(Editor's note: This is an opinion piece posted by a Patch reader. If you'd like to post on Patch yourself, find out how here.)



Do you remember the last time a sitting Long Island Congressman invited a far-right Hungarian fugitive with personal and family ties to neo-Nazi figures and political groups to headline a campaign kickoff fundraiser? I don't, because it never happened. But if you bring a hundred bucks to the Smithtown Elks Lodge tonight at 6 p.m., you can say that you remember the last time our representative invited a Nazi-linked speaker to his fundraiser, because that's exactly what's going down at tonight's campaign rally for Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin.

Zeldin's campaign kickoff will feature Rep. Chris Gibson, former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer (Donald Trump's Baghdad Bob), and ex-White House "deputy assistant" to the President and Breitbart Editor, Sebastian Gorka. Or as he's known in the Ph.D program at the political science department of Corvinus University in Budapest, aka Hungary's version of the University of Phoenix Online, "Doctor."

Now let's also consider that the other guy who was fired by Trump for being too comfortable white supremacy and xenophobia, Steve Bannon, is different from Gorka only in that Bannon is not Hungarian, and did not wear his dad's Nazi-ish medals to the Presidential inauguration. To my best recollection, he simply wore a barn coat.

Bannon and Gorka might be the only two figures on the extreme right wing that Donald Trump is ashamed to be associated with, and both have had the distinction, post-White House firing, of headlining a Lee Zeldin fundraiser.

That is remarkable. Think about it: Suffolk County's local hate groups, such as the Loyal White Knights of Hampton Bays, have not been as successful in attracting high profile bigots to their events as Lee Zeldin. If you're a member of the Loyal White Knights, that has to be embarrassing.