The fighter
Former Senate leader used political will to shape region
Albany Joseph L. Bruno, an ironjawed former state senator whose political clout shaped some of the region’s largest economic achievements, died late Tuesday at his Brunswick residence.
Bruno was 91 and had been battling cancer.
A boxer in his younger years
and a Korean War veteran, the Rensselaer County Republican served as the Senate’s majority leader for 14 years following his 1994 overthrow of Long Island’s Ralph Marino. In the chamber, Bruno’s political moxie eventually made him one of the Capital Region’s greatest rainmakers, funneling state support to projects as diverse as the Globalfoundries chip-fab and the minor league ballpark at Hudson Valley Community College that bears his name.
But his tenure as Republican leader ended abruptly in June 2008 when Bruno announced he was leaving elected office after 32 years. The news came as an FBI investigation of his intersecting public duties and private business interests was intensifying.
Seven months later, Bruno was indicted by a federal grand jury for multiple felonies relat
ed to the alleged use of his office for personal gain. He professed his innocence and vowed to fight the charges.
The investigation of Bruno, called Operation Green Pastures, began in late 2005 when FBI agents started examining his use of private jet aircraft supplied by Jared Abbruzzese, his horsebreeding partner and business associate. Abbruzzese was never accused of wrongdoing. The investigation ultimately led to charges that Bruno had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in “gifts” disguised as consulting fees.
In the five years following his indictment, Bruno endured two federal criminal trials, the first ending with his 2009 conviction on two of eight corruption charges — a jury verdict that was later reversed by a federal appeals court in response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. At his second trial in December 2014, a jury acquitted Bruno on the two remaining felony counts he faced.
“I put my head down when I heard ‘not guilty, not guilty ’ because I was kind of trying to comprehend what I just heard,” Bruno said at a post-trial celebration that day. “Honest to God, I dedicated my adult life to public service. ... No one can imagine, unless you have experienced it, to have the
government, the United States of America, trying to put you in prison — for the rest of your life, probably, in my case.”
Bruno was born on April 8, 1929, at the Glens Falls home of his parents, Vitaliano and Rachael Catherine Bruno, both of whom had emigrated from Italy with their families. The third oldest of eight children, he endured a hardscrabble upbringing in a flat by the railroad tracks that had no running hot water and an oil stove as its only heat source.
Years later — after entering politics — Bruno would say that his support for labor unions was shaped by watching his father abused in lowpaying jobs, including as a
railroad worker and shoveling coal in a paper mill.
Bruno was 9 years old when he began delivering pastries before school to help earn money for his family to buy food. A year later, he took a job selling newspapers, earning three cents for each paper he sold. At 14, he got a job answering phones for a taxi company that paid him $3.50 a week. According to Bruno, he kept a dime each week and gave the rest to his family.
In Korea, where Bruno was deployed at the end of the war, he was promoted to sergeant first class; his duties included exhuming bodies and deactivating and removing unexploded bombs. He received a Bronze Service Star and other honors, as well as
becoming the undefeated light heavyweight champion of the 25th Infantry Division, based in Hawaii.
After returning from the Army, Bruno worked in various businesses as a salesman. In 1959, he used a $5,000 investment to start the United Telecommunications Corporation. The name was later changed to Coradian Corporation, which at its height employed about 800 people. Bruno later sold Coradian, which sold telephone systems to government and business.
In 1966, Bruno worked on the campaign staff of Republican Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, and later became a special assistant to state Assembly Speaker Perry Duryea. Bruno was elected to the state Senate’s 43rd District in 1976, representing Rensselaer County and part of Saratoga County.
Former Gov. George E. Pataki served in the Legislature with Bruno from 1983 until he was elected governor in 1994, just weeks before Bruno ousted Marino from the Senate’s top job in a Thanksgiving weekend coup. (Pataki was in the Assembly until 1992, when he was elected to the Senate.)
“For 12 years Joe Bruno was a tremendous partner in Albany as we tackled the tough problems to bring New York back from the brink of ruin,” Pataki said in a statement Wednesday. “On issue after issue, Joe was an indispensable ally. From reforming our criminal justice system to keep violent criminals behind bars to jobs and economic development, Joe was a stalwart leader.”
