A Race Too Close To Call-- And Over Two-Thirds Of The Votes Uncounted

Lee Zeldin and his boss-- undermining America

When I lived there is the 1960s, Suffolk County was still to some extent a rural backwater. It was still the biggest potato-growing county in the U.S., although Idaho was coming on strong. I was once dragged in front of a grand jury in Riverhead, the county seat and, judging by the cast of characters and their values, I could have easily have been in Kansas. Today Suffolk County is the 4th most populous in New York State (about a million and a half people), after Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan, with more people than the Bronx, Nassau, Westchester, Erie (Buffalo) or Monroe (Rochester). It takes up most of Long Island and is overwhelmingly suburban now, although it is still the most important farming county in New York.

NY-01 is most of Suffolk County, although both NY-02 in the south and NY-03 in the north both have sizable pieces. NY-01 is a swing district with a Republican congressman, Lee Zeldin. Obama won the district-- narrowly-- both times he ran, but in 2016 Trump beat Hillary by over 12 points.

A week ago, Democrats had a primary to pick the nominee who would take on Zeldin in November. Of the 3 serious candidates, two ran as moderately progressive, Perry Gershon and Nancy Goroff, and one ran as a typical conservative Democrat, Bridget Fleming. With all precincts counted, Wednesday showed an election way to close to call-- because most votes had been cast by mail and they had not been counted. This is what was counted:

• Perry Gershon- 5,166 (35.4%)
• Nancy Goroff- 5,002 (34.3%)
• Bridget Fleming- 4,062 (27.8%)

As of the June 3 FEC reports, Goroff had raised $2,342,792 ($1,005,600 self-funded) and spent $1,584,630; Gershon had raised $1,113,460 and spent $925,637; and Fleming had raised $703,116 and spent $591,288. Two dark money groups spent independent money in the primary, Blue Tide NY-1 LLC spent $168,919 in favor of Gershon and a notorious scam-artist/grifter sewer money group, 314 Action Fund, spent $516,670 smearing Gershon and supporting Goroff.

So what do the candidates do while they sit in limbo waiting to see which one of them will be duking it out with Zeldin? He has raised $3,906,970 so far this cycle. An e-mail to her supporters from Goroff helped shed some light on how a candidate navigates this in between time.

This campaign has always been focused on facts, data, and reality. So let me tell you where things currently stand.

Here are the facts: after an incredible election day with almost 15,000 votes cast in person, we’re down 164 votes. There are currently over 35,000 absentee votes still to be counted-- over ⅔ of the votes in this election. We’re very much in this.

Those votes won’t be counted until at least July 1, and depending on how fast the Suffolk County Board of Elections can count, we may not know the winner of our Primary until mid-July. Our campaign has promised to support this process to ensure that votes are counted as smoothly and quickly as possible to help us declare the eventual nominee and move on to run against Lee Zeldin.

As the absentee count progresses, we are cautiously optimistic that once every vote is counted, I will be the Democratic nominee. Here’s why:

On election day, we won the town of Brookhaven, and Brookhaven makes up substantially more of the absentee ballots than of the in-person vote-- 61% compared to 58%.

Our very active field program was exclusively designed to encourage our supporters to vote absentee until right before election day, so there is reason to believe that our supporters heard from us and submitted their votes by mail.

We are modeling these results, and any small adjustments in the margins make all the difference. For example, if we increase our margins by .5% across the district compared to the in-person vote, we win. If the absentee votes are split like the in-person votes, but we do 1% better in absentees in Brookhaven, we win. The uncertainty is greater than the precision we can get in any of our models. The situation boils down to this: we need to make sure every vote is counted, and when they are, we remain hopeful we will win.

But here’s the thing: While we watch the vote counting, Lee Zeldin isn’t slowing down. In fact, he just announced a fundraiser featuring fellow Trump apologist Jim Jordan as a special guest!

The primary is a first stop on the way to our goal of beating Lee Zeldin and replacing him with a scientist who is working to actually make lives better. We need to begin raising money to compete with Zeldin’s $2 Million war chest. With just over 130 days until the General Election, we can’t miss a day, even with the Primary winner uncertain. So we’re going to keep sending emails with updates, we’re going to keep holding Zeldin accountable, and we’re going to keep asking for money to do exactly that. And if it turns out that I am not the nominee, any funds you donate from this date forward will be refunded.

With two-thirds of the votes uncounted, there is no telling who the winner will be, not in a race this close. And one has to wonder how many races from last Tuesday that is true of. It certainly is the case in Kentucky's Senate race, where the Schumer candidate looked like she was leading but, since then, Charles Booker, the progressive, has pulled ahead-- and where most votes are still unaccounted for, but where we should see final results tomorrow.

How To Use Trump's Impeachment To Win 2020 Congressional Races

Lee Zeldin (R-NY) and Trump, welded at the hip

Smart Democratic candidates running for Congress against GOP incumbents have gone on the offense against their Trump-enabling opponents. Nancy Goroff is running to represent the Suffolk County residents of swingy NY-01. The current incumbent gave up trying to pretend to be a mainstream Republican and shifted all the way too the right lately, likely with an eye on becoming a Fox News host in the near future. He became one of the most aggressive and obnoxious of the Trump defenders in the House.

Goroff sent out an e-mail to her supporters Wednesday night right after the vote reminding them that "the House of Representatives just voted to approve articles of impeachment against Donald Trump for his abuses of power and obstruction of Congress. This action was necessary against a President who has proven to be a clear and present danger to our democracy." She quickly turned the discuss to Zeldin:

But Lee Zeldin chose to put party over country. He ignored clear evidence that Trump attempted to bribe Ukraine with taxpayer dollars into interfering in the 2020 election. He voted to protect Trump and uphold corruption at the highest levels.

