YORK — Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul won a second full term Tuesday night — notching a victory after bashing her Republican foe as a MAGA acolyte and touting her efforts to address spiking costs.

The governor’s campaign leveraged New Yorkers’ antipathy toward President Donald Trump, his aggressive deportation campaign and tariff regime while tagging GOP nominee Bruce Blakeman as a staunch White House ally. She embraced her party’s increasingly powerful left flank by campaigning with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, democratic socialists a generation younger than the 68-year-old Hochul.

“No Republican has won statewide in New York since George Pataki won his third term as governor in 2002,” Siena Research Institute pollster Steve Greenberg said. “Republicans have a huge uphill climb in New York because there are more than twice as many Democrats as there are Republicans. This outcome is not a surprise in the least.”Once the state’s little-known lieutenant governor, Hochul’s victory is the culmination of an evolution she underwent during her first term. Propelled into the job by the resignation of the scandal-scarred Andrew Cuomo, Hochul rebounded from earlier missteps to secure a series of policy and political victories.

Holding together a fractious New York Democratic Party in an age of profound political upheaval, Hochul is now poised to return to Albany with pressure mounting from the left to raise taxes on wealthy people and large corporations to fund Mamdani’s expensive agenda in New York City.

She courted Jewish New Yorkers — an increasingly complex task as more prominent Democrats, including Mamdani, criticize Israel — by touting measures like creating protest buffer zones around houses of worship.

And with affordability woes taking center stage, the governor’s campaign focused on New Yorkers’ cost concerns.

Her victory over Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, was built, in part, on a series of policy wins like expanding no-cost child care while also backing a package of measures meant to limit the reach of Trump’s push to deport undocumented immigrants living in New York. She trumpeted efforts to address New Yorkers’ utility bills through a temporary moratorium on data center construction as well as a $1 billion rebate program that sent money back to taxpayers.

But much of her fire was intensely focused on Trump, who remains deeply unpopular in deep blue New York. Hochul frequently tied her Republican opponent to the president and the high costs resulting from the Iran war and a tariff battle with Canada. Blakeman did little to separate himself from Trump and twice rallied with the president.

Republicans, including Blakeman, attempted to avert catastrophe by framing their races around Democratic governance — a gambit that voters would blame years of one-party rule in the state for their affordability problems and not the Republican president. In the end, that strategy did not pay off.

“Hochul ran a campaign talking about two things: One, what she wants to do for New York going forward, and two, how Blakeman is tied to Trump because she knows that Trump remains decidedly unpopular in his former home state,” Greenberg said.

Hochul’s win extends a 20-year victory streak for Democrats in New York gubernatorial races. Republicans remain shut out of power in New York statewide and badly trail Democrats in enrollment.

The closest a GOP candidate came to winning since Pataki’s last victory in 2002 was four years ago when then-Rep. Lee Zeldin came within 6 points of defeating Hochul. At the time, Hochul had only been serving as governor for a year following Cuomo’s resignation.

Since that relatively close call, the moderate Hochul has grown into the role.

She has forged alliances with leftists in her party like Mamdani. She endorsed his mayoral bid last year following his Democratic primary win over her scandal-scarred predecessor, Andrew Cuomo. And she convinced Mamdani to retain NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch while bonding with him on issues like expanding child care.

The governor sent millions of dollars in state aid to bolster Mamdani’s first city budget. She opposed hiking income taxes, but instead backed a levy on pricey second homes, a move meant to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for New York City. Endorsements from the mayor and Ocasio-Cortez helped short-circuit Hochul’s only primary challenge from her estranged lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado.

“She ran an error free campaign, effectively harnessed the animating themes of the midterms, and had the wind at her back to cruise to this clear eventuality,” Democratic strategist Alyssa Cass said. The help from Mamdani may come with a price.

Hochul carefully sidestepped questions over whether his support for her would lead her to back a broader tax increase next year. The mayor’s allies, including those in Albany, are expected to press that case during budget negotiations.

Hochul, though, has become more adept at negotiating with lawmakers in the often opaque state Capitol. After her fellow Democrats embarrassed her by turning down her first choice to lead the state’s highest court, the governor notched a series of state budget victories that included narrowing the scope of the state’s controversial cashless bail law and banning cellphones in schools.

A former county clerk, Hochul first came to statewide prominence opposing then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s push to allow undocumented immigrants to receive driver’s licenses. This year, she sought to limit how the federal government enforces immigration laws.

The governor backed measures meant to put legal guardrails around Trump’s immigration policies, including a law that prevents Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deputizing local police officers to carry out civil deportation proceedings. The federal government is challenging that measure in court.

"Shipwrecked by Cuomo into the Governor's mansion, Gov. Hochul has weathered every storm — COVID, Eric Adams, Trump 2.0 — by learning and adapting while somehow never flinching,” Democratic strategist Amit S. Bagga said. “That's what's made her successful.”