Will Staten Island Voters Give Their Ex-Con Ex-Congressman a Second Chance? Tony Zambito Thinks So
On Staten Island, there’s a lot of forgiveness for former Congressman Michael Grimm, who served seven months in federal prison for failing to report almost $1 million in cash receipts.
“He did a couple things wrong, but he paid his dues,” said retired firefighter Tony Zambito. Sitting on the edge of Great Kills Beach, he said he likes that Grimm is an energetic supporter of President Donald Trump.
“Anyone could’ve done it,” said Deanna Immitt, sun-bathing in the parking lot nearby. “Anyone could’ve made the same mistake.” She likes that Grimm is “a fighter for what he thinks is right.”
“A lot of politicians – their hands are dirty,” said Christopher Fedele, after loading a paddle board onto his car. “I think it sort of goes with the territory.” An ordained minister and retired sanitation worker, he recalls Grimm tirelessly helping relief efforts, both on the ground and in the halls of Congress, after Superstorm Sandy.
Grimm is trying to run on his Congressional record from 2010 to 2014 and on what he says is a stronger allegiance to Trump than incumbent Republican Congressman Dan Donovan. He’s trying to persuade voters that he was unfairly prosecuted by the Obama Administration Department of Justice.
“I had three delivery boys and a dishwasher off the books, and I’ve never hid from that,” Grimm said in a recent debate on WABC. “It was a civil offense.”
But his opponent, Dan Donovan, the incumbent Congressman and former Staten Island District, says Grimm’s version is self-serving and misleading.
“In November of 2014, he asked us to vote for him. He said he was innocent of the charges against him. We believed him,” Donovan said at the debate. “Our community voted for him. A week later he pleaded guilty, using our votes as a bargaining chip with the Justice Department.”
The bottom line: in between being an FBI agent investigating white-collar crime and being elected twice to Congress, Grimm had a restaurant called “Healthalicious” – where he failed to report almost one-million dollars in cash receipts. In his guilty plea, he admitted paying employees off the books and lying to investigators.
He served seven months in federal prison.
President Trump is supporting his opponent in the GOP primary on Tuesday -- and warning Republicans that nominating a convicted felon could make it easier for Democrats to take over the reliably red seat in November
Trump tweeted that Donovan “will win for the Republicans in November...and his opponent will not. Remember Alabama” – a reference to the Republicans’ ill-fated nomination of Roy Moore for US Senate.
But many of the district’s Trump supporters are ignoring the warning – and posting multiple yard signs for Grimm, often festooned with American flags.
Mary Purdy thinks her neighbors are crazy.
“He thinks he’s the Teflon don, that nothing’s gonna stick. And he’s wrong,” she said, in the parking lot of a Staten Island Costco. “The Democrats are out to kill. He’s gonna get crucified.”
The 11th Congressional District isn’t exactly ‘purple.’ A single Democrat has represented it in the past 35 years – current District Attorney Michael McMahon – and he only served a single term, from 2008-2010. Still, Democrats sense vulnerability this year in the only district in New York City that voted for Trump in 2016.
Max Rose, the leading Democratic candidate already has almost twice as much money in the bank as Grimm and Donovan combined.
This story originally aired nationally on NPR's Morning Edition.
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