History will judge politicians like Zeldin for their lack of principle. But right now, we need to hold them accountable at the ballot box.

We need honest leadership in Congress - not unbridled partisanship.

...Tonight's vote is not about Democrats or Republicans. It is not about our personal opinions of Donald Trump's character. It is about affirming that no President is above the law, that we have co-equal branches of government, and that foreign interference in our democracy must be stopped.

By opposing the articles of impeachment, Zeldin showed that he cares more about his political networks than upholding free and fair elections. It's up to us to hold Zeldin accountable.

Two day earlier, Goroff had effectively set Zeldin up for what she knew was coming. She wrote: "Breitbart News-- the extremist news outlet which aligned with the alt-right under the leadership of Steve Bannon-- just came out with a glowing profile of my opponent in NY-01, Republican incumbent Lee Zeldin. They called him a 'legend' and 'impeachment’s biggest star.' Zeldin continues to see his job as a way to raise his profile in right-wing media-- not to represent the people in Suffolk County. Zeldin has grown more and more radical at the same time the district is growing rapidly more Democratic. The New York Times recently reported the profound political shift, and there are now more registered Democrats than Republicans on Long Island. The good news is that we can win: In my first quarter, with your help, I outraised Zeldin by $70,000 in individual contributions. Next November, I’ll unseat him to become the first female Ph.D. scientist in Congress, but as Trump’s GOP props up Zeldin, I will need your help."

She ended with an appeal to people "as frustrated as I am with Trump, Zeldin, and the rest of the GOP circus in Washington." Later, Nancy told me that "With his vote, Zeldin cemented his place on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of his constituents. There has never been energy and activism in NY-01 like we've seen due to Zeldin's votes to protect the president while harming his constituents (ie. not signing on to remove the SALT tax cap). Just this week, on a cold rainy night, over 600 people came out across Suffolk County to call for impeachment-- numbers at protests we've never seen before."

Mike Siegel is the progressive candidate running against far right Trumpist Michael McCaul in a gerrymandered central Texas district. Like Nancy Goroff, Mike saw an opportunity to draw a contrast between himself and his opponent on the question of impeachment. "Yesterday was a historic day," he wrote. "The House impeached a president for the third time in the history of our nation. But here in the Texas 10th, instead of standing up to the President’s abuse of power, Rep. McCaul abandoned all dignity and common sense. He said, 'some 63 million Americans voted for President Trump,' and therefore he should not be impeached. Complete nonsense. McCaul has failed to uphold his oath of office. He claims to be a foreign policy expert-- then he must know how important foreign aid is. He knows that when Congress appropriates aid and the President withholds it to advance his personal agenda-- that is an abuse of power. Michael McCaul swore an oath to defend our constitution but he has done nothing but protect his own political ambitions. While McCaul has been sucking up to Trump, our district is in need. Tens of thousands without health care and closing rural hospitals. Several counties with polluted groundwater due to coal ash contamination and fracking fluids. Closing public schools and a growing homeless population. What has McCaul done with his time in office for the people of Texas 10? Nothing. I am committed to fighting for the people of this district. To ensure their needs are put first. And to fight to protect democracy in the United States, from all threats, foreign and domestic."

The GOP Doesn't Have Enough Congresswomen. Lara Trump To The Rescue?

How smart could Lara Trump be? After all, she married the dumbest member of the Trump clan, their Fredo. Lara Yunaska was born in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1982, and has only ever lived in Manhattan and North Carolina... but she's been to the Hampton's frequently enough to have a general idea where Long Island is. Lucky, because there's a week-old rumor circulating that wife of Eric may run for Peter King's seat, now that he's retiring. The rumor started at Bereitbart and has oozed into legitimate media like the New York Times and Newsday, Long Island's most widely read newspaper. The district includes much of blue-leaning Suffolk County and the south shore of Nassau County. As we saw a week and a half ago, swingy NY-02, is trending blue.

Last year, Nassau County’s white population dipped below 60% for the first time ever, as Latino, African-American and Asian populations across Long Island grew while the number of non-Hispanic white residents continued to decline. Less than 30 years ago, Long Island--then classic white flight suburbs-- was more than 84% white, according to the 1990 census. In 2018, about 59% of Nassau County residents and 67% of Suffolk County residents were white, according to the new estimates. Democrats now outnumber Republicans on Long Island, a once unthinkable development in a traditional conservative stronghold where voters backed every Republican presidential candidate, bar two, from 1900 to 1988… The numbers on Long Island enumerate the challenges for Republicans. In 1996, registered Republicans in Nassau County outnumbered the Democrats, 360,000 to 257,000. By this year, the number of Democrats had rocketed to 411,000. The number of Republicans, by contrast, had dropped by more than 30,000. In NY-02, once all all-Nassau district is now mostly a Suffolk County district and the Democratic Party now has a registration advantage over Republicans. Obama won the district both times, although Hillary lost it to Trump by almost 10 points. Peter King was reelected in recent years because he was Peter King, beloved by the transpartisan super-corrupt Long Island establishment, not because he was a Republican per se. All things being equal, a Democrat is likely to win it in 2020.

The Republicans are looking for a candidate to replace King and the Trumpist wing of the GOP is floating Lara Trump's name. There are 16 other Republicans in the primary-- Islip Town Councilwoman and ex-TV news reporter, state Assemblyman Mike LiPetri and Suffolk County election commissioner Nick LaLota-- or looking at it, particularly former Congressman for the North Shore district, Rick Lazio. The Democratic establishment seems to have settled for Babylon Town Councilwoman and Afghan War vet Jackie Gordon, a centrist, which is just what the DCCC wants.

