Nicole Malliotakis Has A Primary Opponent
Yesterday, I was looking to see if anyone had officially declared they are running for the NY-03 congressional district where the constituents had bungled into electing George Santos last year. Santos has filed the paper work to run for reelection, although it is widely assumed that state Sen. Jack Martins will be the Republican candidate. There are half a dozen Democrats being talked about as possible candidates but so far just one has filed. He isn’t as bad as Santos, but… almost. Josh Lafazan is officially a Democrat— or in George Santos parlance— Democrat-ish. But if he’s a Democrat, it’s a Democrat who runs with the endorsement of the Conservative Party and who last year ran a failed campaign backed by No Labels and funded by lobbyists and Sam Bankman-Fried’s stolen FTX loot. Lafazan spent $1,862,923 in the primary— on top of the $710,849 that Bankman-Fried spent for him— and came in third with just 5,296 votes (20%).
While looking to see what was up in NY-03, I happened to notice some activity in NY-11, the Staten Island, south Brooklyn district that is represented by New York City’s only Republican, Nicole Malliotakis. She was reelected last year in a landslide against conservative pretend Democrat Max Rose— 115,992 (61.8%) to 71,801 (38.2%). Rose, a slimy Blue Dog, offered no real reason for anyone to bother getting off the couch to go vote for him— so they didn’t. When he was in Congress for a term, the district has an R+13 partisan lean. After redistricting last year, the partisan lean was slightly less red— R+11. Two years earlier Trump won the district against Biden, 53.4% to 45.7%. So far no Democrat has declared but… Malliotakis has a Republican primary challenger— a weird one but a challenger.
Republican Nick Robbins is the chief of staff for Staten Island Assemblyman Sam Pirozzolo and has run for office before. An 18 year old college student in 2018, he tried to challenge Mid-Island Assemblyman Michael Cusick (Chairman of the Staten Island Democratic Party) but never made it through any party primaries. The Staten Island Advance reported that he was inspired to run by Trump. "I was never interested in politics until the 2016 presidential election, when Donald Trump became an everyday person in the news," Robbins told The Advance. "I think witnessing that forces you to take a look around at what you believe in and how people elected to represent you do their job and how your own government works."
He campaigned— briefly— on 3 issues: MAGA-like xenophobia, reducing tolls on the Verrazano Bridge and legalizing recreational marijuana. "I think if cigarettes are legal, alcohol is legal, this should be legal,'' said Robbins. "It's only common sense. Research has shown that no one has ever died from a mariuana overdose. It's something that people should have the right to do. This is, again, where I break from the Republican view on this because the government shouldn't be restricting what people want to do with their lives.” On and one more thing— requiring drug testing for people receiving public assistance.
He didn’t become an assemblyman but he did become the chairman of the Staten Island SAM Party (Serve America Movement Party) before it merged into Andrew Yang’s Forward Party. While Robbins was chair, their were exactly 649 registered members— in the entire state of New York, so likely around a dozen on Staten Island. That eventually led him to declare his candidacy for a New York City Council seat but he either withdrew or was disqualified, so never competed in the primary. Before he exited that race he said he wanted to run so he could pass legislation that would require that people on public assistance— which he identified as food stamps, Social Security and Medicaid) work while receiving their benefits.
I would think Malliotakis isn’t going to have much of a problem being renominated, even in the context of a MAGA-dominated Staten Island Republican Party.
The only other New York seat I’m seeing any early activity in so far is the 22nd district (Syracuse area), but it’s just a welcome rumor that progressive Democrat Sarah Klee Hood may run for the blue-leaning seat won last year by Republican Brandon Williams, who beat a pitiful, useless conservative Democrat, Francis Conole who outspent Williams $3 million to $910,000. The district went from a. D+4 partisan lean to a D+2 lean.