NY-13: Mirones Won’t Run

Former Staten Island GOP Assemblyman Matthew Mirones, who had been gaining steam as a prospective replacement candidate for the seat of retiring Rep. Vito Fossella after the death of Frank Powers, announced today that he won’t run:

Former Staten Island GOP Assemblyman Matthew Mirones has announced that he will not be a candidate for Congress.

“I’ve decided on a personal level not to get back into the political arena at this time,” said Mirones, who represented the East Shore and part of Brooklyn in the Legislature from 2002 until 2006.

He retired from the Assembly in part because of the travel back and forth to Albany, and said today “Washington is that much further.”

Mirones was attractive in that he had the same advantages as Powers (self-financing capacity) combined with an actual electoral track record.

So it’s back to the drawing board for the GOP. Or is it? The Staten Island Advance reports that NY1 broadcaster Lisa Giovinazzo is now the top choice (again) for Island Republicans.

Donovan, Lanza, Oddo, Fiala, Mirones, and even Fossella himself… that’s a lot of names that GOPers have burned through in their search for a candidate here.

Meanwhile, a DC source tells the Advance that McMahon has already raised $400,000 for his campaign while the GOP scramble continues.

19 thoughts on “NY-13: Mirones Won’t Run”

  1. no Republican wants to run in this district. C’mon guys, it’s not THAT Democratic.

    Oh well, Congressman McMahon it is. I’d bet he’s gonna be a Blue Dog anyway

  2. ..if they can’t find anyone I’ll run.  While I wouldn’t be the best Republican congressman I could probably do at least as well for them as Joe does for the Democrats.

  3. This seat is now “lean Deomocrat”. Just today, Robert Novak in his weekly report called this a “lean Democratic takeove” and expect Cook and CQ to do the same very soon. We will not have to wait until the prmaries.

  4. Ms. Giovinazzo, a newscaster on NY-1 News, got 29 percent of the vote when she ran against City Councilman Michael McMahon (D-North Shore) in 2003. McMahon is the Democratic organization pick in the congressional race.

  5. None of the Republican electeds are running because they know the seat will be gerrymandered in 2012 and they don’t want to serve for just two terms, so the argument that Harrison would be an easier mark against a more competitive candidate in 2010 doesn’t cut it.  

    McMahon’s original plan was to run in 2012 when the district was gerrymandered to be Democratic if he lost the Borough President’s race to Jimmy Oddo.  He couldn’t do that if Harrison was elected, so he enlisted Domenic Recchia to torpedo Harrison’s campaign.  Harrison, despite his mother and sister living in Staten Island gets flack for living in the Brooklyn part of the district.  Recchia, not only lives in Brooklyn, but he doesn’t live in the Congressional district.  Had he remained in the race, (Although he really never was in the race.  His non-campaign consisted of I can raise money and I have a vowel at the end of my last name.  He never even launched a website.) he couldn’t even vote for himself.  

    Then Vito imploded and the local GOP became wusses.  

    McMahon then saw an opening 4 years early and decided to run with it.  The local Dem party then strong-armed an endorsement by direct and implied threats of leadership positions and according to rumors people’s actual day jobs if they didn’t support McMahon in the show of hands vote.  The show of hands vote was conducted instead of the usual roll call or a more Democratic secret ballot, because there were people who were added to the County Committee, who didn’t even know they were on County Committee and had party picked people show up and vote instead.  No one not involved in this Tammmany Hall sham would be able to prove this by show of hands, while people would be able to recognize if a person voting by roll call was in fact that person.

    What the DCCC has done is also hypocritical.  Steve Harrison’s campaign was told he would have to raise certain fundraising benchmarks before he would ever be eligible for the treatment McMahon is getting.  But McMahon had barely registered his fundraising committee when the DCCC stepped in.  If the DCCC had given Harrison this treatment after he formally announced in August of 07, he’d have 3 million dollars by now.  

    McMahon was also recently endorsed by former Mayor Ed Koch.  Normally, an endorsement from an iconic NY political figure like Koch would be considered a good thing for a Democrat.  But consider this, Koch endorsed Bush in 2004 and recently has been endorsing more Republicans than Democrats.

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