Zeldin's record targeted

Daily Point

GOP rivals target Zeldin’s two Albany terms

The four Republicans on the June 28 ballot for governor have begun to set themselves apart. On that front, businessman Harry Wilson’s latest ad plays on front-runner Rep. Lee Zeldin’s past bends of the knee to ex-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

“Lee Zeldin was Andrew Cuomo’s favorite Republican,” the narrator intones (without explaining how “favorite” is measured). “He voted for Cuomo’s billion-dollar tax hike, and every Cuomo budget. No wonder Zeldin said Cuomo should be president.”

The exact Zeldin quote to Cuomo, as played in the ad, is: “If you were in the White House right now, the nation would be a better place.” Barack Obama was then president, and Zeldin was then in the state Senate caucus headed by Dean Skelos, pre-prosecution.

Wilson’s bottom line is more about governance than it is partisan or personal, which gives the ad more of a general-election tone than a party-food-fight feel. 

“Lee Zeldin has it all wrong,” Wilson tells the viewer. “New York needs fundamental change. A politician can’t do that. I will. I’ll fight crime, deliver the biggest tax cut ever and stop go-along-to-get-along politicians of both parties.” Wilson has never served in elected office but came close in the 2010 state comptroller race. Rival Rob Astorino faced Cuomo in 2014 and famously found members of his party less than committed to defeating the first-term Democratic governor with whom they collaborated on major legislation. 

Astorino’s latest mailings claim Zeldin “voted with Cuomo in Albany more than he voted with Trump in Congress.” Andrew Giuliani also has targeted Zeldin regarding Cuomo.

However, any of the Democratic hopefuls — Gov. Kathy Hochul, Rep. Tom Suozzi or NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams — will easily link Zeldin to the defeated ex-president. The congressman voted on Jan. 6, 2021 to nullify the presidential votes of Pennsylvania and Arizona and even once Trump was gone, voted against huge bipartisan infrastructure aid for his own state.

Zeldin, with extensive red-state alliances as a congressman, faces a typical problem for legislators grasping for election as an executive — a history of party-line votes and deals in which, except in cases of rare independence, the lawmaker is not guided by his own policies or priorities.

If elected governor with “pro-life” support, would Zeldin try to impose new, radically unpopular restrictions on abortion after Roe v. Wade, as now pending in red states? He indicated Monday he wouldn’t. Zeldin’s record in government largely belongs to a once palpably pro-Cuomo GOP caucus in Albany — followed by his adherence to a fiercely pro-Trump agenda in Washington.

That gives the Long Islander’s foes in both parties plenty of latitude to credibly infer and imagine what a Zeldin administration might or might not do.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

Talking Point

How to spell P-O-T?

During the 15 years that New York has moved steadily toward legalizing marijuana, it has actually been legalizing “marihuana,” according to the state’s written laws and many of its announcements about them.

The reason for the confusion? According to historians, it goes back to the 1930s, politicians trying to stir up fears of “Reefer Madness,” American uncertainty about how to pronounce Spanish terms, and an unusual use of slang rather than technical terms, in state and national law.

According to “Marijuana: A Short History,” a book by the Brookings Institution’s John Hudak, both “marijuana” and “marihuana” are slang terms borrowed from Mexican Spanish, for a purpose. Hudak wrote that after the Spanish-American War, authorities who wanted to ban the drug felt associating it with Mexican immigrants made it sound suitably evil. 

The word, with both spellings, was popularized in the 1930s, but it was the “h” variant that made it into the federal Marihuana Tax Act of the 1930s and 1970’s Controlled Substances Act. 

And in New York law, the “h” spelling crept into the earliest penal laws and has persisted ever since, according to Assembly Health Committee Chairman Richard Gottfried, who has had a front-row seat for the pot debate for the 51 years he has been in office. 

It’s how New York spelled it in its bans, its medical legalization in 2007, and now, in its recreational legalization.

But while no one knows exactly when the “j” spelling started to dominate, experts mostly agree it was as Americans learned to better pronounce Spanish words. 

So how should it be spelled in our laws, according to legal experts? 

C-A-N-N-A-B-I-S.

Using a slang word in laws like this is the equivalent of calling liquor “booze” on the books. 

HIGHLY unusual, in other words.

— Lane Filler @lanefiller

Pencil Point

Tornado

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Quick Points

Context counts

• The Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association is endorsing candidates in school board races. If you’re wondering what a police union has to do with school boards, you’re not alone.
• The Taliban mandated that women in Afghanistan cover themselves from head to toe, naming the burqa as the preferred garment. The only surprise is that it took the Taliban nearly nine months after retaking the country to make that decree.
• A Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region has succeeded and retreating Russian troops are blowing up bridges behind them. Time to place your bets: Are the Russians destroying bridges because they don’t want the Ukrainians following them or because they know they’re not coming back?
• Alleged Brooklyn subway shooter Frank James was indicted on a federal charge of terrorism. If the definition of terrorism is an act that spreads terror, sounds like the federal grand jury got it right.
• First lady Jill Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and U2 band members Bono and The Edge made surprise visits to Ukraine on Sunday. It’s getting to the point in Ukraine that the real surprise is a day with no unannounced visits.
• It was a massive opening weekend for “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness,” which might have done even better if some people hadn’t thought it was a biopic of Mark Zuckerberg.
• For everyone who says rightly that there has never been a more appropriately named racehorse than long-shot Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike, remember when he races next that his name is not a plural. 

— Michael Dobie @mwdobie