Bruce Blakeman, the Republican candidate for New York governor, appears onstage with President Donald Trump during an Oct. 9 midterm rally at The Oncenter in Syracuse. (Photo by Tyler Murphy)

SYRACUSE — President Donald Trump brought his midterm campaign to the Oncenter in Syracuse on Friday, Oct. 9, with a request for upstate supporters: vote as if his name was on the ballot.

Trump said, "When I'm not on the ballot, 48 percent of you don't vote. Please pretend I'm on the freaking ballot, will you?"

Less than four weeks before the Nov. 3 election, President Trump made a rare trip to upstate New York.

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the Republican nominee for governor, spoke and said New York has become too expensive, too heavily taxed and too soft on crime.

Blakeman's running mate, Madison County Sheriff Todd Hood, attended, Border Czar Tom Homan and several other candidates and officials were in the audience.

"Kathy Hochul and the radical Dumocrats have turned New York into a national embarrassment of high costs, high crime, massive corruption and communist politicians chasing jobs and businesses and wealth," Trump said.

"This is not the state that I remember 10 years ago when I went to Washington, D.C., to be your president."

He spoke about the high energy costs in New York, saying the state sits on large fuel reserves, while Pennsylvania gets rich. The Southern Tier has natural gas in the Marcellus Shale, which New York has kept off-limits to hydraulic fracturing since 2015 over water quality concerns.

"You are sitting on some of the greatest oil reserves anywhere in the world, and you're not allowed to touch it,” he said.