Senate leaders are now indicating that confirmation hearings on former Congressman Lee Zeldin’s appointment to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will come as soon as Wednesday, Jan. 15. In advance of these hearings, a close look at Zeldin’s voting record in Congress, and more recently his unsuccessful campaign for governor of New York, reveals a profile that is remarkably anti-environment and anti-climate.

In his 2022 gubernatorial campaign, Zeldin was an outspoken proponent of allowing fracking in New York and expanding fracked gas pipeline infrastructure throughout the state. Yet his claims about purported job creation and the economic benefits of the industry were wildly inaccurate. Meanwhile, understanding of the climate-wrecking dangers of fracked natural gas, known for more than a decade, are becoming more and more alarming.

While in Congress, Zeldin cast a number of key votes that were decidedly anti-environment and anti-public health. Among them: an amendment to cut EPA’s budget by $2 billion; supporting Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement; opposing a new EPA methane rule to reduce pollution from fossil fuel operations; supporting a weakened EPA standard under the Clean Air Act regarding particulate matter pollution; and opposing the Inflation Reduction Act, which invested hundreds of billions in clean water, clean air and clean energy initiatives.

Zeldin did also cast a handful of common-sense votes that can be considered helpful to public health and the environment, including support for several bills to address PFAS contamination, and a bill to ban oil drilling off areas of the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines.

In response, Food & Water Watch Managing Director of Policy and Litigation Mitch Jones issued the following statement:

“While Lee Zeldin cast the occasional common-sense vote on a few issues, his overall record in Congress and on the campaign trail has been solidly aligned with Trump’s disastrous anti-science, pro-polluter agenda. Zeldin was an aggressive backer of harmful fracking in New York, and he’s been casually denying the realities of fossil fuel-driven climate change for more than a decade.

“We know from experience that when working in a Trump administration, all else but fealty to Trump and his foolish whims goes out the window, and so we are preparing to confront the Zeldin agenda head-on – in the courts and elsewhere.”