The shady Club for Growth poll that Breitbart claims to have seen shows Lara Trump with 53% compared to 19% for Lazio. The poll showed that 60% of respondents had a favorable opinion of her while only 13% had an unfavorable opinion of her and 18% never heard of her. Although Trumpanzee's own approval rating on Long Island is in the dumpster, 78% of Republicans in NY-02 favor him and only 19% view him unfavorably. (And since this is an all GOP poll, yes, 1% said they have never heard of Donald Trump.)

These are the November 1, 2019 NY-02 registration numbers by party:

• Suffolk part of the district

Democrats- 38,110
Republicans- 59,075
Decline to state- 33,238

• Nassau part of the district

Democrats- 124,904
Republicans- 93,231
Decline to state- 85,086

• Total, district-wide, shows that if Democrats turn out their base and continue turning independent voters against Trump, the district is unwinnable for a Republican, especially one with the last name Trump.

Democrats- 163,014
Republicans- 152,306
Decline to state- 118,324

Now, remember, this Obama district flipped red for Trump (or against Hillary) in 2016. A Biden nomination might be as bad but there's no way to be certain what made NY-02 voters turn against Hillary so strongly. Over a year ago, John Pavlovitz had already begun giving up on the hardcore Trump fanatics. "There's an old saying," he wrote: 'When the horse is dead-- dismount. It’s time to stop beating that horse, America. It’s not going anywhere. I’ve tried for three years now. I’ve tried to understand them. I’ve tried to listen to them. I’ve tried not to assign motive to them, not to speculate as to why they voted the way they voted, not to believe they consented to every cruel thing their vote birthed and enabled. I’ve tried not to caricaturize them; not to make them into one-dimensional stereotypes, not to treat them as some fictional other whose presence posed a threat. I’ve tried appealing to their sense of decency, to their capacity for compassion, to their faith in Jesus." As I'm sure you can imagine, basically none of that has worked for Pavlovitz.

I’ve quietly endured thousands of their racist outbursts and homophobic rants on Twitter and at neighborhood picnics and across the Thanksgiving dinner table-- in the hopes that I could find some vulnerable place beneath their fear to access later.

I’ve tried buoying pep talks and firm tough love and expressions of kindness and straight-talking challenge and attempts at affirmation.

I’ve tried discussing theology, tried sharing stories of oppressed communities, tried to offer facts in the face of a million lies generated by their President, tried to show the lessons History has already taught us about the slope we’re currently sliding precipitously down.

They have all failed to reach fertile ground.

Nothing has worked.


It’s all been fruitless.

I think it’s time to stop saying that we need to understand these people. I think we do understand them:

We understand that they have dug in their heels so deeply, they will not be moved by anything-- not facts or data or truth or their own eyes.


We understand that there is no political scandal massive enough, no President’s Tweet reckless enough, no legislation predatory enough to alter their allegiance.


We understand that the past two years of viciousness and ineptitude haven’t tempered their passions but ignited them.

We understand that the image of an angry white, American male God is so burned into their brains, that they see no conflict with a religion devoid of love or a world absent diversity or a theology made of malice. 
We understand that infidelity, dishonesty, obscenity, and cruelty are no longer liabilities to those they would have lead them.


We understand that the FoxNews poison has so fully circulated through their systems that truth is no longer necessary.

We understand that white supremacists in the Cabinet and Russian infiltration in our elections and children separated from their parents are acceptable collateral damage to winning.

We understand that their capacity to rationalize away human rights atrocities now borders on complete delusion.

People have warned that we should treat these people with kid gloves; that explicitly expressing anger or pointing out criminality or vocally opposing injustice right now will only drive them deeper into their entrenched positions. That’s a fairly dire assessment.

If adults are that fragile in the face of reality, that willing to deny country and humanity simply because they’re offended, that thin-skinned and prone to mutiny-- their dispositions aren’t really a burden the rest of us should or could bear.

We don’t come to this understanding with any joy or self-satisfaction-- we come to it with sober despair and the deepest grief, because we know practically speaking that right now they are unreachable.

It’s one thing to have held out hope for them on November 9th, 2016, but at this point, I’m not sure any miraculous moral awakening or conversion of the heart is possible.

If their consciences and compassion and reason have not been accessed and unearthed by now, I’m concerned those things will never be forthcoming.

And since these people will not be moved, the rest of us need to move together.

Democrat, Republican, and Independent, the deeply devout and the passionately irreligious, people of every pigmentation and persuasion-- we need to move in concert, to affirm our shared regard for one another, and to vote to restore balance in something we all love that is teetering wildly.

This isn’t a battle to change the minds of the few who refuse to be changed. That horse is dead.

It also isn’t a test to see if we can manufacture the same hatred and vitriol for them as they dispense toward us.

This is a golden moment for the vast, sprawling army of good people who believe in the beauty of diversity and in a fully accessible America to speak unequivocally-- on our social media profiles, at family gatherings, in our church meetings-- and most of all, in the voting booth.

We don’t need to convince or coddle or win over hatred, and we don’t need to outdo it either.

We need to outnumber it.
We need to outlast it.
We need to outlove it.
We need to outvote it.

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.'"

