Voters shouldn’t buy Zeldin’s fear and loathing

After the double whammy of a pandemic that’s killed about as many as have been murdered in my lifetime and a shutdown that the city’s economy may never fully recover from, at a moment when the old benchmarks have been washed away and there’s great uncertainty about what the “new normal” will and should be, we’re in the last days of a high-stakes election that’s boiled down to the question of whether or not NYC has fallen from grace and returned to its semi-mythological Bad Old Days as a dystopian, crime-ridden hellscape.

Spoiler alert: It’s not, but electing a governor who thinks it already is could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Suffolk County Republican Lee Zeldin is running on the Fear City slogan of “vote like your life depends on it, because it does,” while Gov. Hochul has countered by raising lots of money for a campaign about nothing in the hopes that her inherited incumbency will be enough to see her through to a full term of her own in a state where Democrats have a big voter advantage based right here in New York City.

Those are depressing alternatives, but elections are always about alternatives, not ideals.

Are New Yorkers really going to elect someone whose campaign is all about what a terrible, terrifying place our city supposedly is?

Who has a clear message but no actual plan for bringing down crime other than firing Manhattan’s newly elected district attorney (Zeldin’s vote as a congressman against certifying the 2020 election that Donald Trump lost and his vow that as governor he’d overturn the result of the 2021 election that Alvin Bragg won say it all about his contempt for the will of the voters) and declaring a “state of emergency” that he says would somehow bring around Democrats who will almost certainly still control both houses of the Legislature?

Who has no affirmative ideas for New York City, and whose “plan” for mass transit boils down to killing the congestion pricing plan that would bring urgently needed money to the MTA and help ensure that the city’s circulatory system doesn’t collapse?

Really?!

It’s striking to see Zeldin take a page directly from Eric Adams’ election playbook, holding press conferences at crime scenes and counting on the fulsome support of the Murdoch media empire to amplify his message of Be Afraid.

The difference is that the mayor — who clearly got the memo from the Hochul camp to stop railing against bail reform at least until after the election — is a native New Yorker, a former cop, and someone who consistently talks about both public safety and the importance of fair and just policing.

Adams has skin in the game here while Zeldin is a classic Long Islander, running against New York City.

On crime, he’s a mirror image of the “defund” and decarcerate Democratic lawmakers who are correct about the immorality of cash bail and the need for fairness but who seem utterly disinterested in shaping a functional justice system that’s also swift and certain.

Zeldin is offering a one-legged stool with the leg on the right instead of the left.

Speaking of congressmen from Long Island, where polling shows Democrats are poised for a shellacking, it’s hard to imagine that Tom Suozzi, whose primary campaign went absolutely nowhere, would be having nearly as tough a time against Zeldin in the general election.

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The party’s surprise defeats in Long Island in 2021, along with the defeat of ballot measures Dems expected would basically pass themselves and Gov. Phil Murphy’s near upset in New Jersey, all should have been flashing sirens about how tough 2022 could be that Democrats simply ignored.

Hochul did her best for most of this race to pretend like she wasn’t running one. She’s failed to deliver her own vision for the state and didn’t even start communicating what’s at stake in this election or what’s wrong with Zeldin’s vision and plans for New York until awfully late in the game.

(Despite her massive campaign warchest, much of it courtesy of donors with business before the state, I still haven’t received a single piece of mail from her campaign.)

That’s why Barack Obama is cutting ads and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are showing up to rally with Hochul, after early voting has already started, to try and belatedly “wake up Dems” as Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine has been banging the drum to try and do since September.

Elections are about alternatives, and this isn’t a referendum on Hochul’s first year as governor but a choice between her and Zeldin. You don’t have to love her or the Democratic establishment or the direction things are going in to vote against electing Trump-with-an-inside-voice as the governor of New York.

Vote like New York City’s future depends on it, because it does.

Siegel ([email protected]) is an editor at The City and a columnist for the Daily News.