SOURCE:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12/nyregion/zeldin-epa-trump.html
By Nicholas Fandos and Lisa Friedman - November 12, 2024
The choice of Mr. Zeldin, a former Republican congressman of New York, to be the next E.P.A. administrator caught even some of his closest allies by surprise.
When he ran for governor of New York two years ago, fellow Republicans privately exhorted former Representative Lee Zeldin to distance himself from Donald J. Trump and his debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
He leaned in instead, most likely dooming any chance of his winning in a Democratic-leaning state. But his loyalty did not go unrewarded: This week, President-elect Trump chose Mr. Zeldin, 44, to be the next administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
The selection caught even Mr. Zeldin’s closest allies by surprise, and sent environmentalists and their opponents alike racing to understand his record. Unlike the energy industry lobbyists Mr. Trump elevated during his first term, Mr. Zeldin is a former Army lawyer and career politician with relatively little climate or energy expertise.
But it fits a pattern emerging in Mr. Trump’s earliest cabinet-level announcements, as he turns to his most reliable boosters from New York and Florida, often over seasoned policy experts. Mr. Zeldin’s nomination came the same day that Mr. Trump tapped another prominent New York Republican, Representative Elise Stefanik, to be his ambassador to the United Nations.
Mr. Zeldin declined to be interviewed for this article. In interviews with nearly a dozen environmental activists and others from his district, though, a portrait emerged on Tuesday of Mr. Zeldin as a Republican willing and even eager to address environmental problems at home on coastal Long Island, who nonetheless became more extreme on national climate positions as his profile grew.
Many also wondered whether Mr. Zeldin’s personal positions would even matter under a president who has promised to “kill” key environmental regulations as part of his economic agenda.
In his first remarks after accepting the nomination, Mr. Zeldin told Fox News that he would prioritize “unleashing economic prosperity through the E.P.A.,” and pursuing “energy dominance,” a phrase Mr. Trump uses to refer to developing more oil and gas.
Mr. Zeldin had very little to say about environmental protection, the reason the agency was first created in 1970.
“There are regulations the left wing of this country have been advocating through regulatory power that ends up causing businesses to go in the wrong direction,” he told Fox.
The nomination punctuates a remarkable turnabout for a politician who once appeared destined to labor away on the backbenches of Congress.
During four terms in Washington, Mr. Zeldin was known primarily for his work on veterans’ issues and his staunch support for Israel — not for climate or economic policy. He has never managed a staff larger than his 12-person House office.
Mr. Zeldin’s fortunes began to change after Mr. Trump’s arrival in Washington. He was one of the first Republicans to take Mr. Trump’s candidacy in 2016 seriously, later signed up for his impeachment defense team and helped amplify Mr. Trump’s debunked fraud claims after he lost the 2020 election.
Mr. Trump took notice, especially when Mr. Zeldin managed to turn a long-shot bid to defeat Gov. Kathy Hochul, Democrat of New York, in 2022 into a viable threat by running in the mold of Mr. Trump on crime and the economy.
Mr. Zeldin fell six points short of victory, but the close margin buoyed his national reputation. By this fall, he was crisscrossing the country campaigning for Mr. Trump, and allies speculated he could get a high-level national security appointment.
“He trusts Lee,” Representative Mike Lawler, a New York Republican now contemplating his own run for governor, said of Mr. Trump. “Having somebody who understands where the president wants to go and can implement his agenda can be critical.”
Mr. Zeldin’s own record on environmental issues appears to be mixed.
He has generally opposed legislation designed by Democrats to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote renewable energy. In the Fox News interview, he singled out “bringing jobs back to the American auto industry.”
Auto manufacturing jobs have actually gone up under the Biden administration, but the oil industry opposes Biden administration rules cutting greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. Mr. Trump, who accepted more than $75 million from oil interests during this presidential campaign, has promised to reverse the rules.
But back on Long Island, environmental advocates gave the congressman relatively high marks on conservation issues that tend to be less partisan, including those affecting the hundreds of miles of coast, estuaries and waterways in his district.
Mr. Zeldin, for example, took a leading role in the effort to save Plum Island in the Long Island Sound from development. Mr. Trump himself once had designs of buying the 843-acre, federally owned island, where hundreds of bird and animal species make their homes, and building a golf course.
Mr. Zeldin was an original co-sponsor of a major bipartisan conservation bill Mr. Trump signed into law. And he fought to give the E.P.A. money that could be used to help restore the Long Island Sound.
Kevin Dowling, who served as Mr. Zeldin’s legislative director for nearly five years, said the congressman also fought Republican efforts to eliminate a federal program that uses revenue from offshore oil and gas leases to purchase land for conservation and public recreation, known as the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Those battles were not well-publicized, he said.
“On that and a lot of random amendments, there was always a huddle of northeastern Republicans who were just more environmentally minded,” Mr. Dowling said.
Most surprisingly to activists, Mr. Zeldin opposed a 2018 plan by Mr. Trump to open nearly all U.S. waters to oil and gas drilling.
“At the time we knew that Lee Zeldin was very close to the administration, and we specifically went to him to ask for his help,” recalled Adrienne Esposito, executive director of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment, an environmental group in Farmingdale, N.Y.
She said she had been skeptical he would come to their side. But activists outlined the economic devastation that a single oil spill could bring to Long Island. Two days later, she said, Mr. Zeldin announced he had introduced legislation that would ban drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
“It was huge,” Ms. Esposito said.
Others came away less impressed. Ashley Hunt-Martorano, a former climate activist who lived in Mr. Zeldin’s district, said that while he may have taken an interest in protecting the economy of Long Island, he had not taken real positions to address climate change.
In 2016, Mr. Zeldin agreed during a filmed meeting with constituents to join the bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus. Asked how he felt about the effects of rising greenhouse gas emissions, Mr. Zeldin, whose own home, in Shirley, N.Y., sits just a block from the rising waters of Bellport Bay, said “the threat is very real” for Long Island.
Ms. Hunt-Martorano, who said she made it her mission to convince Mr. Zeldin to work on climate issues, said she “thought maybe I wore him down.” She ultimately arrived at another conclusion: “He kind of led us along.”
At the same time, Mr. Zeldin opposed — and often tried to halt — efforts to reduce emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, arguing that Democratic climate plans were driving up prices for consumers.
In 2022, he voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, which is pumping $370 billion in tax breaks and subsidies into wind, solar, nuclear and other clean energy projects nationally.
Mr. Zeldin said the law would spend “hundreds of billions of dollars our country doesn’t have on far-left policies our country can’t afford.”
During his campaign for governor, Mr. Zeldin pledged to reverse New York’s ban on hydraulic fracturing. He opposed a tolling plan designed to reduce traffic in New York City and generate revenue for public transit. He also said he would push to slow the state’s landmark law designed to slash greenhouse gas emissions, calling it “pathetic political posturing, poor leadership.”
Mr. Zeldin’s conflicting views were captured neatly by the League of Conservation Voters, a left-leaning environmental group that tracks support for legislation related to the environment. The group gave Mr. Zeldin a 14 percent lifetime score — lower than any Democrat currently in Congress, but higher than any Republican.