Fleming and LaLota State Their Cases in Express News Group Debate

Democratic Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming and Republican Nick LaLota, the chief of staff of the presiding officer of the County Legislature, who are vying for the 1st Congressional District seat being vacated by Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, sparred on a number of issues at a Zoom debate sponsored by The Express News Group on Friday, October 28.

LaLota, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who served 11 years in the military, tried to paint Fleming as a tax-and-spend Democrat who was soft on crime, while Fleming countered that LaLota represented Republican extremism that threatens the future of American elections and will trample personal rights, including the right of a woman to have an abortion.

LaLota cited high inflation, taxes and rising mortgage rates as major concerns of the voters with whom he had spoken. “I’m running for Congress to ensure that the next generation of Americans has the American dream available to them,” he said.

Fleming, a former prosecutor and Southampton Town Board member, said she came from a working class background. “I think folks are looking for someone who can stand up for fundamental freedoms that are definitely under threat, and at the same time have the backs of ordinary Long Islanders who just want to make ends meet,” she said.

Asked by moderator Joseph P. Shaw, the executive editor of The Express News Group, if Democrats should take responsibility for the inflation that was, in part, fueled by stimulus measures, Fleming said the alternative was far worse.

The coronavirus pandemic caused a worldwide economic shutdown, she said, with millions of jobs lost in the United States alone. “The money that was infused into the system to keep America running actually prevented us from heading into a depression, and I dare say global depression, that would have had wide-ranging impacts,” she said.

Acknowledging that inflation was like a “pay cut” to ordinary Long Islanders, Fleming said she had voted to cap county gasoline taxes — a measure LaLota said he wrote for the legislature — and would work hard in Washington, D.C., to restore the state and local tax deductions, or SALT deductions, that were capped at $10,000 when Republicans pushed through major tax cuts in 2017 under former President Donald Trump. That tax bill, she said, “included a direct hit on blue states” with the SALT deductions cap.

Lalota agreed that the SALT deductions need to be restored, but he suggested that “the blue states need to show that they are able to pare back their spending before they ask the red states to subsidize their budgets.”

LaLota argued that government “doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem,” and said years of deficit spending had left the country in an untenable position. He said if elected, he would support a proposal put forth by Senator Rand Paul that would require all heads of federal departments to cut 1 percent of their discretionary spending.

But Fleming said that cutting things like office furniture budgets would not have much of an impact on the deficit “when the Trump tax cuts allowed what could be a $1.9 trillion deficit increase.”

She said LaLota, who has been endorsed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, would join him in taking the budget ax to entitlement programs. “Social Security and Medicare are on the table for this Republican agenda,” she said.

LaLota flat out rejected the notion that he would vote for any provision to cut either program, calling them “contracts” with the Americans who had contributed to them. But LaLota said Fleming, by criticizing the Trump tax cuts, showed that she supported higher taxes.

Fleming countered that his criticism was an oversimplification of a complex issue, but she said she would vote to rescind the tax cuts “in terms of the giveaways to wildly profitable corporations and billionaires — absolutely.

“We need mindful, courageous, thoughtful representatives who are not just looking to make partisan hits or attack each other, but can look at the nitty-gritty … things that will have a real difference,” she added.

LaLota chided her for saying she would oppose corporate bailouts when she served on the County Legislature, which then gave Amazon multi-year major tax breaks to construct a “last-mile” facility at the Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton, saying it was hypocritical of her to get on her soapbox and hold corporations responsible in Washington when “you had the opportunity for the last six years and you did nothing.”

Fleming responded that she had worked on the contract for the facility to ensure that workers were treated fairly in the company.

Fleming, in turn, tried to paint LaLota as an extremist on abortion rights.

“We are in a very, very dangerous place in the United States, where for the first time in 50 years, we have seen a fundamental freedom taken away from 50 percent of the population,” she said of the Supreme Court’s overturning of the abortion rights guaranteed under Roe v. Wade. “We are going back to a time when women were second-class citizens. The government has no place in a medical examining room when a woman is making a decision about what happens to her body and what happens to the trajectory of her life.”

She said, if elected, she would vote for a bill to codify abortion rights at the federal level.

“I’m running for Congress, and I’m running for Congress in the State of New York,” LaLota responded. “Like it or not, the Supreme Court has ruled that this is now a state matter. Not one person’s right in New York State is going to change.”

Nonetheless, LaLota said he supported a woman’s right to have an abortion during the first trimester and in cases of rape, incest or when a woman’s life is at stake.

Fleming said such exemptions “cannot function in the real world,” and she argued that LaLota’s stance on abortion was even more extreme than the proposal put forth by Senator Lindsey Graham to pass a federal law that would impose a ban on any abortion after 15 weeks.

Although a growing number of Republicans have joined the ranks of those calling into question the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, LaLota said if he had been in Congress in 2021, he would have voted to certify the results.

Locally, he said as a county elections commissioner, he agreed to certify results, “despite some requests, if not pressure, from some of those within my own party.”

LaLota said the easiest way to make elections safe would be for the state to issue voter identification cards, as is the practice in 36 other states, as well as limit absentee ballots to those who are ill, out of town or in the military.

He said both sides agree that more election fraud takes place with absentee ballots, often from family members, but Fleming dismissed the notion that absentee ballots were the source of much fraud. “I’ve never seen credible evidence of fraud by coercion in the absentee ballots,” she said. “It’s a scare tactic. It doesn’t exist.”

Fleming then tried to take LaLota to task for agreeing to eliminate the early voting center on Shelter Island. He responded that the Board of Elections faced budget constraints that required it to eliminate the center. When money was restored, the board agreed it would be better practice to offer early voting in more densely populated areas, he said.

The candidates also said they would bring different approaches to solving America’s energy needs, especially at a time when Russian oil imports have been shut off and OPEC has refused President Biden’s request that it ramp up production, announcing instead that it would cut production.

LaLota said the United States should tap into some of the 43.8 billion barrels of known petroleum reserves that it has within its own borders to become truly energy independent. “You have to tap the thing that is in your own backyard, so you don’t have to beg your adversaries for it,” he said.

But Fleming said LaLota’s call to drill for more oil when half the acreage under lease on federal land is not being used today was wrong. “The fact of the matter is oil companies, which are wildly profitable right now more than ever in history, are holding off on using those sites and seeing windfall profits because of it,” she said.

Noting that LaLota has been endorsed by Ryan Zinke, who was secretary of the interior under President Trump, Fleming suggested that LaLota shared Zinke’s support of offshore drilling in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New York.

LaLota dismissed the suggestion that he would support drilling off Long Island’s coast and said if it was fair to conclude that he shared the same opinions as those who have endorsed him than the same should hold true for Fleming.

He called her “bail reform Bridget,” adding that she was a “total supporter of lawlessness” because Governor Kathy Hochul, who has endorsed Fleming, supported bail reform.

Fleming scoffed at the idea, saying her career as a prosecutor showed she was a supporter of public safety. She added that she had been endorsed by a number of police unions and poked at LaLota for his poor relationship with the Amityville Village Police Department when he was a village trustee there. LaLota said he had sought pay freezes to bring the village’s department more in line with other municipalities and responded that he, too, had been endorsed by police unions.