The two candidates vying for the Democratic Party’s nomination to challenge Representative Lee Zeldin in New York’s First Congressional District next year both support the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Meanwhile, Mr. Zeldin, who has been a steadfast ally of the president, has queried his constituents as to their support for the inquiry.
Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, announced her support for impeachment proceedings on Sept. 24, in the wake of an anonymous whistle-blower’s account of a phone call between Mr. Trump and the president of Ukraine. Mr. Trump allegedly asked his counterpart to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading candidate to challenge him in 2020, and his son Hunter Biden, who had been a director of a Ukrainian gas company.
Mr. Trump appears to have implicitly threatened to withhold military aid to pressure Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, to agree to investigate the Bidens. The president insisted there was no quid pro quo.
Perry Gershon, who narrowly lost a race against Mr. Zeldin last year and has declared his candidacy to face the congressman next year, issued a statement on Sept. 24. “To protect our democracy, Congress must move forward with an impeachment inquiry,” he said. “President Trump crossed the line by (1) obstructing the whistle-blower law and (2) using congressionally approved aid as a bargaining chip to force a foreign nation to investigate his political rival. It is clear that with no enforcement of his boundaries, this president will continue to ignore them, and the rule of law will be forever compromised.”
Nancy Goroff, the other declared candidate for the Democratic nomination, sent out a statement on the same day. “Today, after looking at all the available facts, and considering this defining moment in our country, I’m calling for an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump,” she said. “The allegations that he sought to pressure a foreign country into investigating a political opponent are alarming. They cut to the core of our national security, and what separates a democracy from an autocracy.”
“If the allegations are true,” Ms. Goroff continued, “Donald Trump should be removed from office — and an impeachment inquiry is the proper way to determine the truth.”
Mr. Zeldin’s email to constituents was brief. “As your representative in Congress, your thoughts and opinions are important to me, and I want to hear what you have to say,” he wrote on Saturday. “Do you support a formal impeachment inquiry of President Trump?” Katie Vincentz, a press contact for Mr. Zeldin, had not responded to an email seeking the results of the congressman’s inquiry as of noon yesterday.
But a fund-raising appeal from Mr. Zeldin referencing the impeachment inquiry was decidedly partisan. “It’s as if facts don’t matter to the radical Democrats,” he wrote in an email on Friday, as shown in an article on the website New York State of Politics. “They’d rather tear the country apart at its seams with a misguided impeachment push to appease their enraged activist base, than working together for the good of the American people.” An impeachment of the president, he wrote, “is just another political stunt by the radical Democrats to divide our country.”
On Twitter, Mr. Zeldin attacked Democratic colleagues who back an investigation of the president. “House Dems are desperately abusing their offices to re-litigate the ‘16 election,” he wrote yesterday, “to appease an enraged activist base & remove POTUS [the acronym for President of the United States] from office. With double standards, bad faith & eroded credibility, they are consumed with resisting, opposing, impeaching & obstructing everything.”
“This entire impeachment inquiry is a parody,” he wrote on Saturday. “Those pushing it are getting less & less serious about good faith, credibility, or the process, the more & more they rush to impeach w/out knowing the charge or the facts & evidence to support the charge.”
The day before, he wrote that “If the goal of Congressional Dems this week was to divide the country, waste time, embarrass themselves, blow off policy opportunities, master the double standard, appease their enraged activist base, & show just how unfit they are to lead . . . well then . . . mission accomplished!”
Both of Mr. Zeldin’s would-be challengers criticized Mr. Zeldin, who has defended the president on cable news programs as well as Twitter. Ms. Goroff’s statement led by saying that she, “in stark contrast to her Trump-defending Republican opponent Representative Lee Zeldin, calls on Congress to demand a formal impeachment inquiry.”
“Deflection is not an excuse or remedy,” Mr. Gershon said in his Sept. 24 statement. “ ‘Whataboutism’ as a defense must stop. Without evidence of misdeeds, Republicans like Representative Zeldin try to stir a phony pot of controversy by tweeting misleading videos. Such activity turns a blind eye to the real lawlessness by our chief executive and further enables his bad actions and words.”