New York Gov. Kathy Hochul brushed off rising crime and claimed challenger Lee Zeldin was “hyperventilating” over the key issue Monday — just hours after two subway riders were stabbed, including a good Samaritan who intervened when he saw a woman getting harassed.
During a campaign stop on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Hochul tried to downplay Zeldin’s criticism of her and former President Bill Clinton for “laughing and joking about subway crimes” at an event Saturday.
“I say: check the source,” Hochul told reporters outside the West 72nd Street subway station at Verdi Square.
“He has been hyperventilating, trying to scare people for months and New Yorkers are onto it. All the legitimate media organizations have called him out for what he is doing, fear-mongering.”
The Democratic incumbent added: “And I’m not even talking about the statistics, you can check it out yourself.”
But Hochul’s comments followed a pair of horrific, underground attacks in The Bronx on Sunday.
In one, a 44-year-old man was stabbed in the neck after getting into an argument with another rider on a platform in the Morrison Avenue-Soundview Station around 7:15 a.m.
In the other, a 54-year-old man was stabbed in the left elbow when he went to the aid of a woman who was being harassed on a southbound No. 4 train as it pulled into the East 149th Street-Grand Concourse station around 9 p.m.
Meanwhile, NYPD statistics show that killings in the subway system this year are at their highest level in more than two decades, even as ridership remains well below pre-pandemic levels.
Still, Hochul — who has consistently pivoted to gun control whenever pressed on rising crime in New York City and elsewhere — insisted that “Democratic states are safer than the Republican states” and touted recent measures to address safety on the rails.
“The solution is the state for the first time ever is deploying state officers into the subways. We have cameras on the trains. We’re helping people with severe mental health problems to get them off the trains because they can do harm to themselves or others,” she said.
“So all I’m saying is I understand the fear is out there but fanning the flames of fear to get people terrified is another story.”
Hochul bought tamales from a street vendor, then greeted potential voters at the Utopia Diner a block north before heading to the nearby Hamilton Houses with other elected Democrat officials.
While leaving that event, Hochul appeared to be caught off-guard when The Post asked her about the subway rider who got stabbed in the neck.
“I couldn’t hear,” she said as aides hustled her into a waiting SUV and said she wasn’t taking questions.
Hochul later met privately with left-wing “Hulk” actor Mark Ruffalo after stumping for votes at the Goddard Riverside Community Center.
It was unclear what the two discussed.
Hochul, a Buffalo native and former lieutenant governor, was elevated to the state’s top job when former Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned last year over a sexual harassment scandal.
Although Hochul once held a commanding lead of 24 percentage points over Republican Zeldin, an outgoing House member from Long Island, she’s since seen that advantage evaporate in the face of his tough-on-crime campaign.
Last week, Zeldin edged out Hochul, 48.4% to 47.6%, in a poll by the Republican Trafalgar Group.
