Zeldin stands with national GOP on gun rights

Daily Point

Post-massacre positioning in NY’s GOP primary

Commenting on the carnage in a Texas elementary school, Rep. Lee Zeldin is taking as a candidate for New York governor a position consistent with most of his House GOP colleagues in Washington: alternatives to cracking down on gun proliferation and access.

“Every New York school should have a single point of entry, and trained, armed school resource officers,” the party designee tweeted on Memorial Day as the catastrophe at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde continued to generate political aftershocks.

Zeldin’s statement echoes Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s post-Uvalde proposal in his home state where teachers on Tuesday rallied outside his office, calling it the wrong response.

In New York, the three other GOP contenders for the nomination — Harry Wilson, Andrew Giuliani and Rob Astorino — all have expressed gun-rights support. Of them, Astorino was unique in calling for both “better security protocols in schools including a police officer who will be present during school hours,” and background checks for which Democrats, too, have been pushing and which Zeldin has opposed in the past.

“We need enhanced background checks for gun purchases to include greater access to mental health records. Often, as with the tragedy in Buffalo there were warning signs and threats that weren’t taken seriously enough,” Astorino said in a lengthy Twitter thread.

As a current federal lawmaker and former state legislator, Zeldin has engaged in the weapons issue for years in a way that will be generally popular in the June 28 party primary but predictably controversial in the general election.

Back in 2013, Carl Paladino, an early Donald Trump ally and previous nominee for governor, blasted Long Island’s Republican state senators for going along with the so-called SAFE Act, a gun-control measure pushed for and signed by then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo banning high-capacity magazines in the state.

That was in the months after the notorious school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, carried out by deranged 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who shot and killed 26 people, most of them children ages 6 and 7. He killed his mother and later himself.

Paladino said of the SAFE Act: "This was designed to take advantage of an emotional moment when the nation was grieving Connecticut."

At that time, Zeldin, then one of Long Island’s senators, said he opposed the SAFE Act — but did not have a chance to vote against it because he was on military duty in Virginia. This year, Zeldin boasts of Paladino’s support. Gun laws are due to prompt verbal jousting in the first four-way debate among the GOP primary candidates on June 13.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

Talking Point

NIFA to fund longevity pay, touts county borrowing upgrade

When the Nassau Interim Finance Authority meets Tuesday night, it will likely retire a piece of business that has contorted county politics for half a decade. And it will certainly celebrate a bond-rating upgrade for which it’s been given some of the credit.

The deal on the issue of longevity — annual stipends paid each year based on length of service — will distribute about $100 million to members of Nassau’s five public unions. These are taxpayer dollars that NIFA, and the county under then-executive Laura Curran, had argued were not owed.

Longevity pay increases were stopped as part of a broad freeze of salary increases in 2011, but it was unclear whether those payments were supposed to start again when the freeze was lifted. Longevity became a huge political issue in 2017 when Republicans tried to arrange to restore the increases, in what was seen as a play for union support, and Curran opposed it.

But, with Bruce Blakeman in office and looking to get along with the unions, and with the county flush with cash, and with the risk the county could lose in court and have to pay more, NIFA Chairman Adam Barsky told The Point Tuesday that the deal should easily win approval.

Barsky then took a second to speak proudly of the upgrade, which took Nassau’s S & P bond rating from “A+” to “AA-.”

The new rating came as the county went to market for $250 million in borrowing, for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic led NIFA to refinance much of the county’s debt, saving about $400 million over time.

The S & P analysis cites three years of break-even or better operations and growing reserves, which are largely attributable to the massive federal aid stemming from COVID and the refinancing savings.

But the rating agency also cites the end of borrowings to pay off tax certiorari, county operations, judgments and termination pay, all NIFA demands. And it pointed to improved relationships among the county, its unions and NIFA as keys to the “stable” outlook S & P is maintaining on Nassau.

— Lane Filler @lanefiller

Pencil Point

Not so fast

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Quick Points

Gun talk

• In the face of withering criticism of the law-enforcement response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Ronnie Garza, one of the commissioners who run the Uvalde County government, said, “It's easy to point fingers right now … Our community needs to focus on healing right now." Why is it that the only people who complain about it being easy to point fingers are the people at whom fingers are being pointed?
• Sen. Chris Murphy, who represents the Newtown, Connecticut area and has worked on gun reforms since the Sandy Hook shooting, said of current negotiations, “While, in the end, I may end up being heartbroken, I am at the table in a more significant way right now with Republicans and Democrats than ever before." Which would only make the heartbreak that much worse.
• Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he is encouraging Republicans to have the “political courage” to support gun reforms. There are pro-reform arguments to make, but asking Republicans — and maybe a couple of Democrats — to have political courage has never been a winner.
• President Joe Biden said he’s hopeful that congressional negotiations on gun control will yield positive results, saying that “everybody is getting more rational about it” and describing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as “a rational Republican.” Whether or not you think that’s a low bar, it’s an interesting definition of “rational” and a measure of Biden’s desperation to get something done.
• European Union leaders are imposing an oil embargo on Russia that would cover only oil brought in by sea, exempting oil delivered by pipeline. A partial embargo sounds a little like being partially pregnant; either you are or you aren't.
• A man disguised as an old woman in a wheelchair threw a piece of cake at the famed Mona Lisa painting in the Louvre in Paris, then shouted to bystanders, “Think of the Earth.” Which was pretty much the last thing anyone in the Louvre was thinking about at that moment.
• This past weekend, the nation saw more than 300 shooting incidents that killed more than 130 people. As if Memorial Day weekend is not somber enough.
• A rockabilly legend and mentor to the wildly influential group The Band, The Hawk has flown his mortal coop. RIP, Ronnie Hawkins.

— Michael Dobie @mwdobie