McMahon’s got the name and the dough.

In his 2010 reelection bid Mike McMahon has the advantage of political tenure and the mountain of cash that comes with incumbency.

His two potential opponents are relatively unknown and frantically shaking hands and taking donations across the borough.

Mike Grimm is a former FBI agent and Gulf War veteran. His first run for office is fueled by a passion for conservative principles and a urge to uproot the current regime in Congress.

“I believe our country is on a very dangerous path,” Grimm told me last week, over the phone. “People are angry. People are more conservative here and they are not for a Nancy Pelosi agenda.”

Mike Allegretti is a relatively young former Brooklynite and political staffer who is making a name for himself in his new home, out on the borough of Staten Island.

“This is a values-based community,” Allegretti said. “I believe McMahon is a political member of Congress. With him people come second, politics comes first.”

While there are slight shades of difference between these political neophytes, their biggest challenge is to raise awareness, and money, on a borough very much neglected by Manhattan media — except, of course, when the ferry crashes.

As election day gets closer McMahon’s campaign will unlock the vault and let that ocean of cash flood Staten Island with poltical ads. And it is unclear whether the Republican candidates will sink or swim.

(according to OpenSecrets.org)

Yesterday was St. George’s Day, a European holiday devoted to the legend of St. George slaying a dragon.

So the Staten Island neighborhood of St. George decided to join in on the fun and hold an art and music fair in a local park.

Bands performed in Tompkinsville Square, a short walk from the Staten Island Ferry. Artists displayed paintings and photographs, kids did arts & crafts, tree-huggers dressed as fairies and distributed seed bombs to promote Earth Day.

All this in a park once, and intermittently still, populated by drunks, crackheads, methadone patients, and welfare recipients from the food stamp office right across the street.

Like most of New York City, crime has decreased since the Giuliani administration, and the area is relatively safer than it once was.

The St. George neighborhood, home to the Staten Island Ferry, is the Island’s northernmost point, the progressive shore: an artist enclave, a commuter haven, a place which stands as Staten Island’s best opportunity to become a vibrant and dynamic piece of New York City, instead of the insulated Jersey Shore mall-culture.

This locale, close to Manhattan and Brooklyn, is the previous city council district of now-Congressman Mike McMahon and represents a more Manhattan-centric liberalism than the rest of the boro.

The North Shore is also the home to Staten Island’s first African-American elected official as well as the first openly gay pol.

Another local politician, State Senator Diane Savino (D – SI and Brooklyn), made a passionate plea advocating gay marriage in the New York State last year.

But, again, Sen. Savino represents the North Shore, and this is the exception to the norm on the Island.

The South Shore is conservative in nature and not particularly welcome to outsiders. They would not exactly embrace the idea of an openly gay person in theory, never mind as an elected official. And if they tolerate African-Americans, they certainly don’t want them living in their gated community.

In a Slate.com piece, Jonah Weiner (a former St, George resident) tried to explain the Island’s intransigence toward the rest of the city.

Weiner likened the New York Harbor, which separates the aforementioned boroughs, to a moat that protects a majestic land from the miscreants.

What side that majestic land is on, however, depends on whom you ask, according to Weiner.

I would argue that an Islanders perception of the moat depends more upon where they live.

The North Shore is a diverse environment, a place where once-Councilmen McMahon could practice his centrist democratic ideals with apparent impunity from the Island’s more conservative, moat-friendly areas. Here, the castle is a ferry ride away.

To the Islanders on the Southern shores, in their heavily-fortified McMansions, St. George the neighborhood, like the patron saint himself, is their protective barricade against the potential ‘dragons’ that may lurk on the other side of the harbor in the dirty, graffiti-infested streets they left in the ’70s to join the kingdom of Richmond County.

It’s not quite an uphill battle, but with his reelection bid Mike McMahon faces a kind of strange paradox:

How does he remain true to the centrist Democratic principles that made him quite successful as a city councilman on the North Shore, while at the same time appeasing the rest of the borough, which was so eloquently described to us on Fox last week as “not Obama country?”

This negotiation will play itself out over the next seven months, but it leaves the rest of New York City wondering: Why is Staten Island not “Obama country?”

We spoke a little last week about the geographic and cultural isolation of the borough, the overwhelming preponderance of white people on the South Shore, and a particularly vehement hatred for liberal, black politicians (Debi Rose, Al Sharpton, President Obama, Charlie Rangel).

Another question to ask might be: Where do these people get their information from?

Well, primarily Fox News.

Staten Islanders will proudly tell you that they get all their right-wing propaganda from Fox.

