Zeldin pushing to beat Cuomo
Representative is the presumptive nominee
U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin wants to “save New York” from “King Cuomo” through fiscal responsibility, a tough-oncrime approach and a reimagined formula for funding the state’s public schools.
The state Republican Party in June anointed the Long Island congressman as its “presumptive nominee” for governor. Party leadership is confident that in a state with 3.8 million more Democrats than Republicans, voters are so distraught with both Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s personality and policies that they would select a Republican for governor while looking past
Zeldin’s close ties to the divisive former president, Donald J. Trump.
Zeldin, a former Suffolk County state senator, was one of the most vocal advocates of Trump during the president’s impeachment trials. After the Jan. 6 protest at the nation’s Capitol involving Trump supporters looking to “stop the steal,” Zeldin voted against the certification of the presidential election.
Zeldin, a veteran and member of the U.S. Army Reserve, is viewed by some from his time in Albany as a moderate with a history of bipartisan legislation, particularly on veterans issues. While in Congress, he has taken up some of the conservative base’s flash point issues, while also advocating for veterans’ rights. On the campaign trail, 16 months before the election, he is pushing against both critical race theory in schools and mandatory vaccinations for the coronavirus.
In an hour-long interview with the Times Union, Zeldin avoided mentioning the president’s name and stayed hyper-focused on policy and quality of life issues that he believes are what the voters care about.
“I’ve been focused on issues that matter most to New Yorkers,” Zeldin said, when asked about his message is to voters who may wonder how they can support someone who voted against certification of the election. “New Yorkers are hitting their breaking point right now with the high cost of living, the erosion of public safety, with the quality of education in our schools, the governor’s approach toward attacking people’s freedoms and liberties, and the corruption that has him embarrassing New Yorkers and disgracing himself.”
Eight years ago, while serving in the state Senate, Zeldin reacted to Cuomo’s “state of the state” address with a similar, slightly less political, refrain: “Clearly, we must unburden hardworking New Yorkers from the crushing taxes that affect their family budgets and quality of life. We must make government work better and cost less, and we must develop better strategies that support our small businesses and create jobs on Long Island and throughout the state.”
His commitment to conservative principles and the community that he serves are big pieces to what he believes has carried him to not lose a race since he came into office in 2011.
It’s those same principles that both Zeldin and Republican Party leadership hope can propel them to topple the threeterm governor they’ve dubbed, “King Cuomo,” in what the congressman is calling a “last stand” for New York.
After growing up in Suffolk County, the son of a law enforcement officer and teacher, Zeldin went to the University at Albany. He graduated in 2001 and then received his law degree from Albany Law School in 2003. He joked that at cocktail parties early on in law school, he could not drink. While in school he interned with elected officials.
From 2003 to 2007, Zeldin served in the Army. He was deployed to Iraq in 2006. When he and his wife, Diana, had twins who were premature, Zeldin shifted his service to be in the Army Reserve, which he continues to serve in.
In 2008, Zeldin ran for Congress against Democrat Timothy Bishop but lost by 16 percentage points.
After losing the race, he opened a private law practice in Smithtown. In 2010, Zeldin ran successfully for state Senate against a Democratic incumbent, Brian Foley. After four years in the Senate, he ran again for Congress against Bishop, winning New York’s First Congressional District seat by nearly nine percentage points, or 11,000 votes.
He has been in the seat ever since and if Zeldin chose to run for reelection instead of governor, and Republicans won back the House, he would be poised to take on a leadership position. Zeldin said he believes in term limits — no more than two for governor, he pledges — and he wouldn’t have stayed much longer in Congress if he had run for reelection.
Zeldin’s time in the state Legislature, 2011 to 2014, came while New York was climbing out of the 2008 recession and at a time when Cuomo’s popularity was never higher, according to Siena College polling data.
It came at the time of the infamous “three men in a room,” which later saw two of them, the Republican and Democratic leaders, tumble. Now, the third, Cuomo faces several investigations that center on his administration’s public reporting of nursing home deaths and a multitude of sexual harassment allegations.
Before all of the public scandals that followed, Cuomo was liked by well more than two-thirds of New Yorkers, and Zeldin, a fresh face to the senate, found allies to help push through legislation cutting the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s payroll taxes and supporting veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“New York currently has a governor who sets out bold agendas and finds a way to get things done,” Zeldin wrote in an August 2011 news release about a probe into nonprofit executive compensation. “I’m confident that the governor’s leadership on this issue will lead to real progress. He has the experience as a former attorney general and the assistance of a very capable cabinet to bring results.”
Zeldin often celebrated veterans in his district, had bridges named after them and passed a bipartisan bill to limit protests at military funerals. When he was working with Cuomo to try to repeal the MTA payroll tax, which he said unfairly treated people in Long Island as New York City’s piggy bank, Zeldin wrote that “Cuomo is a key ally with the leadership skills to bring this legislation across the finish line.”
Zeldin pushed for more autonomy for charter schools, which he continues to do. He has pushed against the school aid formula and said that it needs to be entirely overhauled, so that school districts are not waiting until the end of the budget cycle to know how much money they may have.
Zeldin, in his first year, voted against the Marriage Equality Act, which legalized same-sex marriage.
“It is my belief that marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman,” Zeldin said in 2011. “As of tonight, in New York, that definition has changed. This legislation will have a profound impact on the lives of all New Yorkers.”
In his interview with the Times Union, Zeldin said that his view then was more about being uncomfortable with the idea that a state senator could change the definition of marriage. He said now that the Supreme Court has ruled on it, “it’s an entirely different reality than it was a decade ago.”