Rick Lazio? Yeccchhh

I was born in Brooklyn. When I was two, my parents, about to have a second child, decided to move to Long Island, where the schools were supposed to be better. I think that's part of what built Long Island-- a euphemistic way of talking about "white flight." First stop was Valley Stream, basically a walk from the Queens County line and then after a few years to Roosevelt, habit deeper into Nassau County. Roosevelt became one of the first big African-American suburbs and my parents decided to move back to Brooklyn. A few years ago, The Atlantic did an update on a long and much-discussed top-- the state of segregation in the suburbs. "Want to see what segregation looks like in America today? Take a drive on New York's Long Island, one of the most racially segregated portions of the country. I grew up there, and the differences between adjacent white and minority towns can be so sharp it's as if invisible fences divide them. Two villages, Hempstead and Garden City, lie adjacent to one another in Nassau County. Hempstead has a medium household income of $52,000. Garden City's is $150,000. Hempstead, in parts, resembles an inner city-- with bodegas, laundromats, low-rise apartment buildings. Garden City is a suburban idyll, with tree-lined streets, gourmet grocery stores, and large colonial-style homes. Garden City is 88 percent white; Hempstead is 92 percent black and Hispanic (split about evenly). The transition between the two villages occurs within one block, a visual whiplash.

"Long Island is becoming more diverse, Nassau County is becoming more diverse," says John Logan, a Brown University sociologist who has been studying demographics since the 1970s. "But within Nassau County there's been hardly any change in the degree of segregation. The predominantly minority areas are becoming more minority. And the predominantly white areas are staying mostly white... [He] finds that blacks and Hispanics who earn over $75,000 a year live in areas with higher poverty rates than whites who make less than $40,000.

A good way to evaluate these neighborhoods is to look at the elementary schools, which often represent a sub-community of a larger school district. Overall, suburban schools are academically better than city schools. But white suburban schools are better than black and Hispanic suburban schools. "The average black or Hispanic elementary school student attends a school that ranks below the 45th percentile in the state," Logan writes in his paper. The average white student in the suburbs? They attend schools that score above the 60th percentile.

What's true of the schools is true of many of the resources in black suburbs: They are objectively better than those in the city. Poverty rates and crime rates are lower in these communities. "There are reasons why you would move to a predominantly black suburb as opposed to staying in the predominantly black, or black and Hispanic, inner-city poor neighborhood-- it's a step forward," he says. But that does not make up for the fact that, by many measures, blacks and whites are living in different worlds. "I think that's the underlying situation that then becomes the basis for frustration and anger when something happens to spark it," he says.

There has been progress. Black/white segregation has been declining over the years. In 1980, fewer than 6 million blacks lived in the suburbs. Now 16 million do. These numbers are more dramatic for Asians and Hispanics. In solidly middle-class neighborhoods, Logan finds, whites won't leave when minorities move in, like they might have in previous decades. But that is mostly occurring in places with already good public resources. The suburbs are a cornerstone of the American dream. But, for right now, the realization of that dream looks very different in black and white.

Earlier this year, Long Island's top newspaper, Newsday reported that "Nassau County’s white population dipped below 60 percent for the first time in its modern history in 2018, as Latino, African-American and Asian populations across Long Island grew while the number of non-Hispanic white residents continued to decline... The population estimates for July 1, 2018, reflect a decades-long trend that has transformed Long Island from overwhelmingly white to a more diverse place, where Hindu temples and supermercados share the landscape with synagogues and Italian bakeries. Less than 30 years ago, Long Island was more than 84 percent white, according to the 1990 census. In 2018, about 59 percent of Nassau County residents and 67 percent of Suffolk County residents were white, according to the new estimates. Since 1990, the number of white, non-Hispanic residents dropped by nearly 400,000.

Thursday, the New York Times reported that "Well before Rep. Peter King announced that he would retire next year, enough evidence existed that his prospects for re-election on Long Island as a Republican were narrowing. Democrats now outnumber Republicans on Long Island, a once unthinkable development in a traditional conservative stronghold where voters backed every Republican presidential candidate, bar two, from 1900 to 1988… The numbers on Long Island enumerate the challenges for Republicans. In 1996, registered Republicans in Nassau County outnumbered the Democrats, 360,000 to 257,000. By this year, the number of Democrats had rocketed to 411,000. The number of Republicans, by contrast, had dropped by more than 30,000."

Basically there are 5 Long Island congressional districts representing Long Island voters:

• NY-01- Lee Zelden- R (eastern Suffolk Co.)- 75.2% white
• NY-02- Peter King- R (western Suffolk Co., South Shore Nassau Co.)- 62.3% white
• NY-03- Tom Suozzi- New Dem (north shore)- 68.7% white
• NY-04- Kathleen Rice- New Dem (western Nassau Co)- 57.1% white
• NY-05- Gregory Meeks- New Dem (a Queens district with a small piece of southwestern Nassau Co.)- 10.9% white

The second district is looking increasingly shaky for Republicans. The Democrats now have a registration advantage over Republicans, a new development. Obama won it both times, although Hillary lost it to Trump by almost 10 points. Peter King was reelected in recent years because he was Peter King, beloved on the transpartisan super-corrupt Long Island establishment, not because he was a Republican per se. All things being equal, a Democrat is likely to win it in 2020. Rick Lazio begs to differ. He was born in Amityville, in the eastern end of the district, although he represented the North Shore district (now NY-03) for 4 terms in the past--1993 to 2001. He was known as one of Congress' most corrupt members, taking immense amounts of money from Wall Street while serving as chair of the House Banking Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity. To this day, the over $7 million in bribes Lazio took from the banksters is more than any other currently serving House members other than Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy ($9,472,747) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer ($7,355,624) two other paragons of corruption.

