A History Of Bad Men: Lee Zeldin And His Fanatical Pushers

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"It is completely absurd to make it a litmus test for a member of Congress to agree with every individual or group 100% in order to meet with them."

The above quote is from Jennifer DiSiena, Communications Director for Congressman Lee Zeldin, given to the New York Daily News more than two years ago when they ran a story on Zeldin's controversial speaking engagement at the Long Island Chapter of the Oath Keepers.

One could forgive a sitting member of Congress for embarking on a misguided ideological safari. You leave the office thinking you'll meet the folks, get a temperature reading on your district - and before you know it, you're on a dais beset by Gadsden flags, staring over a folding chair audience of wraparound shades, gray ponytails, and patched leather jackets at an Oath Keeper's meeting.

In a vacuum, this is not a difficult controversy to explain. Zeldin might have been a lost tourist on a fact-finding mission, though we're free to guess what type of background research went into a booked speaking engagement with a group that famously posted material on their website, which suggested that the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre was a hoax; that Obama is a Muslim; that claims it is committed to "fighting tyranny local, state, and federal government", and has backed it up by showing up armed to the teeth at civil rights protests to intimidate demonstrators, as well as participating in armed resistance against the federal Bureau of Land Management during famous land disputes at Sugar Pine Mine and the Bundy Ranch. No, this is not a 19th century historical militia re-enactment group - they are real. These events happened.

And, as it turns out, Congressman Zeldin is no tourist. He's a frequent flyer, comfortable in these rooms like ice in a rocks glass. The more he melts into their drink, the softer their ideas taste.

Meet my Congressman's core supporters.

***

Context is important to understanding why Zeldin's recently announced Dec. 14th fundraiser, headlined by Stephen K. Bannon, Breitbart executive, architect of the winning drive of Donald Trump's Presidential campaign, and recently departed White House Chief Strategist, is not a sensational one-off item of political intrigue.

Zeldin has an unfortunate history of dalliance with extremist elements, but has thus far evaded permanent linkages with them through both plausible deniability, and the media's fascination with disposable news cycle controversies. (Sound familiar?) A congressman from a swing district like Zeldin's NY-1 can speak at an event for the radical Oath Keepers, ride to election victory with year-out help from a local arch-Tea Party organization (more on them to follow), then have an accused White Nationalist like Bannon speak at his fundraiser, and see each of these instances treated like separate, unrelated events. They are not. This is a single narrative concerning a lawmaker who allows himself to be co-opted by groups and individuals well outside the norm of American political discourse. Zeldin then takes their ideas about culture and society, sterilizes and delivers them to a wider audience where they become normal features of a national conversation that has drifted further past the boundaries of alt-right ideology than anyone intended or realized.

Let's start with Bannon.

***

People don't popularly refer to Bannon as a white nationalist because of his association with Donald Trump - it's the other way around. Trump is linked to white nationalism and its fellow travelers on the alt-right idea spectrum, almost solely due to his relationship with Bannon. Keep in mind that Bannon's departure from the White House came on the heels of Trump's botched response to the Charlottesville demonstrations, when a neo-nazi protester murdered a young woman. Trump outraged people, including many in his own cabinet, when he drew a moral equivalency between neo-nazi protesters and anti-nazi opposition. This response was laid at the feet of Bannon.

Breitbart, Bannon's website which he once described as the "platform of the alt-right" (noted white supremacist Richard Spencer popularized the term "alt-right" when he used it to describe a subset of right wing ideologies that veer into white-centric racial theories to varying degrees), has been credibly linked to racist ideologies such as white nationalism and white supremacy for some time.

The most damning evidence of this correlation came in October, when Buzzfeed published an expose on a cache of hacked e-mails involving Bannon, former Breitbart tech-editor and noted provocateur Milo Yiannopolous, and Milo’s correspondence with other editors. The e-mails exposed ties with white supremacists including frequent correspondence with Andrew “Weev” Aeurnheimer, system administrator for Neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer, and Devin Saucier, editor of white supremacist magazine American Renaissance. Much of the correspondence is brain storming, Milo asking permission to interview neo-nazis on his podcast, and editors including Bannon figuring out ways to “cleanse” articles from appearing too obviously associated with white supremacy, even as they acknowledge basic philosophical agreement.

