Former GOP Rep. Mike Grimm expressed interest in running against Democratic Rep.-elect Max Rose on election night as results were still coming in, and he recently told the Staten Island Advance that he was still very open to the idea. Grimm recounted that he’d stood up to his party’s leaders while he represented New York’s 11th Congressional District, and if Rose “does some of the things like that I’ve done, then I wouldn’t run against him.” However, Grimm said that if Rose “ends up being the empty suit that just tells you all the platitudes and the things that you want to hear, which is what I think he’s been doing, then … I won’t just run I’ll beat him.”
Rose, for his part, will very much want to avoid doing many of the things that Grimm has done. The former Republican congressman resigned in disgrace in 2015 before a short stint in prison on tax evasion charges. Dan Donovan won this seat in a special election later that year, and Grimm decided to challenge his successor in the 2018 GOP primary.
However, while Grimm had spent his career building up a Trump-like cult of personality by portraying the Obama Justice Department as out to get him, the White House backed the incumbent. Trump even told his Twitter followers that Donovan “will win for the Republicans in November...and his opponent will not,” and invoked Roy Moore and his disastrous 2017 Senate campaign with a “Remember Alabama.” Donovan did indeed win that primary 66-34, but, contrary to Trump’s bold prognostications, he lost for the Republicans in November when Rose beat him 53-47.
This seat went from 52-47 Obama to 54-44 Trump, and the GOP is going to want to target Rose before he becomes entrenched. No notable Republicans other than Grimm have publicly expressed interest in running in 2020 yet, but the Advance writes that two local Staten Island elected officials, New York City Councilor Joe Borelli and state Assemblymember Nicole Malliotakis, have been mentioned as potential candidates. Borelli has also been mentioned for months as a possible candidate in next year’s special election for New York City public advocate.
We don’t know how interested either Borelli or Malliotakis are in a bid against Rose, though we know that Malliotakis badly wanted to run for this seat in the 2015 special election. However, she reportedly had a bad relationship with the Staten Island GOP leadership, and that pretty much doomed her chances to win the GOP nod. That’s because in New York special elections, the county parties pick their nominees rather than primary voters. The Brooklyn GOP was likely to back Malliotakis, but since Staten Island makes up most of this district, their party leaders could essentially nominate whomever they wanted no matter what their Brooklyn counterparts did.
Donovan, who was Staten Island’s district attorney at the time, won his home county’s party endorsement, and Malliotakis decided not to enter a race that was impossible for her to win. Two years later, Malliotakis decided to enter a race that was merely improbable for her to win, and she challenged New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. No one gave Malliotakis much of a chance, and while she carried her native Staten Island, where de Blasio has never been popular, with over 70 percent of the vote, she lost citywide 66-28.