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.
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.