Only a month prior to this revelation, Vanity Fair put out a story with direct quotes from central alt-right contributors to Breitbart and friends of Bannon, on the trouble they've had in keeping hardcore white supremacists from showing up to their events and hitching onto their political coattails, a stunningly disingenuous notion in light of the Buzzfeed story that proved such individuals were solicited by Breitbart senior management.

Bannon's appointment to the White House last year as Chief Strategist to Donald Trump was widely met with cheer from the white supremacist stratosphere, including Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who said about Bannon, "You have an individual, Mr. Bannon, who's basically creating the ideological aspects of where we're going. And ideology ultimately is the most important aspect of any government."

The evidence here is quite damning, and renders Bannon's multitude of defenders hard to take seriously.

Put it this way: When someone arrives at your door one time, preaching hate, and you kick them off your steps never to return, we call them a stranger. When the same person visits your door on a daily basis and eats at your table on holidays, we call them family. And it doesn’t matter how apprehensive you are about them being there, because to the rest of the world, you appear to be related. It's difficult not to view Breitbart as the second cousin of online white supremacist ideology, at best.

***

Speaking of Bannon's defenders, let's get back to Congressman Lee Zeldin.

Prior to inviting Bannon to speak at his fundraiser, Zeldin and Bannon had established a close rapport and working relationship dating back to Bannon's time in the White House. Bannon is a long-time Iran critic, someone who has spoken at great length on his podcasts and in other media about his belief in apocalyptic war scenarios involving the Judeo-Christian West and Islam in the East, centered around Iran. He was also an early proponent in the Trump campaign and Trump White House for scrapping the Iran nuclear deal, something he has in common with Zeldin, also an Iran skeptic. As joint Chairman of the House Republican Israel Caucus, and someone who believes Iran is an imminent threat to Israel, Zeldin made for a logical partner with whom Bannon could build a bridge to Congress on foreign policy.

When Bannon was removed from his position at the White House, Zeldin was one of the first public officials to go on the record about the move, where he offered a lively, unsolicited defense of someone who's political stock had fallen quit low, saying about Bannon on an August 17th appearance on Fox News' America's Newsroom program, “I think in many respects, Steve Bannon has been given a very bad rap. I’ve spent time with him and he’s passionately advocating against BDS and the rising anti-semitism on college campuses. He is passionately pro-Israel, and consistent with the President’s vision on trade policy and moving in a better direction on the Iran nuclear deal. He’s someone who brought [to the White House] a lot of talent and wisdom. He understands world history like few others do in the country.”

For a Jewish lawmaker to make such a statement concerning "wisdom" and "understanding of world history" about a man with clear ties to white supremacist media figures (though it is clear that Bannon is not an anti-semite), a history of race baiting on his website, and a noted penchant for dark apocalyptic theories on civilization clashes, is quite remarkable.

When pressed for a response to the outcry over his recent invite of Bannon to headline his fundraiser, Zeldin rejected any notion that Bannon is linked to white nationalism and/or white supremacy, and again touted Bannon's support for Israel as well as his background as a family man and former Navy officer. By his own admission, Zeldin has spent time getting to know Bannon, and the statements he's made about the man himself suggest a deeper personal connection. There is clearly a relationship that has been established here - one of great mutual respect that began as a partnership on foreign policy, and may continue into other avenues.

The two men agree on a lot more than Israel. Bannon has been central to the hardline stance on undocumented immigration taken by the Trump campaign since the moment in launched, in line with Zeldin's constant appearances on Fox News advocating the construction of a border wall and speaking of migrants strictly in terms of their possible connections to the gang MS-13.

Bannon has also, through Breitbart, made it a point to attack Planned Parenthood and is credited with being the prime mover in the push to defund the organization, a measure that, when it came up for a vote in the House of Representatives, earned Zeldin's enthusiastic support.

***

It should come as no surprise that Zeldin is Bannon's most frequent, outspoken defender in Congress on the issue of white nationalism. He was making such defenses for Donald Trump on allegations of racism early in the 2016 Presidential campaign.

During an appearance on CNN in June 2016, Zeldin was asked about candidate Trump's comments on Judge Gonzalvo Curiel, who Trump inferred hated him and treated him unfairly due to the Judge's Mexican heritage. The host asked Zeldin whether he agreed with Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan's statement that Trump's quote was a "textbook definition of a racist comment."

