Presidential political campaigns have coat tails which during their elections can pull borderline Congressional and Senate candidates along for the ride. The city’s 11th CD, which is all Staten Island plus hefty pieces of southern Brooklyn, including Bay Ridge, is in play with a hotly contested race. In fact the national Dems and Republicans and their respective allies regard this seat as so important they are putting several million dollars in play to win it.
What with the pandemic’s distortions of normal life plus the prolonged street protests against the police, Summer 2020 metro NYC is definitely not the best of times or places for a contested U.S. Congressional campaign.
Just ask 33-year-old Democrat Rep. Max Rose, who waging a reelection run for his second term. Or his rival, Republican Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis who’s trying to derail him.
Rose had enough trouble the last time, 2018, when he beat the then incumbent Republican Congressman Daniel Donovan in a hard fought race by edging the incumbent slightly in Staten Island while pulling stronger vote margins in Brooklyn .
At 35, Malliotakis is already a 10 year veteran of the State Assembly. She ran for mayor in 2017, losing big time citywide but getting more than 70% of the Staten Island vote, nearly 3 times as much as the de Blasio .
A Bronze Star decorated Afghan war vet , Rose is a former health service administrator and also worked as special assistant to the late Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson.Recently Congressman Rose, serving a two-week deployment with the National Guard, worked to set up a 262-bed emergency hospital at South Beach Psychiatric Center on Staten Island.
When it comes to Washington The Congressman is proud to point out in ads how he has delivered for the district.
”We passed the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, cut through years of red tape to get the Seawall project going, took on the Port Authority to save our toll discounts, passed split tolling to take out-of-state trucks off the expressway, secured millions of dollars more for the opioid epidemic and slapped China with sanctions for flooding our streets with fentanyl. We did all of that and more without taking a cent from Corporate PACs or federal lobbyists. “
But he does have significant support from Democratic party funding sources. Money needed, he says, to battle the $2.4 million in “dark money” from the “most powerful super swamps “ of influence, Republican money, that will be aimed at ending his term of office by 2021.
Meanwhile the beneficiary of this “swamp” media spend surge ostensibly will be Malliotakis, the Staten Island counterpoint of the city’s celebrated AOC, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, the new liberal Dem NYC congresswoman who has already carved out some big space for herself.
Malliotakis aims to do the same, on the flipside, of course.
The daughter of Cuban and Greek immigrants, she is pro-President Trump.
Indeed, she was quick to respond to AOC’s attempted call for boycott of Goya Foods, because its Spanish American CEO gave a White House appearance endorsement of President Trump.
The Assemblywoman called Ocasio-Cortez’s actions “shameful” and “symptomatic of the radical left’s attempts to bully and intimidate those who hold opposing views.” She has since participated in a food drive lead by Goya canned foods aimed at NYC and New Jersey families.
Max, for his part, has called Nicole shameful for her duplicity in her alleged Trump support, and other issues, launching a NicoletheFraud.com website right after the June primary to bolster his arguments.
Insisting that she’s “everything you hate about politics. All in one person.”
That includes flipflops on her previous support for sanctuary cities and her onetime opposition to Trump.
He also targets her recent State Senate votes aimed at cutting hospital funding and slowing down investigations of nursing homes. Malliotakis staffers argue back that Assembly Democrats likewise voted the same way on both hospital cuts and protecting nursing homes from investigation.
Malliotakis campaign spokesman Rob Ryan insists that Max is quite the flip-flopper himself–pointing out his initial decision late last year to vote against impeachment of President Trump and then his subsequent Yes vote on the final House roll call to impeach, joining the rest of the Dem delegation.
Ryan added, Rose more recently joined a Staten Island march earlier this summer, protesting police brutality, where many protesters called for defunding the police. And then later in July Rose stated his strong support to not defund the police.
Some of this stems from Rose’s self-described role as a “centrist, populist” trying to find the right balance to fit in with voters. Because the 11th C.D. is the most conservative in all of NYC and until Rose’s recent election, the last stand for federal elected Republicans in New York.
Malliotakis seeks to bring the district back in the fold, pointing out to its voters from Bay Ridge to Eltingville that Max Rose is too liberal to represent them.
Likewise, both President Trump and his surrogate, former city mayor Rudolph Guiliani have recently publicly attacked Rose. Such attacks would be a plus for the Democratic candidates in most parts of NYC. Congressional districts. Not necessarily so in the 11th where Trump got 53% of the vote in 2016 (Indeed, it was the only city CD that he won).
Malliotakis, who has strong support from Trump and Giuliani sees law and order as a critical issue. And yes, the NYPD Police Benevolent Association and other local law enforcement unions have endorsed her.
Marching in Blue Lives Matter across the Brooklyn Bridge in July and participating in other “Blue” events in the district, she is out there insisting that liberal political leaders like Rose are endangering us all.
Of course, congressmen have no direct role in local law enforcement except to guide federal funds to the state and such. But they can and do set the tone or add to it. Rose has supported bail reform, the closure of Rikers Island, and other criminal justice reform measures in New York.
Malliotakis claims his actions are out of step with local voters, particularly in light of the recent violence and looting that have accompanied Black Lives Matter protests and the separate but equally troubling increase in shootings this summer in the city.
With the broader Trump vs. former VP Joe Biden presidential campaign as the lead, there certainly won’t be any problems with voter turnout this November.
Will Rose ride a “Blue” wave in addition to his own support from his work in Washington and in the district? Or will Republicans and independents upset over liberal shifts rally to Malliotakis’ side to oust him?