“I watch Fox News every night,” a small business owner told me in the heat of the health care debate.

This may seem innocent enough but he wore it like a badge of honor. As if to say, “I know exactly what is going on with this ‘socialist health care scam,’ because I follow it very closely — on Fox News.”

The other trusted news source on Staten Island is it’s only local paper, the tragically sinking ship known as the Staten Island Advance, and its sister site SILive.com.

SILive reposts the Advance ‘news’ and its comment threads are usually littered with right-wing rants that have nothing to do with the substance of said news.

Here’s an enlightening remark about a piece regarding North Shore City Councilwoman, and the Island’s first black politician, Debi Rose.

This is just anonymous online posters, they are not representative of much.

But I wonder if we could somehow poll these people, maybe find out, say, what political fringe they are most associated with.

Oh wait look, they voted on their favorite story of 2009.

Wow, I guess those racist trolls voted on the Tea Party — just an educated guess.

As far as the paper is concerned, the editorial board is, at times, rabidly right-wing.

Here a recent selection from April 13 by Daniel Leddy, a man whose moral compass swings more frequently then a ’70s leisure suit.

The piece is called “A leftist agenda drives smear campaign against Pope Benedict.”

“…the New York Times, which has been spearheading the shameless defamation of Pope Benedict XVI, is a demonstrably and obsessively anti-Catholic publication. Facing bankruptcy and shedding all but the thinnest disguise of responsible journalism, the newspaper struggles to survive by intensifying its long-standing prostitution for left-wing causes.”

Alright, the column argues that the pederasts in the Catholic church are completely not at fault here. (NAMBLA would be proud of this column.) It is all the fault of the New York Times and their “prostitution of left wing causes.” OK…

Well, this is opinion right, the Advance does have ‘straight news.’

A week after the President signed his historic health care reform bill Staten Islanders were comforted to find this piece of ‘news’ in their morning papers:

‘Are there enough doctors in the house?’

“But if all of Staten Island’s 49,000-plus uninsured adults get insurance and start going to the doctor more often,” the newspaper warned, “there may not be enough primary-care physicians here to serve them.”

Sound the alarm bells.

Never mind that Obama’s health care overhaul will dramatically improve the lives of millions who currently do not have insurance. The real issue here is that these uninsured people, most likely poor, and probably black, will be flooding the waiting room at MY doctor’s office.

It’s not surprised that the paper would play this kind of ‘class warfare’ card on dawn of a new age of health care reform. It’s exactly the kind of alarmist bullshit that Staten Islanders have come to expect from their news sources.

The Island, or most of it, has become a vapid echo chamber of right-wing talking points. A two-way dialogue between the ‘man-on-the-street’ or the Tea Party and the Island establishment, or the Richmond County Country Club.

Unless this cycle ends, it won’t become Obama country any time soon.

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.

In the nascent 2010 race from the 13th congressional seat in New York a major player has thrown his wig into the ring.

On Feb 19 Rudy Giuliani was scheduled to make a public endorsement of Republican candidate Mike Grimm on the steps of City Hall. 

That appearance was delayed by the unfortunate news that Bernard Kerik was convicted in an epic corruption case.

So instead of a choreographed theater in lower Manhattan, reporter’s got a press release:

“Michael Grimm has outstanding qualifications for public office.” said Giuliani. “As a U.S. Marine he served in combat for our county and then he continued to serve our country for 11 years as a Special Agent in the FBI.”

The City Hall announcement was also notable for its location.

While the 13th district covers the vast and pastoral lands of Staten Island (and Bay Ridge) Grimm chose to make this campaign-defining announcement in lower Manhattan.

From the start, it seems that Grimm has been running his campaign with a national bent.

He launched the campaign at the Hilton Garden Inn (a new luxurious hotel overlooking the former site of the Staten Island Dump) and immediately tied McMahon to the leadership in Congress, calling him a “faithful vote for the Pelosi liberal regime.”

McMahon is actually more of a “blue dog” who voted against the Democrat’s health care bill.

Grimm is also trying to capture the Tea Party magic by name-dropped Scott Brown.

“He ran for the right reasons,” Grimm told the Advance.

I’m sure he’d love to ride the Senator’s mudflaps all the way to Washington DC. But do Staten Islanders really care what happens in Boston?

The response from the McMahon’s campaign has been tepid. 

The office has recently hired consultant, Evan Stavisky, who cited McMahon’s devotion to “the district’s centrist values.”

McMahon will likely cite terrorism funding and the economy as issues that actually impact Islanders but he needs to step up his game before Grimm snags an endorsement from Sarah Palin.