Lee Zeldin's Critics Say Bannon Alliance Could Hurt Him

As the 2018 midterm elections come into view, Democrats in New York’s First Congressional District, stretching from Montauk to Brookhaven and most of Smithtown, are feeling that Representative Lee Zeldin is vulnerable, despite the Republican’s re-election in 2016 with 58 percent of the vote. 

Nationally, once-demoralized Democrats are interpreting recent events as a massive rejection of President Trump, whom polls consistently show draws approval from around one in three voters. Signs of a sea-change, in Democratic strategists  view, include last month’s gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey, which were followed by the Dec. 12 special election in which Doug Jones, a Democrat, defeated Roy Moore, a Republican who had been endorsed by the President and Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and current executive chairman of Breitbart News, in the solidly Republican state of Alabama. 

The Cook Political Report, an independent newsletter that analyzes elections and campaigns, puts New York’s First District in its “likely Republican” column, meaning the seat is not presently considered competitive but has the potential to become so. But the Dec. 14 fund-raiser for Mr. Zeldin that featured Mr. Bannon as the headlining speaker has given Mr. Zeldin’s critics ammunition that they hope will last through November. 

Breitbart News is an opinion and commentary website that Mr. Bannon described last year as “the platform for the alt-right,” a loosely organized group that is widely seen as promoting white supremacy, anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and neo-Fascism. Mr. Zeldin rejects that characterization, and cites Mr. Bannon’s strong support for Israel and its government’s policies as reasons why he considers him a friend and ally.

Mr. Bannon is at odds with so-called establishment Republicans and has vowed to defeat many of them in the midterm elections. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader,is among those drawing Mr. Bannon’s disdain, but this month it was Mr. McConnell on the offensive, ridiculing Mr. Bannon for backing Mr. Moore, who faced multiple accusations of seeking sexual relationships with teenage girls, after the Republicans lost the Senate seat. 

Drawing attention to the bond between Mr. Zeldin and Mr. Bannon will, the Congressman’s opponents hope, weaken his standing among First District voters. 

At least five East Hampton residents, each of them associated with Resist and Replace, a national effort to defeat Republicans in 2018, were among those who traveled to Manhattan on Dec. 14 to protest Mr. Bannon’s presence at Mr. Zeldin’s fund-raiser. The fund-raiser’s location was not disclosed, and so the protesters assembled outside the Park Avenue office of Wayne Berman, a co-host of the event, according to Amy Turner of Wainscott, who took part.

“I’m horrified that our congressman, who’s tried to portray himself as some kind of moderate, is aligning himself with an extremist like Bannon,” Ms. Turner said. Mr. Bannon, she said, “provides a voice, through Breitbart, for white supremacy and hate and bigotry of all kinds. I could not believe the congressman was aligning himself with those kinds of views. . . . He’s more interested in raising money than respecting his constituents. It felt like he needed a strong message.”

David Posnett of Springs said that his mother’s family were German Jews who emigrated to the United States before World War II. “For me, Judaism is all about tolerance and helping people,” he said. “I cannot understand current Israel right-wing politics. . . . It seems like a group of American Jews have aligned themselves with the right-wing faction in Israel.”

That group, he said, includes Mr. Zeldin. “For him, it seems to me, it’s all about power. It’s not the kind of Judaism I’m familiar with. His latest stroke, which is to befriend himself with Steve Bannon, is a slap in the face of everybody, and I’m hoping this will backfire.”

Mr. Bannon, Mr. Posnett said, “has been very cagey. You can’t find anti-Semitic statements attributed to him, but as head of Breitbart, he hires writers that write inflammatory stuff, and then you get hundreds and hundreds of wackos across the country who write even worse stuff as comments” on the website. “Among those are extremely violent, anti-Semitic comments.” 

Mr. Posnett, a retired physician, also criticized Mr. Zeldin for repeated votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. “I spent my whole life trying to save people, primarily cancer patients,” he said. “I’ve seen countless patients die because of a lack of insurance, bureaucratic hurdles, so they couldn’t get their chemo in time because they had no insurance to cover it. For me, even though it was imperfect, Obamacare was a huge step forward. . . . The Republican attitude is,  'If you can’t pay, go and die.' "

Mara Gerstein of East Hampton delivered a speech at the protest, drawing a parallel between her Jewish ancestors and Mr. Zeldin’s, both of whom came to New York from Europe. “And now, here we are, protesting Congressman Lee Zeldin’s alliance with the person in this country who bears as much responsibility for the rise of the alt-right as anyone we could name,” she told the assembled. Mr. Bannon, she said, is “the spiritual leader of the men and women who marched on Charlottesville chanting ‘Jews will not replace us.’ It is Steve Bannon ' the wolf in wolves’ clothing ' who has consolidated today’s white supremacist movements behind political leaders who are willing to use identity-based hate as the fastest route to power.” 

Ms. Gerstein thanked her fellow protesters for attending, “to tell Lee Zeldin that yes, you are the company you keep, that we see the choices he has made, and that we’ll keep showing up until we have someone representing us who believes in a bright future for America, not someone whose embrace of the alt-right dishonors the sacrifice and mocks the aspirations of our people.” 

The New York Post, citing an unnamed source, reported that the fund-raiser was held at the Southern Hospitality restaurant, about one mile from the protest. Mr. Zeldin, the source said, referred to the protesters in his remarks. They were there, he said, “because none of them work.”