i've been waiting for some kind of article about the guy who lost to santos, robert zimmerman. as recently as a few weeks ago, there was no wikipedia photo for him, and it just seemed like he was an anonymous DNC shill who expected to coast to victory and lost to a guy who was not only lying about everything, but who had been exposed for lying about everything by a local conservative newspaper. the DNC and zimmerman didn't notice, i guess, or didn't bother to highlight it.
PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y. — The man who lost to George Santos looks like a winner. Chin up. Good humor. Clean-shaven, sparkly-eyed. Navy suit, flag pin, walnut-hued wingtips. Robert P. Zimmerman has dreamed for 40 years of being a congressman, and so Robert P. Zimmerman is still acting like a candidate, even as his would-be constituents greet him with a sympathetic tilt of the head, as if to say: I’m sorry for our loss.“How are you?” two members of the local school board asked him, with near-simultaneous bereavement.
“Holding my head high!” Zimmerman replied, undefeated by defeat, as they walked into a luncheon Friday hosted by the League of Women Voters of Port Washington-Manhasset.
“As you should!” the women said.
In a banquet hall of fake flowers and real Rolexes, Zimmerman worked the luncheon as if his congressional race never ended, as if he didn’t lose by more than seven percentage points to a man who appears to be a bamboozling cipher and who has become — even by the putrid standards of Trump-era politics — a national embarrassment. Zimmerman, lifelong dream shunted to a near-term crusade, hustled around the clubhouse of the Harbor Links Golf Course.
“We’re going to get him out of office,” he told retired women wearing chunky necklaces, taking their crinkled hands in solemn fortitude.
He greeted library officials and town supervisors with the same pledge: “We’ll get him out of office.”
Isma Chaudhry, co-chair of the Islamic Center of Long Island’s board of trustees, breezed toward Zimmerman with words of affection and thanks.
“But I’m losing hope,” she said. “I’m getting exhausted.”
“We’re gonna get him out,” Zimmerman said, repeating his oath of officelessness.
One campaign is over, and another has begun: an urgent mutiny against a sitting congressman, led partly by his vanquished opponent. The residents of New York’s 3rd Congressional District, a 30-minute train ride from Manhattan, are pissed. They’re affluent and educated, by and large, and they got took. They feel empowered by a unifying rage; they feel powerless from the lack of speedy redress. Santos has refused to surrender, despite a cascade of alleged lies and deceptions and legal and ethics investigations.
“Trust me: No one’s more frustrated than me,” Zimmerman says. “There are a few times I shouted into my pillow: ‘Why didn’t this come out earlier?’”
...
At the Stop & Shop in Bay Terrace, Zimmerman joined citizens in collecting signatures for a letter asking McCarthy to expel Santos for his “lies, deceit, and likely fraud.” Wearing only a suit jacket in the 40-degree air, Zimmerman intercepted shoppers as they exited the store. Bayside resident Dan Cruz said he voted for Santos, called it a “big mistake,” and signed Zimmerman’s sheet.
“We’re gonna turn it around,” Zimmerman told him.
“We’re gonna pull through,” Zimmerman told the next person who walked out.
“We’re gonna make it happen,” Zimmerman told the next person.
― Karl Malone, Thursday, 2 February 2023 01:35 (one year ago) link