Who is Marc Molinaro?

Marc Molinaro is the current county executive of Dutchess County. He was first elected in 2011.

Prior to being elected county executive, he was a state assemblyman. He was first elected to the Assembly in 2006.

Molinaro announced in January that he would not run for governor. But he went on to win a Saratoga Springs straw poll in February and officially changed his mind in March. He said he changed his mind after New Yorkers urged him to run.

A Republican, Molinaro has a long history of serving in government. He was elected mayor of the town of Tivoli when he was just 19 years old.

What platform is Molinaro running on?

Molinaro is campaigning on a platform of rooting out state government corruption, lowering taxes and helping vulnerable populations, like those with disabilities and substance abuse.

His call to rid Albany of corruption has been one of the hallmarks of his campaign so far. Amid the backdrop of corruption convictions for a former Cuomo top aide and for several developers involved in bid-rigging schemes in Buffalo and Syracuse, Molinaro has said the governor has enabled a culture of corruption.

Molinaro has said he is planning a tax cut. He has also said he wants to make the state's cap on local property tax increases permanent, and said he would try to shift the cost of Medicaid administration to the state.

The Republican candidate for governor has also said he is supportive of a pilot program for hydrofracking – a process blocked by Cuomo three years ago.

An upstate politician, Molinaro waded in New York City politics in June by calling on the city to keep its admissions test for its specialized high schools. A bill to get rid of the test recently stalled in Albany.

He also tried to seize on Cuomo saying America "was never that great" at a recent bill signing. Molinaro offered donors a hat with Cuomo's quote on it and "Cuomo 2020" underneath.

What do his opponents say?

Cuomo's campaign has tried to tie Molinaro to Trump, calling him a "Trump mini-me" and saying that no one is going to vote for a Trump clone in New York. (When he announced his candidacy, Molinaro said he didn't vote for Trump in 2016.)

The governor's campaign also recently tried to block a Molinaro campaign ad slamming Cuomo's ethics from airing on several broadcast stations, calling the content "false, misleading and defamatory." (The stations opted to run the ad.) His campaign called Molinaro's attacks false and desperate.