How Grimm is Staten Island's Future?

Trump's hometown wasn't kind to him last year. NY-5 (southeast Queens) gave Hillary an 85.7-12.7% rout. NY-07 (Lower East Side, Chinatown, Little Italy, Bushwhack in Brooklyn and Woohaven in Queens) gave her a 86.9-10.4% win over Trump. But that was nothing compared to NY-13 (Upper Manhattan) where Hillary took 92.3% of the vote to Trump's 5.4% or NY-15 (South Bronx) where Trump only got 4.9% of the vote. But there was one NYC district that Trump actually won. NY-11 is all of Staten Island-- which Trump won 95,612 (57.2%) to 67,561 (40.4%)-- and a chunk of south Brooklyn. Districtwide, Trump won 53.6% to 43.8%. Trump even won much of the Brooklyn part, especially the areas still controled by the Italian Mafia Families and those packed with Russian-Jewish immigrants. Weird district, NY-11, the Brooklyn part stretching from Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Fort Hamilton, Bath Beach and Bensonhurst all the way up to the corner of Avenue P and East 15th Street, a block from the famous JFK appearance at Dubrow's during the 1960 primary that was supposed to-- and did-- prove that he could win in the most liberal neighborhoods in America. Those neighborhoods went for Trump last year.

The congressman from NY-11 is Dan Donovan, a mainstream conservative Republican, who, as Staten Island District Attorney, had refused to indict the cop who choked Eric Garner to death. Soon after that incident, he won a special election-- against a DCCC Blue Dog-- to replace Michael Grimm, who was forced to resign as part of a deal to guarantee he would just get a short prison sentence.

Grimm ("Mikey Suits"), a career-criminal and Mafia thug, wasn't charged with murder or any of his other serious crimes but just allowed to plead guilty to some relatively minor offenses involved with running a dirty health food restaurant, cheating on his taxes and hiring undocumented workers and systematically cheating them. Rather than 40-years-to-life he would have gotten for his more serious crimes, the resignation deal was sweet enough to give him a nice 8 month sentence, of which he served 7 months. And now he wants to run for his old congressional seat again. Donovan is pretty popular there-- especially with the establishment (sans Guy Molinari, who is still completely devoted to his boy Grimm)-- so it would be a very tough primary. Some Trumpists are angry at Donovan because he was one of the 20 House Republicans to vote against TrumpCare.

There are half a dozen Democrats battling it out for their party's nomination: Mike Decillis, a former police officer who is now a special education teacher; Michael DeVito, Jr., a former Marine who runs a non-profit; Boyd Melson, a former professional boxer who is part of the Army Reserves and lives in Manhattan (no campaign website); bond trader Zach Emig; Omar Vaid, a set designer from another district who says his "platform is always evolving"; and, most recently, 30 year old Max Rose, an Army vet who served in Afghanistan and is currently chief of staff for Brightpoint Health, a NYC nonprofit health care provider (no policies or issues on his website).