Democrat Perry Gershon Will Run Again In 2020, Seeking To Unseat U.S. Representative Lee Zeldin

Perry Gershon, the East Hampton resident who lost a bid last fall to unseat U.S. Representative Lee Zeldin, has formally entered the race for the seat again.

Mr. Gershon on Thursday, April 4, filed to be a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for the 1st District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and hopes to again be the party’s standard-bearer against Mr. Zeldin in November 2020.

“We had a great Democratic effort in the last run—the enthusiasm and the record turnout, we want to build on that and present our story better across the entire district,” Mr. Gershon said on Friday.

Mr. Gershon, a retired real estate investor, lost to Mr. Zeldin by just over 11,000 votes in November, a margin of about 4 percent of the vote total. After the election, Mr. Gershon said he was buoyed by the relatively tight margin, compared to the easy 16-percentage-point win Mr. Zeldin had logged in 2016 against the Democratic candidate, Anna Throne-Holst, amid the Trump election wave.

Mr. Gershon performed well in the East End townships, especially on the South Fork, where Democratic registration numbers give him an advantage. But to win the district, he acknowledged, he is going to have to make more of an impact in the western part of the district, including the Republican stronghold towns of Brookhaven and Smithtown, where Mr. Zeldin grew up and lives.

Mr. Gershon said he has already started attending community events in Brookhaven again.

“I will spend more time up there and will be working very hard to identify with those areas,” he said, adding, “I’m here to fight for the entirety of Eastern Long Island.”

With a second bite at the apple, Mr. Gershon said, he hopes that his visibility and awareness among voters—polls after recent elections have shown that voters in the western towns were simply unfamiliar with the South Fork-based Democratic nominees—will help him close the gap with Mr. Zeldin.

“Last time, nobody had heard of me,” he said. “This time, I’m a lot further along. And this is a district where we’ve seen Democrats like George Hochbrueckner and Otis Pike need two cycles in order to win.”

Mr. Gershon said he has heard nothing about other potential Democratic hopefuls for the challengers’ nomination. He won a five-way primary race last year, and costly primaries have put the Democratic challenger at an economic disadvantage in the last two campaigns against Mr. Zeldin.

The Republican-led tax overhaul, which lifted federal exemptions for state and local taxes and has left a heavy new tax burden on New Yorkers as a result, will be front and center in the race this year, Mr. Gershon surmised, along with environmental concerns and economic inequality.

Mr. Zeldin’s office responded by saying the 2020 re-election campaign is far from its concern at this early date.

“Right now, Congressman Zeldin’s focus, far and away, is on his job representing his constituents of [the 1st Congressional District],” a statement from a spokesperson said. “He’s committed to delivering results, and, whether it’s ensuring East End employers have the workforce they need or bolstering our communities’ maritime infrastructure, his effectiveness is indisputable.”