On Tuesday night, the confetti was still falling at her Democratic primary win party when Gov. Kathy Hochul rolled out a general election warning: If her Republican opponent wins in November, he could follow the Supreme Court’s lead and curtail New Yorkers’ abortion rights.
Lee Zeldin, the Republican opponent to Roe, didn’t say a word about Roe in his victory speech. Just days after he had lauded the ruling, Mr. Zeldin instead stuck to criticizing Ms. Hochul’s handling of crime, inflation and the pandemic.
Their divergent approaches are no accident as New York enters the most competitive general elections the Empire State has seen for two decades.
To win in New York, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1, Mr. Zeldin has to reach beyond his conservative base and present himself to be a common-sense candidate in order to appeal to Democrats concerned about public safety, rising living costs, and political independence.
To stop him, Ms. Hochul is determined to convince those same voters that Mr. Zeldin’s views are far more extreme than he lets on — above all, when it comes to a woman’s right to an abortion.
“This is not an ordinary Republican,” Ms. Hochul, the state’s first female governor, said Wednesday morning on NY1 shortly before rolling out a new website labeling Mr. Zeldin a figure from the “extreme fringes.”
“He also supports taking away women’s right to choose,” she said. “This is New York.”
The issue is extremely important in New York, which was the first state to legalize abortion broadly in its entirety in 1970. New Yorkers have not elected a governor opposed to legalized abortion since 1970, and they continue to be overwhelmingly supportive of abortion rights.
The average of the most recent polls conducted by The New York Times prior to the Dobbs decision revealed that approximately 63 percent of New Yorkers believe that abortion should be legalized, while only 32 percent do not. Only seven states and the District of Columbia were more supportive.
Long Island’s conservative four-term congressman, Mr. Zeldin, has been a consistent vote to restrict abortion access and stop federal funds going to Planned Parenthood. He was a co-sponsor of legislation that would, with few exceptions and federally ban abortions after twenty weeks and criminally punish doctors who violate it. He has been praised by anti-abortion groups for his leadership.
Just days before a draft of the Dobbs decision leaked this spring, Mr. Zeldin told New York Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, that he supported appointing a state health commissioner who “respects life as opposed to what we’re used to,” according to a recording of the event obtained by NY1.
Key Results in New York’s 2022 Primary Elections
New York held several primaries on June 28 for various statewide offices, including governor and lieutenant governor. Primaries were also held for some State Assembly districts.
“For a Republican to win in New York, you need to run the straight flush, a perfect campaign,” said Thomas Doherty, a top aide to the former Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican suggested that Mr. Zeldin might have made costly mistakes by promoting his anti-abortion views.
“I don’t know what Zeldin’s thinking was, other than maybe he had a problem in the primary,” Mr. Doherty said.
Mr. Zeldin’s allies argue that Democrats are vastly overestimating how much everyday voters will care about the abortion issue come November, particularly at a time when many New Yorkers are fearful about public safety and struggling to make ends meet amid rising costs for rent, gas and groceries.
These issues have helped Republicans win victories in Democrat-friendly territory in Virginia, New Jersey, New York and parts thereof over the past year. In New York, polls consistently show voters believe the state — and the country — are headed in the wrong direction, views that Mr. Zeldin, a lawyer and Army veteran, hopes could help propel him to victory.
“The Democrats are pushing this abortion debate because they’ve failed so miserably in the other areas that they don’t want to talk about those things,” said Bruce Blakeman, the Republican Nassau County executive who upset a Democratic incumbent last November. Besides, he contended that many voters agree with Mr. Zeldin’s abortion stance.
“The fact that he may be more restrictive than others with respect to abortion is his personal choice,” Mr. Blakeman added.
Mr. Zeldin is the one who did it all has repeatedly tried to stress that the governor has limited power to change abortion laws in New York, particularly given Democrats’ tight hold on the Legislature in Albany and a 2019 law codifying federal protections in case Roe was ever overturned.
“New York has already codified far more than what Roe provided, so the law in New York State is exactly the same the day after the Supreme Court decision gets released,” Mr. Zeldin said in a recent interview with The New York Times. (His spokeswoman declined to comment on this story.
But, as Ms. Hochul has shown by initiating an advertising campaign to clarify New Yorkers’ abortion rights and dedicating $35 million in state funds to promote abortion access, the governor does have broad discretion to interpret, enforce and reinforce the state’s status as an abortion safe haven.
While Mr. Zeldin may be trying to avoid the issue of abortion as he heads into a general elections fight, he has not made any secret of his views in recent weeks.
The congressman was delighted that the Supreme Court reversed almost 50 years of precedent last week and celebrated it as “a victory for life, for family, for the Constitution, and for federalism” and shared his own experience as a parent of twin daughters born more than 14 weeks prematurely.
“In a state that has legalized late-term partial birth abortion and non-doctors performing abortion, in a state that refuses to advance informed consent and parental consent, and where not enough is being done to promote adoption and support mothers, today is yet another reminder that New York clearly needs to do a much better job to promote, respect and defend life,” he said in a statement.
This is a difficult issue for Republicans in New York. The primary voters tend towards more socially conservative candidates but the general electorate is more leftward. Still, Mr. Zeldin’s views depart from other members of his own party who have successfully won statewide office in New York in recent decades, like Mr. Pataki, who was last elected in 2002.
While Mr. Pataki still held office, his political staff ran a poll asking voters for their opinions on abortion. The results showed that approximately a third of voters believed that Mr. Pataki was pro-abortion rights, while another third believed he was opposed to it. The rest did not know.
The governor and his aides were happy.
Mr. Pataki was, in fact, a supporter of a woman’s right to choose. But the poll indicated that he had managed to thread the needle for a Republican even though his primary voters were against abortion, but that the overwhelming majority of residents believed women have the right end a child. The model helped Mr. Pataki win 3 terms.
Ms. Hochul and her Democratic comrades have millions of dollars available to spend on campaign ads. They are not hiding their strategy. They are ready to pursue Mr. Zeldin on more than abortion. They also want to take on his views on gun restrictions, support for former President Donald J. Trump and vote to overturn the 2020 election results in key States.
“You’ve got an extremist view held by Lee Zeldin,And we’re not going to keep that a secret,” said Jay Jacobs, the state Democratic Party chairman. “The voters need to know what they are buying.”
Dana Rubinstein and Jesse McKinleyContributed reporting
Source: NY Times
