Lee Zeldin and his boss-- undermining AmericaWhen I lived there is the 1960s, Suffolk County was still to some extent a rural backwater. It was still the biggest potato-growing county in the U.S., although Idaho was coming on strong. I was once dragged in front of a grand jury in Riverhead, the county seat and, judging by the cast of characters and their values, I could have easily have been in Kansas.
Remember the Suffolk County protestors we looked at on Saturday? These idiots aren't finished making news...
This-- above-- was an anti-lockdown protest by right-wing haters/idiots in Suffolk County a few days ago, where there have been 42,050 confirmed cases (4th worst county in New York State) and 1,709 deaths. I know these people. I grew up among them. Believe me, there are no Einsteins in this crowd. In 2016, New York went for Hillary 58.8% to 37.5%. Suffolk County was a very different story. Trump won 328,403 (52.5%) to 276,953 (44.3%).
How smart could Lara Trump be? After all, she married the dumbest member of the Trump clan, their Fredo. Lara Yunaska was born in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1982, and has only ever lived in Manhattan and North Carolina... but she's been to the Hampton's frequently enough to have a general idea where Long Island is.
I went to college at Stony Brook University in Suffolk County. Before I started school there, Democrat Otis Pike was the congressman. And when I graduated in 1969 he was still Suffolk's representative in Congress, a job he kept for another decade. I was never a big fan. He was too conservative and way too militaristic-- and at the height of the Vietnam War. When he retired he was succeeded by a far right crackpot, William Carney, best known for having been the first member of the Conservative Party to serve in the House.
Yesterday we took a look at some of the prospective 2020 Democratic congressional primaries in New York City, based on a NY Times piece by Shane Goldmacher. I promised to finish up today with a look at the two possible Long Island primaries. I'll describe both.
A couple of weeks ago DuWayne Gregory was elected to his fifth term as the Suffolk County Legislature’s presiding officer. I met DuWayne a few years ago when he helped me conduct a forum for political science and economics majors at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.
Geographically, Long Island consists of of four counties, Kings (Brooklyn) and Queens, part of "the city," and Nassau and Suffolk. Colloquially, every New Yorker who says "Long Island" or "the Island," means Nassau and Suffolk, which have a combined population of 2,846,241. When I lived there in the mid to late '60s, Suffolk County was still the second or third biggest potato farming county in the U.S. with lots of wide-open spaces.
This was a pretty special week for me. My doctor gave me permission to fly for the first time since my stem cell transplant left me without an immune system. I've spent the last 6 months gets immunized for everything from whooping cough and diptheria to polio and dozens of strains of influenza. But she told me I can start going to concerts again and even go on planes-- crowded places where germs are known to lurk.