Since King announced he isn't running for reelection, 16 Republicans launched trial balloons, as did half a dozen Democrats. The Democratic Party had already solidified behind Babylon town councilwoman Jackie Gordon, a centrist. The Republicans are looking at a vast array of candidates including Billy Joel's former girlfriend, Islip town councilwoman Trish Bergin Weichbrodt, state Senator Phil Boyle, state Assemblymen Joe DeStephano, Doug Smith, Phil Ramos, Mike LiPetri and Andrew Garbarino, former Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, current Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and Lazio. He says he's seriously considering jumping in. "I have lived in this district my entire life. It would be unusual if I didn’t give some thought to the representation of the district. I know these folks well and have been among them my whole life... I won this swing district four times, the last three by 2-1 margins, enjoyed broad-based support of Republicans, Democrats and independents and carried it against Hillary Clinton by nearly 20 points," Lazio said. Except its was a different district then, the North Shore district, not the South Shore District.

Since leaving office, Lazio has worked as a corporate lobbyist, CEO of the Financial Services Forum, and as an executive for JP Morgan Chase.

He is currently an executive at alliantgroup, a giant consulting group that helps major companies score tax breaks and other government business.

That resume could give Democrats ammunition to paint Lazio as a corporate and government insider as politics in New York-- and across the country-- take a populist turn.

But Lazio insisted that his business background would be viewed as a plus.

“In my role at alliantgroup I serve as an advocate for small and medium business, cybersecurity, energy efficiency and workforce development,” he argued.

One veteran Long Island Republican, who requested anonymity, called Lazio’s trial balloon “bullshit.”

The Republican bench on Long Island has thinned out after Democrats toppled four GOP incumbents in last year’s state Senate races.

Chuck Schumer Is Already Weeping Over The Loss Of Peter King

Early this morning, Peter King-- first elected to Congress from the south shore of Long Island in 1992-- announced, on his Facebook page, that he won't be running for reelection. The announcement didn't say anything you wouldn't expect from a lock-step Trump enabler. Even though he sits on the Intelligence Committee and is well aware of how guilty Trump is, he announced in his statement that "In the coming weeks and during the next year I intend to vote against President Trump ‘s impeachment and will support the President’s bid for re-election." Many people first heard of his decision via a tweet (above) from Little Chuckie Schmucky. Not familiar with Schmucky? Maybe this little tune will help:




NY-02 shouldn't have been a Republican district all these years. Although Hillary stunk it up with her status quo bullshit agenda, Obama won it both times he ran and the PVI hovered around neutral. After Hillary's dismal showing-- she lost by almost 10 points-- 53.0% to 43.9%, the PVI is now officially R+3. The district won't perform that way with King out of the way. I spoke with the head of the Suffolk County legislature, DuWayne, a former King opponent who has endorsed Gordon. He told me he expects her to win the district, explaining that it was the bipartisan old boys network that kept King in power.

Before this morning's announcement, there were two Democrats running, establishment fave Babylon town concilmember Jackie Gordon (endorsed by EMILY's List and DCCC scam operation End Citizen's United) and local activist Mike Sax. She's already raised $187,941 but I wouldn't be surprised if other potential candidates jump into the race now. In 2018 King was forced to spend $3,175,639 to hold onto his seat. His progressive opponent, Liuba Grechen Shirley, spent $1,948,325. Although both Kirsten Gillibrand and Andrew Cuomo won the district, King was reelected, albeit more narrowly than in previous elections-- 128,078 (53.1%) to 113,074 (46.9%), losing the larger Suffolk County part of the district (D+3) while winning his Nassau home base which performed for him at an R+27 level.

For years, the Long Island political class assumed that his daughter, Erin Sweeney, top Republican on the Hempstead town council, would inherit the congressional seat. But she decided to move to Charlotte, North Carolina and didn't run for reelection.

John Wagner noted in his report for the Washington Post that the 75 year old King is the 20th GOP congressman to bow out of reelection. "King joins a growing number of Republican members of Congress who have announced retirements, resigned or said they will seek another office next year... By comparison, eight Democrats have announced they will not seek reelection."

Even before King announced he was bowing out of Congress, NBC News ran a piece early this morning about how the GOP has lost 100 members since Trump arrived in DC. "Change is a way of life in Washington," reported Dante Chinni. "Politicians come and go at the whims of voters. But even by D.C. standards, House Republicans have seen massive changes during President Donald Trump's administration. This week, as the House impeachment proceedings become public, those changes are going to be front and center. When Trump arrived in the White House in 2017, there were 241 Republicans at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue in the House of Representatives. Today, 100 of them have gone or have announced that they are leaving. That's 41 percent of that original 241 in the 115th House... not congressional seats lost; that's a measure of actual people, the personalities that once roamed the halls of Congress that aren't there anymore. They left for a range of reasons. Some left to take administration appointments, some lost, and some just walked away."

While much is made of partisan flips-- and they are obviously crucial in terms of who controls the House and the Senate-- Congress is ultimately a collection of people, and personalities matter. Personalities frame debates and set up how committees are run. And the House's GOP personalities will define the larger Republican Party when impeachment moves from private to public hearings this week.

The change in the House GOP over the last three years has been especially striking. Compare it to changes in the Democratic House in the same time period under President Barack Obama from January 2009 to November 2011.

...A good number of changes in the Republican House, 36 of them, came through election defeats. But overall, the departures are being driven more heavily by retirements and resignations. Half the Republican House turnover has come via voluntary exit-- 50 departures. And there was a lot of experience on that list.

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, a 10-term veteran, bowed out on his own. And 10 other Republican members who had served at least four terms in the House retired with their seats remaining Republican. That is, they were not in real danger of losing-- they just walked away and let different people take the reins.

And more departures are likely on the way. We are heading into the holidays and the new year, always a prime time for members to announce that they are not seeking reelection.

