Congressman Bishop a Good Guy Loses Badly

So many times he showed up in his car by himself for storm disasters, social events, fires, football games, town meetings and debates. Around Southampton Town, Congressman Tim Bishop knew the back roads, the short cuts, the old families and the locals. He knew the poor by name.

Today that proud and distinguished man, Congressman Tim Bishop, is the loser of his last election bid by 10% of the vote and will soon be out of a job. What I find saddest is this good noble man was so plastered with political mud by his opponent Lee Zeldin and the Republican PACS who viewed Mr. Bishop’s congressional seat as quarry that they just kept firing away. The ads were not sporting, but mean spirited, false and saddest of all, effective. No one will remember the post hurricane aid, how he helped to protect the east end, not once but many times. Nor the letters for help he answered and favors he procured. Now his reputation is compromised if not ruined.

As a former U.S. Congressional Intern I CAN PROMISE the folks who donated money to the Zeldin effort (perhaps more than $10,000 to the Zeldin campaign) will be calling in their chits real soon. The two campaigns plus PACS (not including George Demos primary costs) spent a reported combined amount of $12.3 million (using Southampton Press numbers) for the congressional seat . That’s a lot of money even in the Hamptons.

So to Tim Bishop I raise a glass to toast you for caring, for working hard to represent everybody in the 1st Congressional District after hurricanes, and so forth. You are not just a class act, you are the real thing, 15 generations of family on the east end in the district. When all the PACS threw the mud at you I felt it was being thrown at me too. I wish Mr. Zeldin well, after all his district is my home, but karma is a weird thing. Watch out Lee, what goes around, comes around.