Vote Against 2020 Election Results Cited as #1 Reason Congressman Zeldin Can’t be Elected NY Governor
By Dan Murphy
The buzz among many moderate republicans and independents in Westchester is, can someone who voted against the certification of the 2020 Presidential election in Congress be elected Governor of deep blue New York? Or, how can Zeldin win even in the middle of a red wave coming across the country and possibly in NY?
Many Westchester republicans have held onto their allegiance to Rob Astorino for Governor, so Zeldin has to face that hometown advantage. But while Astorino has tried to ease back on his ties to Trump, Zeldin has done nothing of the sort.
Several newspapers across New York State have come to the same conclusion. Zeldin failed as a leader on Jan. 6, 2021, when he voted against certifying the election of Joe Biden. The headline of Newsday, Long Island’s and Zeldin’s hometown daily paper, was “Zeldin’s Failure as a Leader.”
Calling Zeldin’s votes against certificaiton, “shameful,” Newsday outlined the comments that Zeldin made in the days and weeks after the narrow November 3, 2020 election of Joe Biden over Donald Trump, one of which was “You can’t tell me with a straight face that there aren’t dead people who get absentee ballots and then vote,” said Zeldin on the Sebastian Gorka show. And “The system isn’t tamper proof. It’s not error proof,” on Fox TV.
Zeldin’s heated rhetoric continued up until after Jan. 6, when he called for a peaceful transition. But Newsday said that Zeldin “should be haunted by the lies and rhetoric that led to the insurrection in which members of law enforcement working to protect Zeldin’s colleagues were beaten and one killed.”
One Westchester republican pointed out, “Astorino lost his re-elect as County Executive in 2017 because of Trump and his ties to Trump. Isn’t the same thing going to happen to Lee Zeldin? Can’t you see the TV ads coming and coming? I just don’t see a Trumper winning in New York State.”
The Daily News, in their endorsement of Harry Wilson in the GOP Primary, wrote about Zeldin, “Lee Zeldin, the Suffolk County congressman who is the favorite of party bosses, served four years in the state Senate and eight years in Washington, but his veer towards the Trumpist right repels us and will weigh him down in the fall.”
The Buffalo News, who endorsed Astorino, wrote about Zeldin, “Zeldin disqualified himself by voting, in the immediate aftermath of an insurrection, to reject electors pledged to Joe Biden. He defends the action as routine, but an insurrection isn’t routine. It was terrible judgment and, for a governor, judgment is the coin of realm.”
On his speech on the House Floor on Jan. 6, Zeldin said “many of my constituents have been outraged and demanding that I voice their objections here today.”
We remind our readers of the voter enrollment numbers in New York State. 6 million democrats, 2.8 million republicans and 3.3 million independent voters-not registered to any party.
