Dick Hubert’s Worldview: County GOP treats 16th Congressional candidate Dr. Miriam Levitt Flisser with contempt, and worse

October 2, 2024 at 10:49 p.m.

Dr. Miriam Levitt Flisser

Dr. Miriam Levitt Flisser called the Westmore News after my column item Aug. 29 asking her to contact me for a campaign interview, as her website had no place to leave requests for interviews or media inquiries.

This, mind you, from the Republican candidate for the 16th Congressional seat in next month’s elections.

That response, and Dr. Flisser personally answering the phone number given to me for inquiries, led to a near 40-minute interview last Friday afternoon.

It was our second detailed interview, the first resulting in a full-length column on her initial 16^th District candidacy which ran Sept. 29, 2022.

Here’s an excerpt from that column:

“Perhaps you or your family got to know her through her pediatric practice—her 15 years as Chief of Pediatrics at Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville where she served as the first woman president of the medical staff.

I could go on and on about Dr. Flisser’s life achievements. And her origin story—arriving in the USA as the child of penniless Jewish refugee parents after years of their fighting the Nazis in the forests of what is now Lithuania and Latvia. That work called for her mother to be an explosives expert and her father a marksman. Kill or be killed was the life they led.

After the war, her parents went back to their hometown where the locals threatened to kill them. They fled to the American zone in Germany where they became stateless refugees, eventually migrating to the USA under the McCarren Act—arriving here on a Marine troopship.”

Sadly, as far as Dr. Flisser’s campaign support and the campaign itself, nothing has changed in two years.

*Dr. Flisser confirmed that the Westchester County Republican organization has not contributed a dime to her campaign. NOT A DIME. Two years ago, the County GOP, under Doug Colety, also refused to give her a dime. Flisser says they’ve “never discussed” his refusal to donate. “Maybe it’s something I should ask,” she told me.

I told her this refusal “smacked of sexism.” I told her she should call them out. She did not disagree.

*I asked if top Republican donors like Rye City’s Gary and Julie Killian have offered to hold a fundraiser for her, as they have for 17^th GOP Congressman Mike Lawler. She said they’ve had no contact with her.

*She could not name a single Republican who has endorsed her campaign. Not one. I told her the only other Republican I could think of in a similar situation was the GOP candidate for Governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, whose racist and antisemitic statements have turned off Republican donors from across the country.

*I asked her if any Republican candidate anywhere shared her values. She replied: “I don’t think any share my story and that’s where my values come from.”  

I asked her what values she shared with the top of the GOP ticket, Donald Trump. She pointed to Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  

We had a lengthy conversation about women’s reproductive rights and the threats to those rights by Republicans nationally and in states like Idaho, Texas, Louisiana, and Georgia, for starters. Dr. Flisser said she was not familiar with any of those medical crises. I asked her if she had conversations with women office holders locally like State Senator Shelley Mayer whose candidacies emphasize their efforts to fight for reproductive rights freedoms. She said she had never communicated with them. (As State Senator, Mayer represents a wide swath of the 16^th District.) Dr. Flisser said she thought it was a “good idea” to be in touch with Senator Mayer.

I asked if she had any common issue agreements with County Executive George Latimer, her Democratic opponent. She only wanted to talk about her differences centered on law enforcement, but she has had no in-depth communication with any of the candidates running for District Attorney, the chief law enforcement officer in Westchester County.

Dr. Flisser says she has not asked GOP Congressman Mike Lawler if he would endorse her. Given that Lawler has raked in huge sums at fundraisers in the 16^th District, most notably at the Killian home, it would seem at the minimum that Lawler would endorse Flisser. So far, not a single Republican office holder has endorsed Flisser. She says she will let me know if they endorse her. I told her the refusal of Republican candidates to endorse her is “political criminality.”

A final note. Flisser’s November Congressional opponent George Latimer was the beneficiary of some $15 million in political action committee funds in his successful campaign to defeat Jamaal Bowman in the 16th District Democratic primary. His name recognition is huge. His support in the Jewish community, supposedly Dr. Flisser’s strong point, is also huge.

It’s no wonder the GOP has given up contesting this seat. But why Dr. Miriam Levitt Flisser is subjecting herself to this kind of humiliation from fellow Republicans is mystifying.

I have only one reasonable explanation. And it’s based on an in-house commercial that MSNBC runs for its host Ali Velshi. In it, Velshi describes how his immigrant father ran for an office in Canada that he had absolutely no chance of winning. Velshi says his father told him that it was his way of celebrating democracies where people like him could run for office.

I can understand why a child of refugees would feel that way about running for public office in the 16^th District. But Dr. Flisser is being treated as political dirt by a misogynistic and callous Republican organization under Doug Colety, and he and they need to be called out.

If you’re a Republican, you desperately need a new County chairman. It’s time to remove Colety from his job as County Commissioner of Elections and start all over again.

Dick Hubert, a retired television news producer-writer-reporter living in Rye Brook, has been honored with the Peabody Award, the DuPont Columbia Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award.

Editor’s Note: This column, written by Dick Hubert, represents his opinion and not that of this newspaper.