Party First

In 2020, two different groups named U.S. Representative Lee Zeldin, the Shirley Republican who represents the 1st District, one of the most bipartisan members of Congress. It was a designation he touted throughout his campaign. But to anyone who has watched Mr. Zeldin since he first ran for Congress in 2008 — he lost to incumbent Democrat Tim Bishop, before eventually ousting Mr. Bishop in 2014 — these rankings are belied by his votes, his actions, his words and, often, his silence.

Even following Mr. Bishop, a dyed-in-the-wool liberal Democrat, Mr. Zeldin easily takes the title as the most partisan figure who has represented the East End in memory. Elected officials on the local, state and federal levels of all political stripes have been known to ignore the letter after their name on the ballot for the sake of cooperation and accomplishment. Mr. Zeldin, on the other hand, wields a partisan bludgeon: He has always performed politics in the most cynical manner, with one set of rules that he applies to Democrats and another for Republicans.

His hypocrisy was on full display during the 2018 campaign, when he was outspoken in his condemnation of any statement that came close to comparing political opponents to Nazis. Mr. Zeldin, who is Jewish, gets very upset about such comparisons — when Democrats do it. Yet when Donald Trump Jr. compared Democratic Party policies to Nazi Party policies, Mr. Zeldin had no criticism to offer.

In March 2019, Mr. Zeldin accused then-freshman Minnesota U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar of “unrelenting, unabashed anti-Semitic attacks.” In the same statement, he said: “Rep. Omar knows exactly what she is saying and doing and has been hurling these attacks for years. The hatred that regularly pours out of her heart is a cause of the underlying problem with anti-Semitism in the world and absolutely not the answer to it.”

In a January 2020 op-ed, Mr. Zeldin wrote: “As a nation that opposes and condemns hatred in any form, America must root out anti-Semitism wherever it rears its ugly head. We must not embolden it or elevate it, or even tolerate this hatred, which is attempting to normalize itself in our society. Whether this bigotry is brazen or it is toxic anti-Semitism deceptively masked in subtle tropes, we must eliminate it wherever it exists.”

When Mr. Zeldin talks like this, it’s impossible to argue with him: It’s a passionate, articulate position. Rooting out anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred is imperative — on this we can all agree.

But to Mr. Zeldin, bucking his party to condemn a fellow Republican is a bridge too far, no matter if it “emboldens” or “elevates,” or “even tolerates,” normalizing hatred. As we’ve seen Mr. Zeldin put his party over his stated principles again and again, it’s clear that bestowing him with the title “bipartisan” is punchline fodder and in no way reflective of reality.

On Thursday, February 4, Mr. Zeldin was presented with the opportunity to formally rebuke the anti-Semitism of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the freshman Georgia congresswoman who — among many other indefensible statements — blamed 2018’s California wildfires on “space solar generators” and “lasers or blue beams of light” controlled by a group that’s at the center of a long-standing anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

He can’t plead ignorance — he’s acknowledged the problem. Though he does not do interviews these days, communicating with the media only in carefully crafted written statements, he issued one of those missives fully acknowledging the “bizarre conspiracy theories,” “anti-Semitic tropes” and “dangerous falsehoods” that Ms. Greene traffics in, calling them “indefensible, wacky, harmful and wrong.”

Strong words. But when voting to strip Ms. Greene of committee assignments — something he had prescribed for Ms. Omar — Mr. Zeldin refused to join 11 other Republicans who voted their principles over party. He voted to keep her in place.

His reasons? Aside from suggesting that her online comments came before her election to Congress, it was pure, undistilled partisan politics. He suggested that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi employs separate standards for Republicans and Democrats, adding that Democrats’ “hypocrisy has become political art” — projection so vivid that it’s in 4K.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a litmus test of sorts, but it’s hardly the only evidence of naked partisanship. Despite being very active on Twitter and Facebook since the start of the new congressional session to criticize Democrats at every turn, he has said nothing denouncing Ms. Greene’s history of overt anti-Semitism on social media. At the same time, he says plenty about Nancy Pelosi, who is the GOP’s new Hillary Clinton, a strong woman portrayed as an evil harridan to stir up partisanship.

In Mr. Zeldin’s own words in an August 2020 virtual event hosted by the American Jewish Committee: “We shouldn’t have double standards. We shouldn’t have moral equivalencies.” Comparing Ms. Greene to Ms. Omar — who later apologized for her comments, and even voted to condemn them in a House vote — is beyond ridiculous. Not to mention his obsequious dedication to Donald Trump, considering, as a New York magazine writer recently noted, “A top-ten list of the most anti-Semitic things ever said by either Donald Trump or Ilhan Omar would consist entirely of Trump quotes.”

Whatever excuse Mr. Zeldin eventually gives for his failure to take real action against Marjory Taylor Greene will be just that — an excuse. He knows what the right thing to do is. He’s just deciding not to do it.