Zeldin actually agreed, saying "With the way I subjectively define racism, I agree as well. I think that Mr. Trump made a regrettable mistake with his statement. It’s a regrettable legal strategy – he’s trying to win a case.”

He goes on to reaffirm his support for Trump, and then distract from the controversy by creating a false equivalency between Trump's comments and Democrats at-large: "Quit frankly, the policies I’ve seen from the Democratic Party when you are micro-targeting a community, when you are putting blacks together, Hispanics, and certain economic messages and positions on issues ... quite frankly, I see it a lot.”

Zeldin mentions this point about four times throughout his appearance, regarding micro-targeting to minority communities regarding policy (i.e. campaigning in ethnic neighborhoods on issues specific to those ethnicities, something all candidates do with every constituency). He even claims that he finds it more racist than what Trump said, and goes on to say that one "could easily argue that the President of the United States [Obama] is a racist, with his policies and rhetoric."

It makes you wonder exactly what Zeldin is referring to here, both in regards to Democrats and President Obama. And what makes common place constituency targeting based on ethnicity "racist", as opposed to "regrettable campaign strategy" as he might have labeled it if Trump were the guilty party?

To watch Zeldin engage in petty courtroom lawyering every time a cable news host asks him an inconvenient but direct question about race, gender, or Steve Bannon's clear-as-day ties to white nationalist movements, is to a thing of beauty.

Roy Moore, candidate for U.S. Senate from Alabama, who stands accused of raping and molesting multiple teenage girls when he was in his 30s, and was notably recruited to run exclusively by Bannon in defiance of Senate GOP wishes, has become somewhat of a problem for Zeldin. Mainly because Moore and Zeldin are the first and only two Senate and House candidates that Bannon is endorsing at the moment in his promise to tour the country behind a coalition of candidates who will support President Trump's platform.

Now, to be clear, this is only a problem for Zeldin in that the media will ask him for his opinions on the Moore - and in that sense, Moore has been an issue for the entire Republican Party. And yet when asked about his thoughts on whether the Moore allegations were true, Zeldin launched into lawyer mode.

"I never said that it's not true. I never said that it definitely was. There's an allegation that took place. So I wouldn't want to be misunderstood."

When pressed about whether he would want to serve with a Senator Moore, he said, "I would not want to serve with a 'Senator Anyone,' if they were responsible for what these allegations are that are coming out."

And finally, whether he would pull support for Moore: "I've never backed him, I have never endorsed Roy Moore. So, I don't even have an endorsement to pull."

It's of note to mention that in the video of the appearance, before questioning Zeldin, CNN ran a video clip of Bannon vehemently defending Moore at a campaign rally.

The answers given by Zeldin differ from other Republican colleagues who have flat out said they believe Moore should drop out of the race, even going so far as to refusing to seat him if he's elected. Zeldin's comments more closely resemble Trump's, who avoided direct condemnation at all costs by referring, generally, to "anyone" who has committed such crimes against girls, and "anyone" with a criminal history in the Senate. It's the same brand of equivocation employed by both Trump and Zeldin on issues of race (Trump blaming "hate on all sides" for Charlottesville Nazi rally; Zeldin invoking "racism on both sides" when asked specifically about a racist remark of Trump's).

This lawyering, careening, and careful equivocation on issues of moral certitude would be easier to process if Zeldin and Trump deployed it across the board, but that is not the case. On the topic of immigration, both men take a clear hardline, and do not hesitate to bring all conversation regarding undocumented immigrants as a general population back into the sphere of criminality, particularly MS-13.

Think back to Trump's speech when he launched his Presidential campaign, his comments on undocumented immigrants, "When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringings drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Now compare that to Zeldin's frequent commentary on the same issue. While far less crude and antagonistic, Zeldin uses the same tactic of speaking about illegal immigration in terms of violent crime.

In an appearance on CNN's New Day in February of this year, host Christ Cuomo asked Zeldin about his thoughts on controversial Trump immigration policies. Here is a short excerpt of the dialogue:

ZELDIN: Well, we are a nation of immigrants and people should be able to come to our country and my district to pursue the American dream and hope and opportunity and education. It's a unique district out here because we have a lot of people who come here legally, seasonally. We have the vineyards, the farming of the north fork, the tourism and hospitality industry of the south fork.

