Are Democrats trying to make Lee Zeldin sound cool?
In a Hail Mary attempt to prevent Republican Lee Zeldin from pulling off an upset next Tuesday, Democrat Kathy Hochul’s campaign decided to deploy an army of shrill, hectoring fishwives to stump for her in reliably Democrat Manhattan Thursday. And all they managed to do is make Zeldin sound cool.
As I mentioned earlier this week, the panicked Hochul held a rally featuring the unpopular Kamala Harris and the equally unpopular Hillary Clinton. And during the event, Democrat Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney referred to Lee Zeldin as “Mr. No, Mr. Darkness.”
When “New Yorker” reporter Erin Durkin tweeted Maloney’s quote Thursday evening, the reaction probably wasn’t what Maloney was hoping for.
Rather than make Lee Zeldin sound dangerous and scary, Maloney made Zeldin sound “Metal AF:”
I whipped up that image in response to Stephen’s tweet because he’s right. It is Metal as f*ck.
Funnily enough, my Lee Zeldin/Led Zeppelin image was such a viral hit on Twitter that someone even posted it in a reply to Erin Durkin’s initial tweet.
If the goal was to put the fear of God into New York voters, Carolyn Maloney failed miserably.
I mean, come on. What was her logic here?
“Oh, NO! Lee Zeldin is becoming a ROCK STAR! How can we stop him from beating our fellow fishwife?! I know! I’ll make him sound like a heavy metal rock star.”
No wonder Carolyn Maloney lost her primary race against Jerry Nadler.
Only Kathy Hochul would think the woman who got beaten by a broken-down old man who craps his pants in public would be an ideal surrogate for her campaign.
I said the other day that I haven’t seen anything like this before in New York politics. Lee Zeldin’s popularity is definitely unique.
Usually, Republicans nominate some nobody who doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell against the Democrat candidate. Even that ludicrous Kirsten Gillibrand won her 2018 reelection to the Senate by a 34-point margin. I had to look up the name of the Republican who challenged her because, even in 2018, I couldn’t remember her name.
Likewise, Andrew Cuomo beat challenger Marc Molinaro in 2018 by 23.4 points.
In New York, Republicans are the Washington Generals to the Democrats’ Harlem Globetrotters. They’re not supposed to present a challenge or (God forbid) win.
Then Lee Zeldin came along. And NY Democrats don’t know what to do.
Before the primaries, Lee spent months traveling the state slowly building support for his campaign. And after he won the primary in June, he just kept traveling — holding small gatherings, pressing the flesh.
Then in the fall, his campaign took off.
When I first started following Lee on Twitter a year ago, his tweets rarely got more than a handful of likes and retweets while the videos he posted never got viewed more than a few hundred times.
That’s not the case anymore. Zeldin’s Twitter engagement skyrocketed in recent months.
Like this one one from yesterday:
And while I admit that Twitter isn’t real life, the increased engagement does bear noting.
One thing you have to understand about New York voters is this. The ones who don’t vote Democrat often stay home on election day. They know the Democrat candidates will sail to victory so, as many often say, “what’s the point?”
But this year, there is a point.
Lee Zeldin isn’t just a warm body whose name nobody can remember. He’s a genuine contender in a dead-heat race against a Democrat incumbent.
And all those discouraged New York voters who haven’t fled the state for Florida are now excited about Lee Zeldin.
Now, Zeldin isn’t holding small gatherings but massive rallies where hundreds, if not thousands, show up on a regular basis.
The one holding small gatherings now is the incumbent Democrat, Kathy Hochul (when she bothers to campaign at all). And the only way she gets a crowd at her rare campaign events is by prevailing on organized groups like union members and other activists to show up.
And since that isn’t helping, Hochul’s Hail Mary was to drag Hillary’s dusty ass off the shelf and prevail upon the deeply unpopular Kamala Harris to join her rally in deep-blue, reliably-Democrat Manhattan.
In short, Hochul’s strategy was to campaign with women so odious that only the most reliably-Democrat voters would care. And they’re already planning to vote for her, so “what’s the point?”
Meanwhile, her “We are Women, Hear us Roar: ZELDIN IS EXTREME” campaign strategy did nothing to change the minds of the Republicans, Conservatives, Independents, and yes, Democrats who are excited to vote for Lee Zeldin.
And if the best Hochul has to offer in the final days of this campaign is to have these women make Lee Zeldin sound cool, I can see why New York Democrats are bracing for disaster on Tuesday.
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