The campaign trail is getting pretty rough these days for Republican candidates.
In western New York State, at a campaign event outside Rochester, Rep. Lee Zeldin, the Republican challenger to NY Gov. Kathy Hochul, dodged a potential stabbing while speaking on stage in front of a crowd.
The assailant, a military veteran named David Jakubonis, lunged up on stage and attempted to thrust a sharp object at Zeldin’s neck while he said, “you’re done.”
Luckily, Jakubonis was rather slow in his approach and there were plenty of other veterans around to subdue the attacker and prevent serious bodily harm:
In video of the attack, a man can be seen onstage with Zeldin, grabbing his arm before they fall to the ground.
“You’re done,” the man can be heard repeating in the assault, which unfolded at around 8 p.m. at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Perinton.
The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office identified the suspect as David Jakubonis, 43.
The attack ended after the suspect was restrained by people in the audience and members of Zeldin’s campaign, video recorded by NBC affiliate WHEC of Rochester shows.
In the attack, the man appeared to be holding an object with two protruding points. The sheriff’s office statement did not say what kind of weapon it was.
Here’s a video of the incident which demonstrates just close Zeldin was to being stabbed in the neck and perhaps fatally injured:
Zeldin is currently a sitting Congressman in New York representing the 1st Congressional District which is the western half of Long Island.
The kicker in the story is that despite an attempted stabbing of a gubernatorial candidate, and sitting Congressman, Jakubonis was released hours later thanks to New York’s epically progressive bail laws, a point which Zeldin has frequently hit during his campaign:
“Everything wrong with the current state of the New York. A lunatic attempts to stab a gubernatorial candidate, gets arrested, only to be ‘released on his own recognizance.’ What an absolute joke,” Fox News contributor Joe Concha tweeted.
“Attempt to stab a GOP Congressman on stage, get released on your own recognizance. New York, everybody,” The Spectator Editor-at-Large Ben Domenech wrote.
“So New York’s bail law allows you to attack a political candidate with a knife and be released on your own recognizance within hours? Maybe there should be a carve out for would-be assassins,” New York Councilman Joe Borelli wrote. “Wow.”
Another aspect of the story has to do with the current New York Governor, Hochul, and a recent email from her campaign providing Zeldin’s event schedule and encouraging her supporters to show up and protest his campaign:
New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul’s campaign sent an email about upcoming campaign events being held by Lee Zeldin, her Republican challenger in the New York gubernatorial race, prior to a man’s attempted attack on him while he was speaking Thursday evening.
Prior to the Zeldin campaign event, Hochul’s campaign sent out a media advisory, titled “‘Big Lie’ Lee kicks off statewide ‘MAGA Republican’ bus tour,” to subscribers of its email list. That email, according to NY1 reporter Zack Fink, contained information pertaining to Zeldin’s upcoming campaign events, including the dates and times the events were scheduled to begin.
It’s not clear whether the assailant was encouraged by the email or simply showed up because the event was taking place in his hometown of Fairport, a suburb of Rochester.
In an environment where conservative Supreme Court judges are having attackers arrested outside their homes with weapons in hand, it seems unwise for political candidates to post their opponent’s schedule and encourage protests or unrest at upcoming events.
Then again, Hochul is anything but a shrewd politician having fallen into the office after the disgraced Andrew Cuomo stepped down for a host of ethical reasons, not to mention sexual harassment allegations.
In that way, Hochul is a weak candidate herself and ripe for the picking if Zeldin can mount a serious campaign in the Empire State. New York had a long string of Republican rule from Albany under George Pataki from 1995 to 2006, so it’s not that out of line to see the potential for an upset in November given the current environment Democrats have created nationally.
It’s still an uphill climb, but with Zeldin’s point about New York drifting so far off track being made for him on the campaign trail, maybe more voters will start paying attention.
