Rallies, pressing the flesh, hitting the campaign trail — these time-honored electoral traditions have been put aside, at least for now, as the Covid-19 pandemic upends the country. Campaigns have gone virtual in New York’s First Congressional District, where several candidates are vying for the Democratic Party’s nomination to challenge the incumbent, Representative Lee Zeldin.
Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming, Perry Gershon, and Nancy Goroff all said on Monday that they had already stopped gathering petitions by March 17, the day the state suspended the signature-gathering process and reduced the signature requirement from 1,250 to 375.
Just before the March 17 suspension, Ms. Fleming said, “The first shift we did was to have our volunteers offer a box of pens for petition-gathering instead of individual pens, so no one would have to use one that someone else had touched. That lasted practically no time at all -- within a day, we said we can’t have volunteers out anymore.”
Mr. Gershon, who lost to Mr. Zeldin by four percentage points in 2018, said he himself had been out gathering signatures for his candidacy at the mobile home park on Oakview Highway in East Hampton around three weeks ago, “and realized at the end that it didn’t feel right.”
“We had more than enough at that point,” he said.
Ms. Goroff, who is on leave from her position as chairwoman of Stony Brook University’s chemistry department, said her campaign “stopped circulating petitions ourselves on March 10,” having gathered far more signatures than required under the revised rules. “We didn’t want to be contributing to the spread of the virus. We’re really focused right now on making sure we get information out to people that is useful and can help them through this difficult time.”
How to move forward, with less than three months until the Democratic primary? “We’re using every tool at our disposal for accessing and outreach to people remotely,” Ms. Goroff said. “We’re certainly continuing voter outreach efforts through phone calls and texting, as well as email and social media.”
Ms. Fleming held an online fund-raiser via video conference on Monday evening, one of several she has held that include a question-and-answer session. “It wasn’t the same as us all being together, face-to-face, campaigning, which I love and is certainly a much more typical way of connecting with voters,” she said. “We’re all in the same boat, and we’re going to make the best of it.”
Mr. Gershon launched a series of town hall-type events back in September, and held them in January and February in Patchogue and Coram. A March 18 event to take place in Bellport happened on Facebook instead. “We shifted the focus to talk about the effects of the coronavirus pandemic,” he said. “I had a public health expert on with me to answer questions.” Another such event will be held on Monday from 7 to 9 p.m., during which health care professionals will again join the candidate.
Anything we can do to keep attention to the campaign and what we’re trying to do, in circulation, in the general populace, that’s a good thing. It’s hard to have to adapt, not being able to do in-person events. I’m just focused on how do we keep engaging people.”
The pandemic and the governor’s executive order prohibiting nonessential gatherings have forced candidates to get creative in their fund-raising efforts. “It’s a very, very difficult time for people, so you need to be sensitive to these circumstances,” Ms. Fleming said. “For some, it’s just not appropriate to approach on the fund-raising level. But a lot of people do understand that the stakes are higher than ever. We need a change in leadership. So people are home and open to having conversations.”
“It’s fair to say that people’s focus has been less on political donations, and politics generally, than on getting by, survival, taking care of those most in need,” Mr. Gershon said. “From an attention point of view, trying to break through that is a challenge.”
While her campaign is not holding fund-raising events, it has already raised more than $1 million, Ms. Goroff said. “That put us in a very strong position . . . I think people’s minds are elsewhere. We want everybody to stay safe and focused on their loved ones.”
Instead of a traditional end-of-quarter fund-raising appeal, Mr. Gershon and his wife, Lisa, decided to match contributions to his campaign during the last week of March with donations to Long Island Cares, the East End Food Bank, and Community Action-Southold Town. “It gives people an opportunity to make a political gift but also support a charitable cause at the same time,” he said.
Despite the country’s predicament, one thing that has not changed in this campaign season is criticism of the incumbent, Mr. Zeldin, who is among President Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters. “The question is, is our president serving us in this crisis?” Ms. Fleming asked. “And I think the clear answer is no, whether because of misinformation and lack of trustworthiness — when it’s so incredibly important — or whether it’s bungling the testing rollout and not being truthful about it. These are gross failings of leadership, and Lee Zeldin has continued to support the president without question, even in circumstances where his own constituency is in jeopardy. That’s why I say even though the crisis makes campaigning more difficult, it also makes it more important.”
“After being incredibly partisan over the last three years, and especially the last year and a half,” Mr. Zeldin “is trying very desperately now to pretend he’s bipartisan,” Ms. Goroff said. “When people point out legitimate concerns with the president’s leadership, he says you can’t say that because that’s being partisan and this is no time for partisanship. But his record is so extreme, I think voters are smarter than to believe that he is suddenly interested in bipartisanship, when he has not behaved that way up until today.”
Mr. Gershon agreed with that assessment, adding that Mr. Zeldin has used the pandemic “to politicize in a way to be seemingly apolitical. He brags about being nonpartisan and working with the other party while at the same time does not miss an opportunity to slam Democrats on Breitbart and go after the Democrats in Congress and Schumer on Twitter and in his press releases. He is definitely talking out of both sides of his mouth.”
A spokeswoman for Mr. Zeldin did not respond to an email seeking comment on his re-election campaign during the pandemic.