We also have a big issue here with regard to MS-13, gang violence, a lot of people who are here illegally and are disrupting communities and destroying lives. So the implementation of this new order is going to be incredibly important. I want to see a priority of effort placed on where I see that disruption of a local community, that disruption of the family as opposed to putting the higher priority on others who may be here who love our country, who want to be great citizens of our community.

CUOMO: Right. But it is that neglected group in this. If you're a MS-13 guy, if you're a gang member and you're creating criminal activity, that's a no-brainer, right. And if you're a seasonal worker, you have your pass and your documents. That's a no-brainer. We're talking about this other group that looms large in your district, and you know this. The schools are filled with them. The local homes are filled with them. They're people who are here. They are undocumented but they have assimilated into the communities. They have families there, they are working, they are law-abiding. They are vulnerable more than ever under these new guidelines. Can you stand for that?

ZELDIN: We're going to have to see how it ends up getting implemented. It's difficult for me to comment on exactly how many people are going to get deported, how this is going to get enforced in the coming weeks, months and years.

It's important to look at the full context there, instead of breaking it up into bytes, to get a sense of Zeldin's verbal strategy. He is asked about immigration policies that effect a large, general population of undocumented immigrants. His first step is to lead with a platitude: "We are a nation of immigrants/American Dream/Hope and Opportunity". Second, he moves right to MS-13 and stresses that he'd like the focus of hardline policies to be on criminals and not law abiding undocumented immigrants (which happens to be the overwhelming majority of them according to research). "Communities disrupted, destroying lives." When questioned about the other portion of the illegal immigrant community, i.e. the non-violent population which is once again, almost all of them, his answer is much less forthright.

"We're going to have to see."

As details on Trump immigration policies became clearer in the coming months, and as localities braced for the ICE raids that would inevitably target law-abiding undocumented workers with children for deportation (and had already been doing so at that point, rattling communities in the process), Zeldin's public comments did not address these issues (the ones he was "going to have to see" about) but instead, shifted further towards the violent crime aspect and MS-13.

A mere three months later on FOX & Friends, Zeldin spoke at length with host Steve Doocy about immigrant gang activity.

ZELDIN: They recruit these kids as early as elementary school, and once you are in you can't get out. And what we saw with the most recent crime, you had four murders. One of the individuals was in the gang and tried to get out and was murdered because once you're in you can't get out. Then three others were murdered because you can't associate yourself with that person who is trying to get out.

DOOCY: We had a guest on a week or two ago, congressman, who said that one of the things people don't talk about MS-13 is they’re mainly in this country illegally.

ZELDIN: There is a huge illegal immigration component of it.

It's worth mentioning that Zeldin has spoken about school children being MS-13 members in several interviews. Immigration hardliners often bring up the notion that the children of undocumented workers are a strain on the school systems, filling up classrooms and receiving public services that legal citizens pay for. But Zeldin and other hardline opponents never speak on the issue in terms of scale.

According to Suffolk County officials quoted in Newsday, there are 712 MS-13 members on Long Island, 345 of whom are active. There are 111,000 estimated undocumented immigrants on the island. That means MS-13 accounts for 0.6% of the total undocumented immigrant community on LI. Numbers get even smaller when accounting for just Suffolk County. They were responsible for an estimated 11 murders in Suffolk last year, and most MS-13 related crime and murder is inflicted upon those in the local immigrant community, many of whom are being targeted by ICE for deportation and are afraid to report crime activity to authorities.

For comparison's sake, there were 303 heroin-related overdose deaths in Suffolk in 2016. One wonders how far along we might be on the heroin epidemic if MS-13 were responsible for those overdose deaths.

Now imagine being part of the 99% of Suffolk County undocumented workers who aren't MS-13 members, or their school-age children, who constantly hear their local Congressman appear on major media platforms to link their general population with MS-13 gang members, sometimes in one sentence. Trump received heat for his comments about "rapists and murders, and some I take it are good people too," but Zeldin's verbiage is not far off in principle.

***

We are headed into deep territory here, but it's important to examine the Zeldin's talking points and their striking similarity to tactics used by the Trump/Bannon/Breitbart alt-right media's cultural controversy machine.

