On Friday, GOP Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis formed a fundraising committee with the FEC for a potential bid against freshman Democratic Rep. Max Rose in New York’s 11th District, but she didn’t commit to running. While Malliotakis said she was “very encouraged” to get in after she spoke with Donald Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, she added that she was going to raise money for both a congressional campaign and her re-election bid to the legislature. Malliotakis cannot run for both Congress and the Assembly at once, so it would little sense for her to keep fundraising for a legislative campaign unless she was still keeping her options open.
Other Staten Island Republicans are also eyeing this 54-44 Trump seat. City Councilman Joe Borelli told the Staten Island Advance that he was considering running here, and that he was heading to D.C. to meet with GOP leadership about a possible bid.
Former Rep. Mike Grimm, who held this seat from 2011 until he resigned in 2015 ahead of a seven-month prison stint for tax evasion, has also been talking about another run since the very night that Rose unseated Republican incumbent Dan Donovan. On Thursday, Grimm posted a video where he declared, “It is comical to expect Republican voters will want someone as unprincipled, unaccomplished, and underwhelming as Nichole to share the ballot with President Trump in 2020.” It’s really subtle, but we get the sense Grimm doesn’t like Malliotakis very much.