Taking it to the streets

Daily Point

Debate update?

Rep. Lee Zeldin, Republican of Shirley, has announced that he’ll participate in a “meet the candidates” event Sept. 15 at the Peconic River Sportsman’s Club in Manorville. It’s the club’s “Legislature Night,” when candidates for office present their views, says the Zeldin campaign.

Could it be the first side-by-side campaign meeting between Zeldin and Democratic challenger Perry Gershon?

In a Facebook post, Gershon said Wednesday night that he had not received an invitation, so no luck so far. He also questioned what he knew of the format regarding a lack of “responsive answers between the candidates or with the audience.” Nevertheless, he said he would welcome an invitation. So perhaps we’ll see the East Hampton candidate whose campaign website has a tab on preventing gun violence go into the lion’s den of a facility whose website notes, “Our shotgun sports facility is second to none.”

Mark Chiusano

Update: Following The Point's publication, Perry Gershon informed us that he had received an invitation to the above appearance.

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Pencil Point

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Reference Point

Different era, same problems

If you’re in your car this Labor Day weekend and find yourself trapped in the singular misery that is the George Washington Bridge, you can take some small comfort in knowing that you’re living a nightmare that is at least 56 years old.

On this date, Aug. 30, in 1962, Newsday’s editorial board wrote about the newly opened lower level of the GWB and what it called the bridge’s “ancillary highways” — the dizzying array of roads leading to and from the bridge on both sides of the Hudson River, but especially in New Jersey.

The board observed that while engineers were proud at the opening and the governors of New York and New Jersey were happy, the labyrinth “fills the average motorist with forebodings.”

The board compared the potential for snafus with a well-known problem in Queens.

“What the pretzel at Kew Gardens used to be to the unwary traveler (until the Long Island Expressway provided a straight-line bottleneck) the baffling variety of entries and exits from the new, two-level bridge are bound to enhance,” the board wrote.

The board said the bridge’s planners were “uneasily aware” of the potential for confusion and had built in “escape hatches” for motorists who find themselves suddenly on the wrong road and in the wrong direction.

“How many victims headed for Washington who find themselves on the way to Sullivan County we couldn’t estimate,” the board wrote, leading it to muse on what has become a puzzle for the ages:

“Nobody can complain about progress — such carping is next door to sacrilege — but it is fair to question whether the human mind has not at last met its match in the George Washington Bridge.”

A half-century later, there is nothing new we can add to those observations.

Michael Dobie

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Daily Point

Grechen Shirley draws a crowd in Brooklyn

It has been a busy end to the month for congressional challenger Liuba Grechen Shirley, who has raised funds around Long Island and in New York City in an attempt to match opponent Rep. Peter King’s war chest, which topped $3 million in cash on hand at the end of June.

Wednesday found the Amityville Democrat working for donations at Commons Café in Brooklyn, a popular gathering place for left-leaning Brooklynites (example: The Anti-Bourgeois Summer Readers Group) and a short walk from the Long Island Rail Road at Atlantic Terminal.

The event had some of the energy that Democratic challengers around the country are counting on to help flip Republican-held House seats in November. Around 40 people gathered in the back of the venue over homemade cakes and wine and Brooklyn Lager beers. Some had Long Island connections — some were expats, others have family members to the east. Sea Cliff Mayor Ed Lieberman, the father of one event host, also was there. So was Brooklyn Democratic Assemb. Jo Anne Simon, who periodically ducked out of the back room to glimpse the bar TV, which played the gubernatorial primary debate between Cynthia Nixon and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

When Grechen Shirley arrived, she briefly pondered watching the debate herself. (Cuomo has endorsed her, though her platform is pretty similar to Nixon’s.) But she focused on the task at hand: revving up donors and potential canvassers.

In her stump speech, she discussed progressive priorities like Medicare for all, the problems of corporate donors and mass incarceration. And she reiterated what she described as the importance of flipping the district and having new people in politics.

When asked by an attendee what advice she would give to someone considering a first run for office, Grechen Shirley said, “Just do it.”

Mark Chiusano