Perry Gershon of East Hampton, who narrowly lost a challenge to Representative Lee Zeldin last year and hopes to be the Democratic Party’s nominee to challenge him in the 2020 race for New York’s First Congressional District, said that he had raised more than $400,000 in the second quarter.
Meanwhile, a rival for the Democrats’ nomination, Nancy Goroff, announced last Thursday that she had raised more than $200,000 in the 72 hours following the July 9 announcement of her candidacy.
Mr. Gershon, who announced his candidacy in April, said on July 9 that he had raised $406,750 in the second quarter, all of it from individual contributors. “Long Islanders are eager to fix what is broken and corrupt in Washington,” Mr. Gershon, who issues regular criticisms of Mr. Zeldin, wrote in the July 9 announcement. “I want to thank everyone for the overwhelming support they have given to our campaign. I’m honored and grateful to have this much energy and excitement behind the campaign. This is just the first step in flipping New York’s First District and I’m looking forward to continuing to build our momentum.”
On Monday, he issued a sharp criticism of Mr. Zeldin, a close ally of President Trump, after the president said via Twitter that four Democratic women in Congress, all of them nonwhite and all of them American citizens, should “go back” to countries “from which they came,” a controversy that resulted in the Democratic-controlled House voting on Tuesday to condemn the remarks as racist. “It is a patriotic duty to fight back against Trump’s extremism,” Mr. Gershon wrote. “Congressman Lee Zeldin is Trump’s staunchest cheerleader in Congress and one of his biggest enablers. Those who are committed to tolerance, decency, progress, science, and democracy must step forward to challenge him, because we are not safe with Trump in office.”
Ms. Goroff, a Stony Brook resident who is on leave from her position as professor and chairwoman of Stony Brook University’s chemistry department, said that all of her contributions had likewise come from individual donors. “Since announcing my campaign against Representative Lee Zeldin just three days ago, the support I’ve seen from our community has been nothing short of amazing,” she said in a statement issued last Thursday. “It is clear that voters are fed up with the dysfunction and gridlock in Washington, and they’re ready for new leadership. As a scientist, I will bring a fact-based approach to combat global warming, make health care affordable, protect a woman’s right to choose, and offer common-sense solutions to the gun violence epidemic.”
Mr. Gershon won 47 percent of the vote in last year’s election to Mr. Zeldin’s 51 percent, the incumbent’s margin of victory far smaller than in 2016, when he first defended his seat. In that race, he easily held off a challenge from former Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst, winning by 16 percentage points. A former state senator, Mr. Zeldin was elected to Congress in 2014, when he defeated Tim Bishop, the six-term Democratic representative, by nine percentage points.