Is Long Island Republican Lee Zeldin Throwing Away His Career Defending Trump?

I went to college at Stony Brook University in Suffolk County. Before I started school there, Democrat Otis Pike was the congressman. And when I graduated in 1969 he was still Suffolk's representative in Congress, a job he kept for another decade. I was never a big fan. He was too conservative and way too militaristic-- and at the height of the Vietnam War. When he retired he was succeeded by a far right crackpot, William Carney, best known for having been the first member of the Conservative Party to serve in the House. He later switch to the Republican Party and then retired after 4 term and was succeeded by Democrat George Hochbrueckner and was beaten by Republican Michael Forbes in 1994. Forbes, noting that the GOP was "tone deaf" to the plight of working families, switched to the Democratic Party in 1999, while still in Congress, but was so right-wing that he lost the Democratic primary to a 71 year old librarian (who was financed by the GOP to the tune of a quarter million dollars). Republican Felix Grucci beat her and represented Suffolk County in Congress for one term before being beaten by Democrat Tim Bishop, who served from 2003 to 2014 when he was beaten by Lee Zeldin, 55-45%, primarily because of a scandal in which a hedge fund manager paid him off in return for getting the family a fireworks permit for their kid's bar mitzvah.

Got it? That's Suffolk County, a quintessential swing district on the high growth eastern end of Long Island. When I lived there, it was the biggest potato-growing county in the U.S. Now it's 99.9% suburban (actual statistic) and 0.1% rural. It's also the 28th richest congressional district-- in terms of median income-- in the country. The more diverse and more Democratic western parts of the county are no longer part of the first congressional district. The northwestern area is part of NY-03 (Tom Suozzi's district) and the southwestern area is part of NY-02 (Peter King's district, soon to turn Democratic). Zeldin's district, which still includes Stony Brook starts at Nissequogue in the north, encompasses Smithtown, the eastern shore of Lake Ronkokoma and Patchogue. Everything to the east of that is Zeldin's district, including Port Jefferson, Brookhaven, Fire Island, the Hamptons, Riverhead and Montauk. It was an R+2 district until Hillary's abysmal campaign resulted in it being reclassified as an R+5. Obama won the district both times but Trump crushed Hillary 54.5% to 42.2%.

Last year Zeldin hung on, beating Perry Gershon 139,027 (51.5%) to 127,991 (47.4%), Zeldin having successfully labeled him "Park Avenue Perry." Gershon out-raised Zeldin, $5,017,361(about 40% of it self-financed) to $4,447,149. This cycle Gershon is trying again, but he has a strong primary opponent he has to get through first, Nancy Goroff, a distinguished scientist from Stony Brook. So far Zeldin has raised $1,855,879 to Gershon's $605,891 and Goroff's $521,006.

This morning, when Robert Reich wrote to his supporters that "Republican members of Congress are shredding reality to protect Trump in the face of mounting evidence that he and his administration are a criminal syndicate" he could well have been referring to Zeldin, who is apparently staking his whole career on Trump coattails. "Here's the truth," wrote Reich: "Congressional Republicans know that Trump is guilty, and they know that they look like damn fools for protecting him. Every day, they are making a calculation of how far they can take this without losing their careers."

Long Island media is covering Zeldin's role as a Trump enabler very closely and it is likely the 2020 congressional election will hinge, at least in part, on how Suffolk County voters view Trump. As of November 1, this is how party registration looked in the first district:

• Republicans- 159,329
• Democrats- 151,357
• Decline-to-state- 131,158

In other words, it will be the unaffiliated voters--who have been turning sharply away from Trump-- who determine Zeldin's fate next year. Last week a high-dollar donor fundraiser Zeldin held in St James-- one of Suffolk County's toniest neighborhoods-- attracted a strong contingent of protestors. Newsday interviewed several of them who complained about how Zeldin had "decided to throw his lot completely into the Trump camp and to adopt, in full, the Trumpian agenda." Some talked about organizing and how determined they are to remove Zeldin from office.

Last night Perry Gershon told us that "Lee Zeldin hasn’t held a town hall in over two years, and is consistently inaccessible to his constituents, which is why there is such dissatisfaction with him. To make matters worse, most people these days only see him when he is on cable news portraying himself as Trump’s #1 defender and cheerleader. I just held my third town hall in three months where we discussed affordable healthcare and the climate crisis we are in, as well as local issues like dangerous drinking water, lack of federal funding for our antiquated sewers and the crippling tax burden Long Islanders face. It has become crystal clear that residents are sick of Lee Zeldin and itching for a change."

This morning we heard from Nancy Goroff. Zeldin, of course, is the issue where she and Gershon are in complete sync. "Zeldin continues to lie and obfuscate in order to protect a corrupt President," she wrote. "He muddles the discussion of timeline, of what the President requested and of who knew about those requests when, to pretend that the President did nothing wrong. Zeldin has shown over and over that he cares more about getting on TV than about helping the people of our district. And by his metric, he has been enormously successful in the last month, because of his willingness to lie on camera on behalf of the President. Unfortunately, he does not show similar diligence when it comes to looking for solutions for healthcare, climate change, or financial security for his constituents. We deserve better!"

Reporting for NBC News, Allan Smith asked one salient question: how could some virtually unknown GOP lawmaker become a point man for Trump's impeachment defense? Zeldin might not be paying any attention to the water crisis in Southampton, but he's spoken more than any other Republican in the House about Trump's impeachment, which he insists is a "charade," a "clown show," and a "cocktail that is" House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff's "favorite drink to get America drunk on." He's become as much a Trump favorite as Gym Jordan and Mark Meadows. The difference is that they're both in super-gerrymandered districts created to elect Republicans. Zeldin's district is a true swing district and, unlike them, he's endangering his career. "Zeldin's loyalty to Trump," wrote Smith, "as well as his attacks on the impeachment process, has been met with much chagrin from Democrats. One House Democratic aide said Zeldin was 'maybe the best instance I’ve seen of someone using emulating Trump as a pathway to relevance.'"