Staten Island's Tough Guy Congressman Faces Someone His Own Size

Profile in today's NYT of Domenic Recchia.... DEM House nominee who's got a good shot of picking up a Republican seat.

>>>Domenic Recchia thinks there’s something for everyone to loathe about the man he wants to unseat in Congress, Michael G. Grimm.

There is that 20-count federal indictment, for starters, that accuses Mr. Grimm, a two-term Republican from Staten Island, of employing illegal immigrants and hiding around $1 million in sales and wages at his Manhattan health-food restaurant, Healthalicious. Not the kind of work history, Mr. Recchia says, that is likely to impress the many union members who live in the neighborhoods of the 11th District, encompassing Staten Island and a slice of southern Brooklyn.

And then there are the district’s mothers and fathers, who Mr. Recchia, a Democrat, says ought to be appalled by Mr. Grimm for threatening, on camera, to toss a diminutive television reporter off a United States Capitol balcony — with the parting promise: “I’ll break you in half. Like a boy.”


“Michael Grimm should pick on someone his own size. You know?” said Mr. Recchia, who is a large and lumbering trial lawyer, whereas Mr. Grimm is a taut and stocky former Marine. “I know how to fight,” he said, recalling his college years playing outside linebacker. For good measure, he added, “Let’s get somethin’ straight.”


It is precisely Mr. Recchia’s old-school Brooklyn bearing — his thinning hair gelled into something resembling gray tubes, his one-two-tree accent — that the city’s Democratic power brokers are banking on to neutralize Mr. Grimm’s own outer borough credentials.

Democrats had for years sought to recruit Mr. Recchia, a former City Council finance chairman, top lieutenant for former Speaker Christine C. Quinn and, not unimportant for the district, an Italian-American. And they are optimistic that the political conditions now are more favorable than last time around, when Mr. Grimm, already the subject of an F.B.I. investigation, defeated a little-known Democratic opponent.>>>> more at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/07/nyregion/domenic-recchia-steps-up-to-unseat-michael-grimm.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMedia&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0