'Tis a new fundraising season

Daily Point

GOP's future

The invitation for a Suffolk County GOP “victory” celebration on Monday has some interesting language in bold. Under the name of the top guest, Rep. Lee Zeldin, the invitation says: “The Future of the Republican Party.”

The Shirley politician will be the keynote speaker for the event, says county GOP chairman Jesse Garcia, who suggested that of Zeldin's present and future, "the sky's the limit for that."

Zeldin, who lost the governor’s race to incumbent Kathy Hochul by less than 6 percentage points in unofficial results, talks a lot these days about his party’s future as he ponders his own — perhaps including a run for Republican National Committee chair. 

His Twitter posts have been full of directives to fellow GOPers, such as, “Go everywhere, always be on offense, and never ever rest.”

He has argued that the GOP “needs to retool and transform in preparation for 2024,” and has laid out some philosophical and strategic thoughts on how to do so, including what sounds like the red version of the every-county campaign that Democratic senatorial candidate John Fetterman rode to victory in Pennsylvania this year.

“Republicans need to campaign much harder in the cities,” Zeldin tweeted this week. “It doesn’t matter how deeply blue the city is or how convinced people are you will get creamed there. Show up early and often, hit the issues hard, and generate the coverage that also reaches the neighboring suburbs as well.”

Zeldin, of course, did very well against Hochul in his native Long Island suburb, and the Island was home to lots of GOP wins in congressional and state legislative races. Some of those victors are slated to be on hand at the Monday fundraiser at Lombardi’s on the Bay, including Rep. Andrew Garbarino, incoming Rep. Nick LaLota, plus incumbent members of the legislature and new ones: Ed Flood in the Assembly and Dean Murray in the State Senate. 

Tickets are $250 a person, but being a “platinum sponsor” would run you $10,000, according to the invite.

It’s all part of a new fundraising season for Suffolk Republicans. A recent list of events includes upcoming fundraisers for Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney, Brookhaven Town Clerk hopeful Kevin LaValle, and Brookhaven Town Superintendent of Highways Dan Losquadro.

One election ends, another begins. 

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Talking Point

Local unions rue an incumbent’s loss

One Long Island civil-service union representative on Wednesday described the Election Day defeat of Assemb. Peter Abbate (D-Brooklyn) as a loss to labor.

“He’s very active in his community,” the activist — who’s far from what you’d call a Democratic shill — told The Point. “He’s not one of those people who just goes along with whatever’s going on in the Assembly.”

As chairman of the chamber’s Committee on Governmental Employees, Abbate, 73, built a reputation for effectively responding to and conducting resolutions on Civil Service issues. Even law-enforcement unions, portrayed broadly in news media these days as Republican allies, reportedly found him to be a valuable contact.

 While Abbate was far from a left-wing ideologue, he surprisingly lost in a regional red tide. Before this month’s election, Lester Chang, the Republican who won, was better known as a denizen of Manhattan’s Chinatown than he was in the 49th District, which includes Bensonhurst.

That could be a sign of trouble ahead, at least for Chang. He voted in Manhattan last year. State legislative candidates this year were required to reside in the county including that district for a year. Democratic Party officials in Brooklyn have been discussing whether and how Chang taking office in January could be legally challenged at this point in the process.

Could the story on both sides of the aisle be more 2022?

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

Pencil Point

Lame ducks

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Final Point

New York, again, against the tide

A record number of women will serve in the U.S. House of Representatives come January: 124 of them, according to Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics.

And the number of Republican women who will be serving in the 118th Congress — 42 — is also a record, including 33 in the House and nine in the Senate.

New York, however, was not particularly helpful with either trend. 

Of the state’s seven women who won election to the House in November, none of them are first-timers. Every woman who was a new House candidate lost. And Long Island played a big part in that pattern, with Democratic hopefuls Bridget Fleming, Jackie Gordon, and Laura Gillen all losing their bids, despite lots of fundraising and decent Democratic registration numbers that could not overcome New York’s local red wave. 

But it turned out to be a red wave just for some. On the subject of Republican women victories, New York once again bucked the national picture. Rep. Elise Stefanik, one of the state’s female Republicans and a rising member of national party leadership, has spent years trying to support more conservative women running for Congress. Yet that goal wasn’t met in her home state. All four Republican women newcomers who were on the general election ballot in New York this cycle lost their House bids in November. 

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano