“The Devil You Know” — Staten Island Voters On Why They Begrudgingly Back Cuomo
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Guardian Angels
1 min read
The article mentions Curtis Sliwa's 'stewardship of the Guardian Angels quasi-vigilante organization' without explaining what it is. This volunteer safety patrol organization founded in 1979 has a fascinating and controversial history that shaped Sliwa's public persona and political career.
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Ranked-choice voting in the United States
1 min read
The article discusses strategic voting behavior where voters choose between candidates to 'stop Mamdani' - a dynamic directly influenced by NYC's ranked-choice voting system adopted in 2019. Understanding how this system works illuminates the 'begrudging Cuomo voter' phenomenon described throughout.
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Staten Island
12 min read
While the article assumes familiarity with Staten Island's political character, most readers don't know its unique history as NYC's most conservative borough, its geographic isolation, or why it nearly seceded in the 1990s. This context explains why it's considered 'prime Sliwa territory' and 'distinctively American.'
I love Staten Island. It’s one of the most distinctively American places in America. And I’ve been all across America. Don’t get me wrong; there are plenty of other places I like as well. But something about Staten Island gets me laughing every time I visit.
Yesterday I trailed Frank Morano, a recently-elected NYC Councilman from Staten Island’s South Shore, as well as his cohort of fellow Republican office-seekers. Longtime followers may recall that I was a semi-regular on Frank’s late-night WABC radio show, before he opted to jump into the political fray. And if you’re going to jump into the NYC GOP political fray, there’s no better training than as a Talk Radio Guy on WABC. Just look at Curtis Sliwa, of whom Frank is a big supporter. Before a dramatic falling-out with WABC proprietor John Catsamatidis, the grocery chain mogul who has now backed Andrew Cuomo, Sliwa was a staple of the airwaves, and you can tell he’s mastered a certain kind of radio-cadence in his everyday speech. I used to listen to “Curtis and Kuby,” an afternoon show, while driving in the car. And I didn’t realize Frank was once a producer of that show. But of course he was, as I found out yesterday.
Our first stop was a newly-opened Shop Rite in the Great Kills area. I mistakenly identified this as a Shop Rite I had patronized several times before, on my own volition, not recognizing that it’d only opened a few weeks ago. So already, I was caught in a big fat lie; I’d been to some other Staten Island Shop Rite that looked almost identical.
Frank and his crew knew everybody and their mother, almost literally. I was cracking up at the lady in the above photo, Marian Kryshak, 80, posing with Frank. She made sure to clarify that she was Italian, and had divorced her husband with the name Kryshak. She recounted being infuriated by her friends, whom she reported had been “brainwashed” into voting for Cuomo. “They’re idiots!” she fumed. “I used to listen to WABC faithfully, but when they started the Cuomo shit, I gave up on them.”
Marian clearly had special animosity toward Cuomo, and thus was one of the voters who wasn’t going to be bludgeoned into backing him so as to stop Zohran Mamdani. Asked why she
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