Keep these changes in mind this week when the House impeachment trial becomes a public affair. There has been a lot of turnover in the House in the past few years, and not just in terms of partisanship. The president's own party in the chamber looks very different from when he arrived in Washington.

The House Republicans have less institutional memory and more new faces than they did a few years ago-- and those new faces have come to Congress in Trump's Washington. That's likely to have some impact when temperatures and rhetoric rise around impeachment.

Three memorable quotes by Peter King, the right-wing asshole Schumer said he will miss and whose friendship he will always value:

• Just after Michael Jackson's death: "Let's knock out the psychobabble. He was a pervert, a child molester, he was a pedophile. And to be giving this much coverage to him, day in and day out, what does it say about us as a country? I just think we're too politically correct. No one wants to stand up and say we don't need Michael Jackson. He died, he had some talent, fine. There's men and women dying every day in Afghanistan. Let's give them the credit they deserve... I believe I'm articulating the views of a great majority of the American people."

• On the Occupy Wall Street movement: "We have to be careful not to allow this to get any legitimacy. I'm taking this seriously in that I'm old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy. We can't allow that to happen."

• After the police murdered Eric Garner: "If he had not had asthma, and a heart condition, and was so obese, almost definitely he would not have died from this."

King was a repulsive racist and an all around bigot. Right after the Orlando shooting in a gay club, he termed it a "vicious Islamic terrorist attack" on his Facebook page and said that "the Islamic threat to the United States is greater than at any time since 9/11" and excoriated "leftwing editors at the New York Times and the "liberal ideologies" of the ACLU, stating that both the newspaper and organization were attempting to "intimidate" critics of Islam. He also helped lead the charge against football players peacefully protesting discrimination by kneeling during the national anthem, likening their protest to "Nazi salutes." That's who Peter King-- a corrupt bag of shit-- is. I'm sure he and Schumer will sson meet again in Hell.

Primaries-- Against Long Island Incumbents

Yesterday we took a look at some of the prospective 2020 Democratic congressional primaries in New York City, based on a NY Times piece by Shane Goldmacher. I promised to finish up today with a look at the two possible Long Island primaries. I'll describe both. NY-03 is the North Shore district that starts in Suffolk County around Kings Park and Commack, heads west through Huntington, and into Nassau County towns like Oyster Bay, Hicksville, Glen Cove and Great Neck, winding up in northeast Queens (Douglaston and Beechhurst) ending at Alexandria Ocasio's district. It's a pretty affluent district (3rd wealthiest in the country with a $101,695 medium income) and a D+1 PVI. Obama won twice and Hillary beat Trump 51.6% to 45.5%. The district is 73% white, 13% Asian, 9% Latino and 3% Black. It's Steve Israel's old district and the current congressman, Tom Suozzi, is the former Nassau County Executive.

In 2016, when Israel retired, Suozzi decisively won a crowded primary and went on to beat Republican Jack Martins 53-47%. In 2018, there was no primary challenger and Suozzi has no problem in the general, beating Republican Dan DeBono 157,456 (59%) to 109,514 (41%).

Unlike Israel, Suozzi didn't join the ultra-reactionary Blue Dogs. Instead he signed up with the less reactionary New Dems. Goldmacher highlights his membership in the "bipartisan [albeit misleadingly named] Problem Solvers Caucus," and explains that he "has angered progressive activists, including on immigration, after he went on Fox and Friends last summer to embrace 'some physical structures on the border' and defend the Immigration and Customs and Enforcement agency. This is ironic, single Suozzi-- despite his conservatism some things, is pretty much considered a super-star when it comes to progressive immigration policy.

In 1994, as Mayor of Glen Cove, Suozzi created one of the first day laborer centers on the East Coast. When he was honored by the New York Immigration Coalition (for creating an environment of welcome and inclusion for immigrants in Nassau County) in 2011, he told the audience that "Those men who were standing on the street corner looking for work back in 1994 are the same men who now have their own businesses as landscapers and contractors. They have bought their own homes. Their children are now going to the same public schools as my children. They are living the American Dream... What ICE officials were doing [massive raids] was wrong. [He asked the audience to put themselves in the place of immigrant children] "who saw ICE come bursting through the door in the middle of the night, some of them carrying shotguns, to take away members of their family. Do you think that child will ever trust law enforcement again? This issue has become an excuse for racism in this country and we have to constantly work to persuade people that we are talking about human beings and their lives. We have a lot more work to do together. We have a lot of people to convince."

So... someone may want to primary Suozzi for being too conservative or not progressive enough... but immigration is the wrong issue. And so is anything to do with Climate Change. He quickly offered to co-sponsor AOC's GreenNewDeal resolution.

Goldmacher asserts that "some on the left have encouraged Robert Zimmerman, a D.N.C. member who lives in the district and once ran for Congress in the early 1980s, to challenge Mr. Suozzi from the left. Zimmerman, 64, did not rule out a run as he slammed Mr. Suozzi as a 'Trump sympathizer' in an interview. 'I understand it’s unusual,' Mr. Zimmerman said of a party official attacking his local congressman. 'It’s more unusual to have a member not stand up for mainstream Democratic principles.' Friends and relatives of mine in the district laughed at the idea of Zimmerman being encouraged by "some on the left." One told me that whatever I may think of Suozzi, Zimmerman is just an opportunist and careerist hack with nothing to offer.

