It must have sounded strange to New York City residents who woke up last week and heard a local wanna-be politician bash the Democratic congress on a Fox 5 morning show. But that’s exactly what they got when Staten Island’s Republican challenger to Mike McMahon made an appearance on the program.
Mike Grimm, former FBI stooge and Tea Party panderer, appeared on the show and gave an eloquent alternative to the Island’s current rep on Capital Hill.
The contender was more subdued and pragmatic then the acerbic letters that come out of his press apparatus.
His biggest bullshit moment cam when he was asked why Staten Island id so different politically from the rest of the city or “Obama country” as the host called it:
“I think it’s a few things. It’s the highest concentration of veterans, It’s the highest concentration of small business owners, it’s the highest concentration of Italian Americans.”
Really, where does he get these numbers from? I had no idea there were more veterans in Staten Island then, say, Queens, or the South Bronx. Italian-Americans? Yeah, I’ll give you that. But small business owners? More small businesses or a “higher concentration” whatever that means, then Manhattan? Brooklyn? Nah, don’t think so.?
So why is Staten Island really more politically right-leaning than the rest of the city?
It’s geographically isolated from the other four boros. The only way to get off the island and into “Obama country” is the 25-minute excursion of the Staten Island Ferry and the Verrazano-Narrows bridge to Brooklyn. On the southern tip of the island, is a neighborhood called Tottenville, which is so close to New Jersey that the boro’s growing deer population is rumored to swim across the Arthur Kill on to Tottenville’s shores. If the deer were to take the train however, they would have a 45-minute ride just to get to the ferry from those beaches.
And there’s all those white people. Census estimates put some South Shore neighborhoods at 75 to 80 percent white. Not that this should matter. But the island’s politically active have a particular disgust for black politicians, hence the Staten Island Tea Party and references to the Island first black elected official as an “ugly low life” who reminds them of “the old show Mr. Ed.”
This is why Staten Island is not “Obama country.” It has nothing do to with Grimm’s erroneous assertion that we have more small businesses here.