first female governor, put both rulings at the center of her weekend hopscotch across the city, highlighting her decisions to spend $35 million to aid abortion access and call lawmakers back to Albany next week for a special legislative session to address the justices’ decision to overturn a 100-year-old New York law limiting the ability to carry concealed weapons.