South of Suozzi's district is Kathleen Rice's-- NY-04. It's where I grew up (Valley Stream and then Roosevelt) and it's entirely within Nassau County. It goes from Westbury, Garden City, Mineola and Floral Park through Hempstead, Freeport, Rockville Centre, Lynbrook and East Roackaway down to Jones Beach, Long Beach and the Five Towns. The PVI is D+4 and Obama and Hillary both won by low double digits. It's the 14th most affluent congressional district in America. Demographically it's 60.5% white, 17.7% Latino, 14% Black and 6% Asian.

Rice was always a very right-wing Democrat who made a career by prosecuting poor people. She's been a horrible careerist and Wall Street shill for her whole career and a nightmare New Dem in Congress. There are several Democrats considering primary challenges. Goldmacher wrote that "Kevan Abrahams, the Democratic leader in the Nassau County Legislature who lost a primary to Ms. Rice in 2014, is considering running again," but he's one of many.

Jay Jacobs, the incoming chairman of the New York Democratic Party, acknowledged that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s success had emboldened potential challengers. But he noted that the primary rules in New York have changed since 2018, when it was the only state in America to hold a separate state and congressional elections, driving down turnout to abysmal lows. Plus, incumbents won't be “caught sleeping.”

“It’s going to be a real fight,” Mr. Jacobs said. “And in a real fight, my money is with the incumbents.”

No doubt Jacobs' money is with the incumbents.

Holding Bad Democrats Accountable-- Long Island New Dem Kathleen Rice Has Earned A Primary

New Dem Kathleen Rice and progressive Siela Bynoe

Kathleen Rice was one of the key instigators in the New Dem mini-rebellion against Nancy Pelosi late in 2018. Seth Moulton gets almost all the blame but it really was Rice who acted the part of the poisonous viper slithering around hissing in peoples' ears. You've probably heard a lot about Moulton getting a primary challenge but much less about Rice's. Rice epitomizes the Wall Street Democrat. And that's not because her Long Island district is so close physically. This past cycle-- in which the GOP didn't bother fielding a serious candidate against her-- she raised $1,391,804 and her single biggest source of campaign cash was... Wall Street ($142,400). As you can see, from the Open Secrets chart below, the Finance Sector is, by far, her biggest source of funds. Predictably, as soon as she got to Congress she joined the New Dems. She serves on the Homeland Security Committee and will chair its Subcommittee on Transportation Security. Progressive Punch has graded her voting record an "F" and her crucial lifetime vote score is a dismal 62.93, not as terrible as Sean Patrick Maloney's, but far to the right of other New York Democrats'.

Rice, a former Nassau County prosecutor, was elected to Congress in 2014 in NY's 4th congressional district (D+4, where Hillary beat Trump by about 10 points in 2016). The district includes most of southwest Nassau County, the inner suburbs my family moved to when I was 2 (first to Valley Stream and then to Roosevelt). It includes the storied Five Towns (actually only 4 of them now, Inwood having drifted west into NY-05), as well as Long Beach, Jones Beach, Freeport, Hempstead, Rockville Centre, Garden City, Floral Park, Mineola, Westbury and New Hyde Park. I went to college at Stony Brook and I think half the students came from NY-04. Rice always bragged how she was New York's toughest DWI prosecutor. She was also tough on students who cheated on exams and was a big anti-drug fanatic. Cuomo appointed her as one of the 3 chairs of the notorious Moreland Commission on Corruption, basically a vehicle to cover-up his own and his cronies' corruption. In 2010 she ran as the right-of-center Democrat for Attorney General. She was heavily pushed by EMILY's List, spent the most money by far and was defeated in the primary by the progressive in the race.

You may have noticed a passing reference to a primary above. But that's the reason for this morning's post. Rice has one coming this cycle. Well-liked Nassau County legislator Siela Bynoe, a progressive, is being recruited by activist and reform groups to run for the seat. Right now, she represents the heart of the congressional district in the county legislature-- Hempstead, Lakeview, Westbury, New Cassel, Uniondale, and Rockville Centre. This is a CrowdPac page recently created by the Young Progressives of Nassau County:

We are outraged that our Democratic Congresswoman Kathleen Rice (NY-4) has been working with the Republican Party to sabotage Nancy Pelosi from becoming Speaker of the House.

Rep. Rice has supported cutting Social Security benefits (by raising the retirement age), banning Syrian refugees, rolling back Obama regulations on Wall Street, and gutting the Americans with Disabilities Act. At the height of Trump’s racist birther campaign to delegitimize President Obama, Rice accepted $53,100 in campaign contributions from Donald Trump himself. Her spokesman Michael Aciman said, “Rice has no intention of returning these contributions.”

Let us call Rice what she is: a Trump-funded Democrat who has been collaborating with the Republican Party to dismantle President Obama’s legacy piece by piece. It’s time to replace her with a progressive Democrat who will fight for working families.

We, the Young Progressives of Nassau County, are drafting Nassau County Legislator Siela Bynoe to run for Congress in 2020. Bynoe has represented the communities of Hempstead, Lakeview, Westbury, New Cassel, Uniondale, and Rockville Centre in the Legislature since 2014. She has also been the Executive Director of Huntington Housing Authority since 2006. She has fought for a $15 minimum wage, affordable housing, criminal justice reform, clean water, public transit, and many other issues.

Siela Bynoe is a candidate who would truly champion the interests of working people of New York's 4th. Kathleen Rice, on the other hand, has failed to represent the residents of the 4th Congressional District, a district Clinton won by 10 points and Obama by 13 points. In addition to her abysmal political record, she hasn't held a town hall in nearly two years.

 Please chip in whatever you can to replace Rice with a true progressive. No corporate PACs. Only people power. Your card will only be charged if Siela Bynoe runs for Congress in NY-04.