Zeldin voted against gun legislation in 2013, brought forward one month after the Newton, Conn., shooting at a school.
“Our focus as a state and nation has to be on providing people in need of mental health care more access to help,” Zeldin said in a statement following his vote. “Society as a whole also needs to better understand mental illness and develop improved means of detecting potential violence long before it can become a threat to anyone else.”
Today, Zeldin remains a staunch advocate of the Second Amendment, but believes there are ways to continue to curtail gun issues that plague cities across the state and nation.
He would reverse cashless bail and hold onto qualified immunity, pointing to recent criminal justice reforms passed by a Democratic supermajority. He believes there should be more law enforcement officers, not less, and would like to see a statewide “bill of rights” for law enforcement officers.
Similar to his time in the Senate, Zeldin would look toward ways to limit the compensation of executives at medical nonprofit organizations, which he said is a major cause of the outsized costs of Medicaid.
In 2013, Zeldin passed legislation as part of the Hurricane Sandy Recovery Package, which hurt parts of Long Island. He said then it would “leave us better equipped to face natural challenges in the future.”
Zeldin continues to believe that the government should fend off rising sea levels, and invest in bipartisan legislation to ensure the communities living around where climate change may be felt most immediately can continue their lives. He did not offer expansive climate change plans.
In 2014, Zeldin voted against a Democrat-sponsored immigration bill because it provided “extensive voting rights to a massive, untapped base and provides them with particular, expensive rights as an incentive.”
Zeldin said he supports immigrants who came to America through the official legal channels and does not believe others who came here without explicit permission, like “Dreamers,” — children who were born in the United States to parents who were here illegally — should necessarily qualify for certain rights, including college financial support, especially in lieu of citizens.
“I’m extremely sensitive to the fact that the limited pot of money has to be balanced with people who are here in the country legally, working hard, and they can’t afford to send their kids to college,” Zeldin said. “We have to do something about that.”
In Washington, Zeldin touts that he is one of the most bipartisan members in Congress, according to The Lugar Center, which works with Georgetown University to rank members based on bill sponsorship.
While Zeldin may sponsor or co-sponsor bills with bi-partisan support, he rarely votes against his party. A Times Union analysis of the voting records of the eight congressional Republicans in New York indicates no one, including Rep. Elise Stefanik, has crossed party lines less than Zeldin.
“I have been voting in a way that is representing the people who send me to office,” Zeldin said.
While in Congress, Zeldin, like the Republican Party in New York, began distancing itself from Cuomo.
“This guy is out of control,” Zeldin tweeted in April 2018. “King Cuomo actually believes that the law is whatever he says it is. No Constitution, Legislature or statute will ever take precedence over this man’s political ambitions.”
In 2019, during the Trump impeachment trial over his role with the leaders of Ukraine, Zeldin spoke more than any other Republican, according to an NBC News analysis of impeachment transcripts. The article’s headline: “Trump’s defender: How a little-known GOP lawmaker became a pointman on impeachment.”
After the insurrection at the Capitol, Zeldin voted against the certification of the election, one of four New York lawmakers to do so. It’s a vote Republican officials are aware will closely follow Zeldin may be used in attack ads as he tries to win over Democrats.
Zeldin has amassed a large following on social media, where posts are often geared toward the Republican base. State party officials note he has a wide reach in fundraising because of his national profile, which followed Trump’s coattails.
Fundraising totals are expected to be released in the middle of July, which Republican officials expect to show Zeldin amassing a healthy number as it begins to plot its course to governor.
Zeldin’s supporters often cite the ills of the state, and nation, including spiking crime and high taxes that are pushing people out of New York. It’s a crisis, they believe, that someone like Zeldin is equipped to solve and a crisis that will galvanize independents and Democrats to support a Republican.
When Gov. George E. Pataki unseated Mario Cuomo in 1994, the voter registration margin between Democrats and Republicans was 2.4 million fewer than it is today and third-party or independents made up a greater share of the overall electorate. Pataki won by less than 300,000 votes.
It’s something his former colleague state Sen. Patrick Gallivan believes Zeldin can overcome.
“Everybody may not agree with his values or how he votes on certain things, but he is a man of his convictions,” Gallivan said. “He always put his community first.
People are concerned about crime and taxes, said Gallivan, who joined Zeldin in the senate in 2011, and if voters focus on those issues, and not Zeldin’s votes on impeachment and election certification, then he would be in a good position to win.
Party officials hope that by igniting the campaign early the more volatile issues could play out sooner.
“That’s been our failure in the past,” New York GOP Chairman Nick Langworhty said at the straw poll vote that led to Zeldin’s nomination. “We’ve tried to compress this.”
Langworthy views Zeldin as the party’s “franchise quarterback” and now they can build their team around him.
Suffolk County Republican Chairman Jesse Garcia sees Zeldin as someone who is effective, regardless of party, and as someone who is a “Democratic incumbent slayer.” He sees Zeldin as someone who courts the “bluecollar Democrats,” which he compared to the “Reagan Democrats” or “Trump Democrats.”
Zeldin’s district has been known as a swing county, a toss-up. It’s one with a Democrat as the county executive, but it voted for Trump. Zeldin believes those feelings of being forgotten by both the progressive Democrats in the city and the bureaucrats of Albany are leading reasons why voters, regardless of his prior votes, will side with him.
“I believe our state is in need of saving,” Zeldin said. “This is a last stand. This is a last great opportunity to save New York.”