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The Newsday editorial board has endorsed Bridget Fleming in New York’s competitive 1st Congressional District, saying her “knowledge of and commitment to local issues is outstanding” and emphasizing why it’s clear “Fleming would be the district’s best representative.”
The endorsement particularly celebrates Fleming’s strong record of working to protect Long Island from the disastrous effects of climate change – an issue of great importance to the region – and her deep understanding of how it relates to the daily lives and costs of living for workers and families.
In regards to her extreme opponent, the endorsement highlights Nick LaLota’s lack of understanding when it comes to implementing plans that both help the economy and protect the environment, saying his plans were “the wrong way to tackle the energy and climate problems to come.”
The editorial board also calls out his “jarring” lack of willingness to support efforts to hold those responsible for the deadly January 6th insurrection accountable.
Read key points from the endorsement below:
Bridget M. Fleming for New York’s 1st Congressional District
Newsday Editorial Board
New York’s 1st Congressional District is perennially considered one of New York’s — and the nation’s — real swing regions. It is a place of contrasts, between hard right and deep blue, between Hamptons wealth and people striving at the poverty line. In its current configuration, it stretches from the easternmost forks of Long Island to the Nassau County line. It includes farmland, town and village centers desperately in need of housing, and miles and miles of pristine yet endangered coast.
With Rep. Lee Zeldin running for governor, CD1 this year is home to an open race and even more potential than usual for a competitive contest, featuring two qualified, experienced candidates.
They are Bridget M. Fleming, a former prosecutor and current Suffolk County legislator, and Nicholas J. LaLota, a Navy veteran and former Suffolk Republican elections commissioner currently serving as chief of staff to the county legislature.
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Fleming, a 62-year-old Democrat from Noyac, was a prosecutor in Manhattan before moving east where she served on the Southampton Town Council for more than 5 years before her nearly 7-year stint on the county legislature. Her knowledge of and commitment to local issues is outstanding, including the minibus pilot program in her district to help replace the loss of fixed bus routes. It’s an initiative for which she says she’d be eager to get funding on the federal level.
That is precisely the kind of drive that CD1 needs in Congress, and why Fleming would be the district’s best representative. She knows that Suffolk County and its hundreds of miles of coastline are on the “front lines of climate change.” That’s not a hypothetical battle, she rightly told the editorial board in her endorsement interview: It impacts the day-to-day lives and budgets of ordinary Long Islanders.
Easy to say, harder to do, and Fleming is ready for the doing: mobilizing federal dollars and resources for electric vehicle charging stations, incentivizing good jobs in offshore wind, and pursuing nature-based solutions to protect shorelines, as opposed to thoughtless hardening that will only exacerbate erosion and push the problem to the next neighbor on the coast.
None of this is abstract for Fleming, who already has her hands deep in this kind of work. That includes the project she helped shepherd to identify vulnerabilities on Suffolk’s coastline and propose investments to mitigate the potential damage. Fleming said this was prompted by a parking lot in Shinnecock East County Park crumbling into Shinnecock Bay. Problem, meet solution.
She sees — and has worked on — the broad picture, from septic improvements to groundwater protection to a project she supported to map the places where solar arrays could be appropriately sited.
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Fleming is ready to hit the ground running in service of the residents of CD1, tackling the real challenges facing the district, overcoming those obstacles to make the region a national leader when it comes to preparing for climate change and building infrastructure fit for a prosperous future.
Newsday endorses Fleming. |