Earlier this morning, Alex Kaufman, reporting for HuffPo, pointed out that "new polling shows older, suburban women in Democratic Rep. Kathleen Rice’s Long Island district overwhelmingly support a Green New Deal" and that her opposition to it makes her vulnerable to a primary challenge. If Bynoe goes through with the primary, it will be Rice's first since being elected to Congress. Kaufman points out that Rice was endorsed by a handful of GOP officials in her district in 2016 and since then has voted with Trump around 30% of the time.

Her vulnerability to a challenge could speak to the changing nature of the Democratic electorate. Support for a Green New Deal unites disparate primary voters from the 2016 election. Among New York 4th Congressional District voters who picked Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016, 55 percent said they would support a pro-Green New Deal candidate, compared to 8 percent who wouldn’t. Among voters who picked former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary, support for a Green New Deal proponent hit 46 percent, compared to 19 percent who don’t.

The results mirror support for Ocasio-Cortez, whose surprise primary victory over the summer skyrocketed the 29-year-old to national fame. In Rice’s district, 52 percent of those polls viewed Ocasio-Cortez favorably, of which 56 percent said they’d support a Green New Deal proponent in a 2020 primary.

“Ocasio-Cortez has clearly broken through,” Sean McElwee, the co-founder of Data for Progress, said by phone. “People like Ocasio-Cortez are more than willing to primary a Democrat for not supporting a Green New Deal.”

But reaching a point where there’s enough “organic buzz” around a Green New Deal that it’s a “topic of discussion beyond the direct actions of a primary opponent,” will require a lot of work, said Jeff Hauser, a veteran progressive strategist.

...“It is seems more than plausible to me but rather very likely that if made salient to voters, opposition to a Green New Deal would be deeply dangerous for the primary chances of any incumbent Democrat,” Hauser said by email. “However the work of making it salient is no small task.”

The Year Duwayne Gregory Can End Peter King's Long, Tired Political Career

Alexa Sheryll is Duwayne Gregory's campaign manager. Their primary is a week from Tuesday, June 26. Alexa explained this week that she's heard that "a lot of people don’t know exactly where the money they give to campaigns goes. "As DuWayne’s campaign manager," she said, "I can tell you exactly where your donation goes... With our campaign, money isn’t going to some shadowy super PAC fund. It’s going directly to our efforts to bring real leadership to NY-02." She pointed to three priorities they need to fund between now and the 26th:

• Supporting our field team (even volunteers have to eat!)
• Helping DuWayne connect with as many voters as possible
• GOTV (get out the vote) efforts

Duwayne has already been endorsed by the Working Families, Women’s Equality and Independence parties and will challenge Peter King on those lines. His primary opponent is a woman and many Long Islanders wondered why Duwayne was endorsed by the Women's Equality Party. They based it on his work on behalf of women's equality, not on gender ID. Recently Duwayne wrote that "Trump campaigned on a platform that was anti-women-- and he’s followed through."

It started with repealing the Affordable Care Act’s birth control access mandate.

Now he has instituted a domestic gag rule that will withhold federal grants from organizations like Planned Parenthood simply because they perform abortions.

Planned Parenthood and similar organizations are the main source of healthcare for so many women across the country who couldn’t otherwise afford it.

I’m standing with women-- and against Trump-- and denouncing this domestic gag rule.

I have been a lifelong advocate for women’s rights and equality on every front. I support Planned Parenthood, paid family leave, equal pay, and a woman’s right to choose.

Peter King, on the other hand, has voted against paid family leave, voted against the ACA (which increased healthcare access for women), and voted to ban abortions nationwide.

Peter King is running the same anti-woman agenda that Trump is. As your Congressman, I’ll vote for policies that bring women’s rights to the forefront, not turn back the clock.

This domestic gag rule is just Republicans’ latest attempt to curtail women’s rights and freedoms.

Duwayne, who I've known for several years, is the Presiding Officer of the Suffolk County Legislature, a post he's been elected to several times. His campaign isn't so much about unaccountable promises as it is about solid progressive accomplishments, which has a lot to do with why Blue America endorsed him. He was the victim of a hate crime when he was eleven years old. This experience helped mold him into a champion for the voiceless. The son of two union workers, an auto mechanic and a registered nurse, he understands what working class families are fighting for. Washington needs more people with a sense of purpose to understand what they are fighting for and what they are fighting against. I asked Duwayne to name a half dozen things he's done that have changed the loves of people on the South Shore. These are the ones that popped into his head immediately:

• I created the Hate Crimes Task Force to address the hate crimes that were happening in the county.
• I sponsored a bill that was the first in the nation ban on powdered caffeine to minors. The FDA later took action to ban the bulk sale of powdered caffeine after my lobbying them.
• Under my leadership we expanded our human rights law to address housing discrimination against undocumented immigrants and LGBTQ.
• I also supported the ban of microbeads in consumer products which was having a detrimental effect in the environment.
• I initiated a program to provide child care for students at our community college that is on public assistance.
• I also created the Suffolk County Land-bank which is charger with cleaning up environmentally contaminated properties and returning them to the tax rolls. This program has received national recognition and has brought in over $5 million in tax revenues. 

It's one thing to talk about doing this and supporting that. It's something else to work with other people to get something done. Blue America supported legislative leaders who showed what they could do in legislatures before they got into Congress. And now we have dynamic congressional leaders like Ted Lieu (CA), Pramila Jayapal (WA), Jamie Raskin (MD) and Karen Bass (CA). This year some of our top endorsements are proven legislators like Kaniela Ing (HI), Jared Golden (ME), Lisa Brown (WA), Rashida Tlaib (MI), Ellen Lipton (MI), and, of course, Duwayne Gregory (NY).