What happened to Lee Zeldin?
When the Republican first entered Congress, he was a relative moderate. He had, in 2014, defeated a longtime Democratic incumbent, Tim Bishop, and his record on environmental issues was fairly liberal. He joined a bipartisan caucus to address climate change, supported solar energy and offshore wind, and even voted to safeguard the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget. He also voted against a GOP push to limit the EPA’s ability to curb carbon dioxide emissions.
That’s all in the deep past now. Zeldin, as Donald Trump’s EPA administrator, has become a full MAGA warrior. Unlike other cabinet secretaries who have questioned some of the wanton budget-cutting undertaken by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Zeldin has been a strong supporter of all the initiatives.
At the EPA, Zeldin is off to an aggressive start, largely adhering to the Trump agenda and what was laid out in Project 2025. He has withheld billions of dollars in climate funds approved by Congress and tried to fire hundreds of employees. He has recommended the elimination of thousands of EPA scientists. He has begun trying to repeal dozens of environmental regulations that curtail toxic pollution.
In some ways, Zeldin’s evolution is emblematic of the Republican Party’s. Had Trump never run for president, it’s possible Zeldin would have remained something like the center-right state senator and congressman he was early in his career.
But Zeldin is also ambitious, and he has a strong read on the Republican base. In 2016, he became one of Trump’s early endorsers, understanding the New Yorker’s strong appeal to his Long Island constituents. Trump’s brawling populism drew Zeldin in.
Once Trump rose to the presidency, it was clear Zeldin was going to be MAGA for good, whether he was earnest or not. Anti-Trump Republicans were being purged. His New York colleague, Elise Stefanik, followed a similar trajectory, throwing off her old-line establishment roots — she had once worked in the George W. Bush administration — to fully embrace the Trump insurgency.
Though Zeldin ran for governor in 2022, just a year after the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol, he did not move to the center in his bid to defeat Kathy Hochul. Rather, he campaigned aggressively on a tough-on-crime message and never disavowed Trump. Since he was just six points shy of winning — the best performance by a Republican in two decades — he saw no reason to moderate himself. If deep-blue New York could almost elect a hardcore MAGA foot soldier, why change course?
There’s another side to that election, though: Zeldin could have outright won if he were willing to put some distance between himself and Trump. Hochul was unpopular then and the backlash against rising crime was at its peak. The pandemic had soured some registered Democrats and independents on Democratic leadership. Had Zeldin tacked, at least somewhat, to the middle — retained his crime message but promised independence from Trump — he could have swayed a few more New York City Democrats.
Instead, Hochul survived because the five boroughs revolted against Zeldin. Turnout in Manhattan surged at the last minute, thanks to the efforts of Democratic politicians there. The left-leaning sections of Brooklyn and Queens didn’t take the election for granted, either.
Zeldin might run for president someday. Rank-and-file Republicans hate the EPA and he can tout his record eviscerating it. Whether he has a real chance to win — overtaking the likes of Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and a long list of other Trump-aligned Republicans — remains to be seen. He’ll be doing his best, in the meantime, to raise his presidential stock.
Ross Barkan is a journalist and author in New York City.