For while Zeldin lacks the undisciplined crassness of Trump, and the white knuckled sensationalism of Bannon/Breitbart, he is their philosophical and semantic equal, employing all the same false-equivalencies, non-sequitors, and inductive fallacies that, quite frankly, Trump and his boosters expertly used during the previous election to convince the public that his many appalling controversies were no better or worse than anyone else's.

Curtis Yarvin, Breitbart contributor, infamous political theorist and close Bannon ally, perhaps expressed this strategy best when he wrote that "nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth. Anyone can believe in the truth. To believe in nonsense is an unforgeable demonstration of loyalty. It serves as a political uniform. And if you have a uniform, you have an army." Bannon's brand of alt-right ideology is one built on useful idiocy.

So what should we make of Zeldin from an ideological perspective? Is it fair to label him a racist? To label Bannon and Trump White Supremacists?

This is, perhaps, not the question we should be asking. Racist language and policies are such, regardless of whether they are ideologically motivated or a just a means to an end. Trump is reflexively racist - culture and race seem to be his immediate instinct. Women and people of color inspire his outrage like no one else. He initiates on topics of race, gender, and culture with toxic ferocity on an almost daily basis. It's a fight he relishes, and does not hide his disdain for his foes in this manner. For him, racism is ritual; it is constant. Ideology did not bring him to white supremacy, white supremacy brought him to an ideology that he could credibly wield.

Enter Bannon, a nationalist who is not driven by race issues, but makes common cause with ideological racists such as white nationalists and white supremacists, as they are 80% simpatico. It’s an important distinction. Bannon is preoccupied with the dismantling of the state and all state-supportive institutions. He is also a culture warrior for a romanticized, historically embellished ideal of Western Civilization, and its importance and urgency to the rest of the world. It is a mode of cultural dominance. U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, trade policy in Southeast Asia, and domestic immigration policy are critical linchpins to Bannon’s platform. Racism and bigotry are byproducts of what he is looking to accomplish, whereas for a devoutly racist, white nationalism such as Richard Spencer, nationalism and Western cultural supremacy are secondary features of his racially driven platform. Bannon understands the necessity of making a dance partner of white nationalists, while being careful not to engage them in ideological public intercourse.

Just as Bannon acts as a secret mode of transport for white nationalism in service to his own agenda, Zeldin is happy to oblige Bannon as a Trojan Horse of institution-breaking hyper nationalism, or as the lay person has come to understand it: Trumpism.

As Trump’s campaign chairman, Bannon orchestrated a media strategy that helped elect Trump to the White House. The only real difference between Bannon’s brand of nationalism and Trumpism, is that one revolves around a platform, while the other is tethered to a distinct and unreplicable personality. Trump, like a good number of past Presidents, is a phenomena. But if Trumpism is to survive Trump, and it is Bannon’s hope that it does, then it must transform into a viable platform that can be utilized by hundreds of candidates across the country. It will not sustain itself on vulgarian brutalism.

Bannon needs useful idiots in Congress, who can appear on television and advocate for Trumpism without the polarizing wild streak. This is where Zeldin and other powerful lawmakers come in handy.

Like Bannon, Zeldin's focus is not race, per se. He is a Conservative and an impassioned advocate for Israel, who sees in Bannon a natural ally as well as a grassroots booster. But as Zeldin has demonstrated time and again, aligning with white nationalists and other species of racists is not a problem for him, if it accomplishes policy goals, brings money into his campaign coffers, or gets him re-elected.

This is, in fact, not a new role for Zeldin, but one he has comfortably played on the local level since running for NY State Senate in 2010.

***

“They were a big part of it. They came to our fund-raisers, knocked on doors, stuffed envelopes, promoted the message by blogging and email. They helped for a whole year.”

That was Lee Zeldin, speaking to Politico for a 2011 story they ran on Stephen Flanagan's Conservative Society for Action, a Suffolk County-based Tea Party-esque organization.

Take one look at their website, a haphazard content typhoon of paleo-Conservative manifesto that might cause you to say, "Wow, so this is where my crazy Uncle gets all that crap he e-mails me about death panels, Obama's birth certificate, and school boards being communist partkom bureaus." You would be forgiven for assuming that the CSA is joke organization, a shined up pastiche of Birchers and Masons. You would be dead wrong.

