WAUKESHA, Wis. — Lee Zeldin may no longer represent the Empire State in Congress, but after zigzagging across the country making key stops on the Team Trump bus tour, he has a message for New -Yorkers: Although they live in a deep-blue state, their votes will actually count next November.
The ex-Representative was searching for former President Donald Trump in heavily Republican Waukesha County when the Post caught up with him last month.
“Just as New Yorkers hope that Republicans will win the right to vote in swing states, swing states – they hope that New Yorkers will go to the polls because the path to a majority in the House runs through New York “Zeldin said. .
About the presidential race in the swing states he visited?
“It’s close,” Zeldin said wisely. “I’m someone who operates like we’re 2 points behind, no matter what the polls say.”
It’s a savvy modus operandi for the Republican who came within 6 points of winning Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022.
Since then, Zeldin has rallied behind Trump, supporting his fellow New Yorker early in the primary campaign, although he previously said he wanted a strong Republican primary.
Zeldin talked strategy in an interview with The Post after his speech in Waukesha, which emphasized that the country is watching Wisconsin and that the boots on the ground in battleground states should be trained to turn out low-propensity voters .
“We don’t want to go back to one-party Democratic rule,” he said. “Democrats could control the House, Senate and White House if voters decide to stay home.”
He told the Post that when it comes to issues, Trump has a clear advantage.
“Undecided voters care about the border, the economy and crime. President Trump is on the right side of these issues, while Kamala Harris is not.
Yet the campaign would focus more on lawyers and poll workers and outsource its field game.
“Every day the ground game continues to get stronger,” Zeldin insisted. “There’s a lot of knocking happening today in battleground states that wasn’t the case a few months ago.”
He added that the campaign recently received even more registrations from volunteer attorneys and election workers.
In his speech that evening, Zeldin addressed another common GOP concern: early voting.
“Rules are rules,” he told the Waukesha crowd, while admitting he’s not a fan of the state’s early voting laws and automated ballot drop boxes.
“Ballots have started to be released in Swing States. November 5 is not election day. It’s the last day to vote. It’s election season now,” he told the Post.
“We New Yorkers look at swing states like all eyes are on them, and swing states mean everything. And on the ground, in the Swing States, they hope that New Yorkers will come out and vote.
According to the Cook Political Report, seven of New York’s 26 congressional seats are contested in competitive races.
The Team Trump Bus Tour stop took place in the Republican stronghold of Waukesha County, where Trump won 59.7% to Joe Biden’s 38.9% in 2020.
A recent New York Times and Sienna College poll shows the race between Trump and Harris has tightened in the battleground state, with Harris at 49% to Trump’s 47%.
Zeldin criticized the vice president for her role over the past three and a half years in his speech and promised his Republican audience a new path forward. In doing so, he even borrowed some of the veep’s favorite turns of phrase.
“Kamala, we will not be burned by what was,” Zeldin told the crowd with a laugh, before continuing to repeat one of his campaign slogans.
“We are not going backwards, we are moving forward with Donald Trump and JD Vance.”