Pataki, who served three consecutive terms as governor while Bruno was majority leader, added that in “the best of times and the worst, I could always count on Joe to be forthright with his opinion. And while we didn’t always agree, Joe’s handshake was his bond and together we made a difference.”
Bruno’s wife, Barbara “Bobbie” Bruno, died in 2008 at age 77 following a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. The couple met in 1949 and had been married for 57 years.
Bruno subsequently built a relationship with Kay Stafford, the widow of deceased former state Sen. Ronald Stafford, who died of lung cancer in 2005. The relationship between Bruno and Kay Stafford became public in 2008 when she bought property next to his residence in Brunswick. The following year, she faithfully sat in the second row of the courtroom during his 2009 criminal trial.
At the Capitol, Bruno gained renown as a toeto-toe lawmaker who preferred climbing stairs to riding the elevator. He brazenly challenged governors in the murky political world where three men, including the Senate leader, controlled the state budget process — none more so than Eliot Spitzer, whose 15-month tenure in office was marked by fierce disputes with Bruno. The lawmaker expressed shock when he learned that Spitzer was resigning amid a prostitution scandal in March 2008 — just months before Bruno himself announced his exit from the political stage.
Former Congressman John Sweeney, who had been part of the team that helped Bruno become Senate majority leader, credited Bruno as one of the reasons he ran for Congress in 1998.
“He mentored me and showed that people from our area could make a huge difference, and he certainly lived the life that did that,” said Sweeney, who was in Congress until January 2007. “He helped many people. He was strong and tough and kind at the same time. There will be no other like him.”
Bruno was famous in the Capital Region for his efforts to steer millions of dollars in tax money and government grants to upstate New York. The 4,500-seat minor league baseball stadium at HVCC — dubbed “The Joe” — is named in his honor, along with parks, pavilions and a control room at the public broadcaster WMHT. A bust of Bruno, crafted by the late Times Union editorial cartoonist Hy Rosen, is on display at Albany International Airport.
He mentored me and showed that people from our area could make a huge difference, and he certainly lived the life that did that. He helped many people. He was strong and tough and kind at the same time. There will be no other like him.” Former Congressman
John Sweeney
Bruno exerted much of his political muscle in helping to improve the region’s transportation hubs, including the Rensselaer rail station, and also creating a foundation for biotechnology and nanotechnology industries across upstate. Those efforts include the Globalfoundries computerchip fabrication plant in Malta and his help securing $1 million in state grants to entice Maplnfo Inc., a software company, to expand its headquarters at Rensselaer’s Tech Park.
Pataki said the success of Globalfoundries was “a testament to our partnership and a huge part of Joe’s lasting legacy of advocacy for the Capital Region.”
Over his tenure, Bruno served as chairman of various committees, including consumer protection, insurance, elections, commerce, economic development, and small business.
He said that his focus on business and technology development was a result of New York losing businesses and population
to other states.
Bruno also pointed to his work on the Solid Waste Management Act of 1988, which helped institute an approach that emphasized reduction, recycling, and reuse of waste products, as well as environmentally sound disposal programs. In 1978, while chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Consumer Protection, the committee passed the Motor Vehicle Warranty Replacement or Refund Act, commonly referred to as the “Lemon Law,” which was legislation that became one of his landmark achievements.
In addition to Stafford, Bruno is survived by his children, Joseph, Susan,
Kenneth and Catherine; his grandchildren, Rachel, Nicholas, Richard, Elizabeth, Anna, Victoria and Aiden; and his greatgrandchild, Alessandra, as well as his sister Florence and his brothers Vitaliano, Arthur, Tony and Robert.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, a private funeral service will take place at 1 p.m. Friday at St. Pius X church in Loudonville. The Mass will be streamed live on the St. Pius X website and can be viewed one hour later later on the St. Pius YouTube or Facebook pages. The state Senate also will webcast the funeral Mass in a hearing room at the Legislative Office Building.
On the way to the Mass, Bruno will be driven past The Joe for a circling of the field that he loved to visit and where he threw out the first pitch of the season on many occasions.
Following the service, he will be driven past the state Capitol in Albany at about 3:15 p.m. on his way to Oakwood Cemetery for a private burial service.