Local Republican party leaders have taken credit for the victories of candidates like Zeldin, the truth is that while Suffolk GOP Chairman John Jay LaValle sits in his office arguing with his Snapple-fetching subordinates about what font-type to use on the letterhead for the next $10,000 per plate fundraiser, Flanagan commands a volunteer army numbering in the thousands that account for the lion's share of local conservative grassroots action. Without the CSA, Republicans would still be relying in bulk on the old rusted structure of compelling town employees to canvass, call, and donate each Fall.

If that sounds similar to the Catch 22 national Republicans find themselves in regarding the Tea Party and alt-right fervor among younger voters, that's because the local political scene is a microcosm of that exact scenario. The Reagan Republican machine built on Southern Democrats, the Finance industry, foreign policy wonks and young professionals with a subscription to National Review, is dead. Republican right-wing politics is trapped in a nightmare vice between Breitbart's 18-35 demo of proto-nationalist MAGA trolls, and the Tea Party's septuagenerian fear factory of Agenda 21 e-mail chains and Sharia Law local alerts. The CSA is the purview of the latter, here in Suffolk.

Some of the content CSA links to on its site is extreme, to say the least, particularly on immigration. One of their embedded videos claims to be of undocumented Mexicans imploring white people to go back to Europe. This is right in line with the Breitbart/Bannon fear mongering about white culture being under attack from brown people.

The CSA's co-founder, an individual named Conrad Schabauer, is about as fringe and unhinged as it gets for Tea Party groups. His Facebook and Twitter accounts, both of which are public, are absolutely littered with gun rights fanaticism, black protest cynicism, German pride, and obviously racist memes like this one about black NFL players accounting for most of the league's criminal arrest records, one about illegal immigrants needing to be in the back of the Thanksgiving parade shoveling elephant feces, and this one about how American Muslims (legal, documented immigrants who quote unquote came here the "right way") should "hop on their flying carpet" and leave the country.

Co-founder. Not "random CSA member I found on facebook who makes insane non-ironic political remarks that are often race related", but the person who co-founded the group itself with Flanagan. To be quite honest, if you really want to be bowled over, read any facebook thread that the CSA and its members are commenting on, and you'll see material that puts Schabauer to shame.

Flanagan himself is more measured and cerebral, graded on the curved scale of fringe right extremism, similar to Bannon. He understands the game and how to play it, how to manipulate his membership but, more importantly, how to gain trust and access to public officials like Lee Zeldin.

Not only was Flanagan's CSA instrumental to Zeldin's State Senate victory, as Zeldin himself admitted above, they have been critical to Zeldin campaign operations every election year since, making up the bulk of his grassroots volunteers.

So embedded into Zeldin's world is Flanagan, that he was handpicked by Zeldin to officially launch his first State Senate campaign in 2010.

***

From the local grassroots level, with extremist arch-conservative organizations like CSA and the Oathkeepers, to the national level with Steve Bannon and the white nationalist linked Breitbart, Lee Zeldin is allied with and actively sympathetic to fringe ideology. This is not a matter of perspective, but the logical conclusion from a mountain of empirical evidence.

Bannon, the alt-right and the Tea Party, far from being convenient accidental acquaintances, are woven into the fabric of Lee Zeldin's platform, on the floor of the House where he votes with Trump policies 90% of the time, and in all of his major media appearances where he parrots their troubled, ignorant thinking on issues of race, gender, and immigration. Zeldin needs them from an organizational standpoint. They need Zeldin, an otherwise amiable man with a trusting face and gentle tone, to sterilize their extremist viewpoints for wider consumption to a larger audience.

In Zeldin's defense, this is quite acceptable to a significant portion of the 1st CD constituency that showed up to vote for both him and Donald Trump with a 60% share of the vote in 2016. That much cannot be denied. To the people who have not come to regret their votes for Trump, I'm not sure what more can be said to change their minds. For those that have, Zeldin's history should give them pause about committing their vote to his re-election next year.

To all other voters in the district, a large percentage of whom did not vote in last year's election, they will need to ask themselves: just how comfortable are they being represented by a Congressman who figures to be the alt-right's point person in the House of Representatives for getting their agenda written into law?

Mr. Zeldin must also reflect: can he represent this independent district that has sent both Democrats and Republicans in equal numbers to Washington for decades, without keeping the company of white nationalists, racists, and conspiracy mongering fringe groups? He should answer that question publicly, and in clear terms.