US Rep Lee Zeldin, Supports Yeshivas, Says High Crime and Inflation in NY could Lead New Yorkers to Choose Republican Gov.

 By Yehudit Garmaise 

Could New Yorkers be so fed up with crime, inflation, and the failures of bail reform that they might elect a Republican governor for the first time since 2002?

US Rep. Lee Zeldin, who anticipates a Red Wave on Nov. 8 said on Wednesday, “The top issues right now [are] crime and the economy. 

“New Yorkers are hitting their breaking points. They are leaving this state; it’s happening every single day. People are heading to other states, where they feel like their money will go further. They feel like they’ll live life freer.”

The upcoming gubernatorial election in just more than three months, “an opportunity for all New Yorkers to take this state back in the right direction towards restoring it to glory,” Zeldin said yesterday outside the 70th NYPD Precinct, where he was attending the walkout ceremony of his running mate, Lt. Gov. candidate Alison Esposito, who retired from the NYPD after served as the precinct’s commanding officer.

“Public safety, law and order, [people’s] ability to decide what’s best for their families, their children, their child’s education, Esposito told a Hamodia reporter who asked her how a candidate who is socially conservative and associated with Donald Trump can win in deep-blue New York.

 I believe that these are the main issues that are affecting all of New Yorkers right now,” Esposito replied. “The ability to put food on their table, the ability to decide what’s best for their children, the ability to decide whether to have their young children still wearing masks or having over-regulation, over-mandates that are crippling our economy, failing to bring jobs back to New York, failing to bring prosperity back to New York.”

In terms of yeshivas, Rep. Zeldin, who is Jewish and whose mother taught fourth grade at a Brooklyn yeshiva, before moving to teach at a Long Island public school said, “yeshiva education is a high-quality education that should be embraced and rewarded.

“We should make life administering one of these schools easier, not harder.

“The state is wrong to be pushing the substantial-equivalency standards.”

Zeldin, who opposed any state-mandated regulations on yeshivas, said that “having access to choice and options is something that should be embraced in Albany. And unfortunately, right now, they are attacking these private-school educations.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul has many times spoken in support of yeshivas, but she has not taken a position on the proposed regulations. In recent weeks, many Jewish media outlets criticized the governor for not granting them interviews in the run-up to her successful primary campaign.