Guy Molinari

After hisa press conference on Rudy Giuliani and the presidential race in midtown yesterday, I asked former congressman and Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari about the Republican Party here in New York.

“We are struggling for survival--that’s how serious it is,” he told me.

To save it, it’s going to take “strong leadership, people that have access to money. Money is necessary to rebuild the party to where it was, and good candidates. So a lot of recruiting has to go into the future. And it can be brought back.”

But Molinari isn’t too excited about John Catsimatidis, a late addition to the Republican Party and likely 2009 mayoral candidate.

(After the jump.)  read more »

Here 's former Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari at a rally today that was seemingly designed to respond to the notion that Rudy Giuliani is running against his hometown (and which was also timed perfectly to coincide with Hillary Clinton's appearance across town at a women's event).

The theme was “Rudy Gets Results,” part of a push to remind people that Giuliani cut taxes, reformed welfare, cut crime and improved quality of life.

During a question-and-answer session (above), Molinari was asked about Giuliani's obvious shifts on issues like gun control and gay rights. He said he didn't want to answer: “I’m afraid my words might be changed.” Then he added, “I think we all have changed our mind on a lot of issues.”

On the morning of March 1, Mayor Michael Bloomberg restated his political credo and his greatest sel  read more »

Our story this week dwells on the difficulty of running a campaign on the "I'm not a politician" theme while, well, running a campaign.

We can't really knock Mike for being a politician. If you like him, you want him to win, so you want him to cut the deals and take the stands he needs to take to win. But it does get a bit complicated when he insists on denying that he does these things.

As we report, he saved a job for Guy Molinari; switched positions on a policy issue for the good people of Middle Village; and has been awful good to the Rev. Floyd Flake.

Guy Molinari kind of laid it out for the Bloomberg people when he asked, of that personnel matter: "Does the Mayor have a political death wish?"  read more »

The answer, it turns out, was "No."

We hate to hit Mike twice in one day on indulging in the pandering, patronage, and politics that he claims to despise. But we didn't think this one could wait:

The Bloomberg Administration has pretty well purged the mid-level Giuliani loyalists from city government over the last three years, to the delight of some observers and the anger of others. One who hung on, however, was Carmela "Chicky" Piazza, who had been the assistant to chief-of-staff Tony Carbonetti under Giuliani. Before that, she was campaign manager, and then chief-of-staff to Staten Island boss Guy Molinari. Under Bloomberg, she's Director of Administration for the Office of Management and Budget.

A few days ago, the Budget Director, Mark Page, tried to fire Piazza. But he apparently didn't realize how powerful her friends still are, and how much influence they have on this administration.

"Everyone and their brother called," one Republican told us, among them Molinari, who we're told was livid and cursing. As several Republicans pointed out to us, the last thing Mike needs is more trouble on Staten Island, where he's worked hard to repair his relationship with the people who helped elect him in 2001.

And so, on Tuesday, Piazza got her job security. We're told she'll probably leave OMB, and wind up at another city agency.

We called Molinari earlier today, and he was reluctant to get into the details:

"I think it's fair to say she has not been fired," he said.

We asked who'd helped prevent that.

"She's the darling of [Staten Island Borough President] Jim [Molinaro], myself, and Rudy Giuliani. This lady has an awful lot of credits to herself," he said.

In what we think is a kind of sweet irony, one of Piazza's jobs in the Giuliani Administration was reportedly supervising the patronage operation.  read more »

NOTE: We haven't tried this before, but hell, this whole blogging thing is new to us. We're still working on this story, so if you know more, would you mind calling or emailing us directly? ANOTHER NOTE: A reliable source, and Piazza friend, tells us that Piazza's work for Rudy had much more to do with handling correspondence than doling out jobs, despite the Daily News report we cited above. He also wasn't much of a fan of our allegedly "snarky" tone...but we fear that's irremediable.

In 1990, Guy Molinari became Staten Island borough president and handed down his seat in the U.S.  read more »

Publicly, Gov.  read more »

Sometime next January, New York voters are likely to discover that the advent of a new millennium ha  read more »

Welfare reform, minor league baseball on Staten Island, casinos on Governors Island: Those were amon  read more »

Marching in a seemingly innocuous Columbus Day parade has landed Representative Susan Molinari, the  read more »