The Patriot Post® · Lee Zeldin's Anti-Crime Campaign Hits Home in NY
New Yorkers are definitely getting the government they deserve. The question on November 8 will be whether they’ve had enough.
If so, the deep-blue state’s voters will elect tough-on-crime Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin as their next governor. If not, they’ll reelect soft-on-crime incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul. But in either case, they won’t be able to say they weren’t warned.
Eerily, the latest example of the Empire State’s rampant crime problem came to Zeldin’s Long Island home yesterday, where two young men were the victims of a gang-related drive-by shooting just feet from his doorstep. “My daughters Mikayla and Arianna were doing homework on the first floor,” said Zeldin, who was with his wife at a Columbus Day Parade in the Bronx. “They heard the shots. Boom! They went upstairs and locked themselves in the bathroom.”
“It really freaked them out,” said the congressman of his twin 16-year-old girls. “This is something where you had two people who got shot who are essentially lying down about 10 feet from where they were doing homework.” As for the two 17-year-old victims, investigators are looking into whether a Saturday night feud at a local recording studio may be connected to the shooting.
Recent polls have shown Zeldin gaining ground on Hochul, to the point where they’re now neck-and-neck according to a recent poll by Trafalgar. Elsewhere, Siena has Hochul up 17 and Emerson has her up 15, but no one believes those numbers now — not even the Democrat-friendly pollagandists who churn them out.
To get a sense of just how shocking an upset this would be — and how terrible the Democrats’ brand is just a month before Election Day — consider that Joe Biden carried New York by 23 points over Donald Trump in 2020.
“New Yorkers throughout the state are sick and tired of the attacks on our wallets, safety, freedom and kids’ education,” Zeldin said last week. “Crime Wave Kathy is driving New York right off a cliff.”
Zeldin is right, and the contrast on crime between Hochul and him couldn’t be more stark — nor could their positions on self-defense and the Second Amendment. In July, Hochul signed the deceptively named Concealed Carry Improvement Act, which marked the gun-grabbers’ first attempt to re-install the state’s notorious gun restrictions after the Supreme Court’s 2A-favorable Bruen ruling in June. As our Nate Jackson wrote at the time: “Leftists hate gun rights with the intensity of a thousand suns, and they won’t rest when it comes to chipping away at those rights. New York Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul called the Court’s ruling ‘frightful in its scope’ and called a special legislative session because, she insisted, ‘We are not powerless to respond to this.’”
Alas, Hochul’s efforts were in vain, as key parts of the legislation, which would’ve forced gun permit applicants to turn over a list of their social media accounts so officials could verify their “character and conduct,” was struck down by a federal judge.
As for Zeldin, we expect him to keep hammering away, especially given the events of yesterday. “I just don’t wanna ever stand in front of crime scene tape outside of my own home or outside of anyone else’s,” he said. “There’s a lot to do.”