Representative Lee Zeldin is facing more criticism from constituents in the wake of his sustained efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Mr. Zeldin, one of former President Trump's most loyal supporters, often touts the fact that an index determined by the Lugar Center and McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University ranks him as the 12th most bipartisan member of the House. On Monday, 259 of his constituents wrote to the Lugar Center to ask that Mr. Zeldin and colleagues who tried to derail the certification of multiple states' electoral votes be excluded from its next Bipartisan Index.
The move follows Mr. Zeldin's insistence, for weeks after the election, that the result was illegitimate because state officials, many of them Republicans, had changed the rules to enable mail-in voting during the pandemic. His efforts included support of the Texas attorney general's challenge to the results from four states won by President Biden, which the Supreme Court declined to hear, and continued through the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol building, after which he again objected to certification of the results in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
"After witnessing the horrific insurrection of January 6 and watching Rep. Zeldin persist in echoing the mob's demands hours later, his inclusion makes a mockery of the intent of the Index," according to the constituents' letter. "By joining an amicus brief in support of the Texas lawsuit that sought to invalidate millions of votes, and by making specious arguments and then voting against Electoral College results, Rep. Zeldin has forfeited any claims to bipartisanship or comity in Congress."
Those signing the letter, said Jackie Gavron, an organizer of the campaign, are "ordinary constituents" of New York's First Congressional District, "regular people who are outraged" by Mr. Zeldin's behavior, which she said "has just been unconstitutional, seditious, and very, very dangerous. He's proven to be anti-democracy, and we have to do something."
Along with bipartisan governing, the nonprofit Lugar Center, named for former Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), focuses on global food security, aid effectiveness, and nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Dan Diller, the center's director of policy, told The Star last month that its Bipartisan Index is based on objective statistics and does not incorporate subjective judgments. Scores are calculated via a proprietary formula that measures the frequency with which members co-sponsor bills offered by the opposite party, he explained, and the frequency with which their own bills are co-sponsored by the other party.
"There are hundreds of grades and scores for members of Congress out there," Mr. Diller wrote in an email.Ê"Almost all of them are intended to support a partisan position or viewpoint.ÊOur Index is one of the few that is focused on a nonpartisan goal: incentivizing members of both parties and all philosophies to work across the aisle at bill introduction."
Mr. Zeldin scores well on the Index, he said, "and has, since he entered Congress. What that means specifically is that he is crossing the aisle with great frequency to co-sponsor bills introduced by Democrats, and many of his own bills are written in a way that they attract Democratic co-sponsors."
But, says the letter from Mr. Zeldin's constituents, the congressman's "radical, divisive and dangerous actions and statements are far removed" from Mr. Lugar's stated goal for the Bipartisan Index of " 'raising the level of cooperation and civility' and diminishing 'unrelenting partisanship.' No matter how Mr. Zeldin and his allies vote in the next few months to whitewash that extremist vote of Jan. 6, rewarding them with a high rating on the 2021 index would make a mockery of the index and tarnish the reputations" of the Lugar Center and McCourt School, they said.
Mr. Zeldin, they continue, "has long demonstrated a disregard for bipartisanship" by meeting with the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia, and "by his choice of inflammatory figures" with whom he has associated, including Stephen Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, both controversial associates of Mr. Trump. "But his actions and statements over the past few weeks to overturn the election have crossed a line."
The letter cites multiple statements made by Mr. Zeldin on social media and Newsmax TV, where he said on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, that Democrats "want absolutely [sic] power. Not only do they want you to agree with them on their policy goals, they are also demanding that you think the way that they do, and in many cases you'll get canceled out if you don't."
A Jan. 21 blog post by Mr. Diller and two of his colleagues notes that Mr. Zeldin and Representative Elise Stefanik of New York's 21st Congressional District are "unquestionably outliers," both scoring high on the Bipartisan Index in the three Congresses in which they have served. "There is no doubt that both are working frequently with Democrats on legislation," they write.Ê"But both also have been strident in challenging the certified election results in highly partisan ways," including supporting the Texas attorney general's suit, "which was derided by numerous election law experts and constitutional scholars [and] asked the Supreme Court for the absurd remedy of disenfranchising tens of millions of voters in other states."
Of Mr. Zeldin and Ms. Stefanik, they write that "It is possible for a member to be devoted to crossing the aisle to work with the other party on, say, pocketbook legislation, while simultaneously making highly partisan choices in their rhetoric and posture on high profile national issues."
Outliers, Mr. Diller said on Monday, "are part of life," citing both Mr. Zeldin and Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who is ranked No. 420 on the Lugar Center's Index, yet voted not only to certify the election results but also to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection.
"We work very hard to try to be just a small voice for cooperative legislation," he said, "so everything isn't driven by political calculation. That's the overarching goal here." If members of Congress cooperate with the other party on legislation, "we're happy about that. If they do something apart from that, as we believe Mr. Zeldin did in this case, that's regrettable. We expect that voters will balance all that."
Since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, an act of domestic terrorism in which five people died, constituents have protested outside Mr. Zeldin's district office in Patchogue and circulated petitions calling for his resignation or condemning his actions. On Jan. 22, East Hampton Town residents were among a group of 22 active and retired lawyers who filed a complaint with the Attorney Grievance Committee for the Supreme Court, Appellate Division, in Albany, charging violation of ethics rules, "including participating in frivolous litigation, making false statements regarding the presidential election, and committing, arguably, a criminal act that reflects on his trustworthiness."
Katie Vincentz, a spokeswoman for Mr. Zeldin, did not reply to an email seeking comment.
