A LONG SHOT,
Malliotakis ‘has guts’ to change city
EXACTLY TWO WEEKS before Election Day, as the marathon race for mayor was heading into the final sprint, Nicole Malliotakis broke her foot trying to avoid stepping on her dog.
But she isn’t letting the heavy boot she’s lugging around as it heals — or the long odds she faces at the polls — weigh her down as she competes for control of Gracie Mansion.
“A long shot still has a shot, though, right?” Malliotakis said during an interview Thursday, before a night spent stumping at galas and community meetings — boot and all.
The Staten Island assemblywoman is a Republican running in a Democratic city, a woman who voted for President Trump in a town where he’s deeply disliked. Polls put her around 40 points behind Mayor de Blasio, a Democrat, though she says her internal polls are more promising.
But Malliotakis has centered her run around other character traits. She’s the child of immigrants, a Cuban exile mother and Greek father, who shaped her ideology. She’d be the youngest mayor in recent history, at 36.
She’d also make history as the first woman, first Hispanic, and first Staten Islander to hold the post.
In political circles, she’s known as a striver — ambitious and unafraid of a challenge, beating an incumbent in her first bid as a relative unknown to take her Assembly seat.
“We’re in an interesting business where everybody wants to be guaranteed that they’re going to win before they take on any of the risky opportunities,” said state Sen. Diane Savino (D-Staten Island/Brooklyn), the only other woman in Staten Island’s Albany delegation. “But Nicole had the guts to do it.” Those guts have at times irked some of her colleagues as they scramble over a limited number of stepping-stone political opportunities in the borough.
“In the beginning, particularly men in her party were a little bit . . . taken aback: What makes her think she could run for mayor?” Savino recalled. “Well, what makes her think she could run for mayor is she is the one who had the guts to do it.”
One person she’s butted heads with used to sit with her in the Assembly — Councilman Joe Borelli. At a recent news conference where he stood beside her, he compared it to a sibling relationship.
“Politics is a contact sport, and certainly heads butt from time to time,” he said. “But at the end of the day, it’s one thing to fight behind the scenes. It’s another thing to be on somebody’s team and put our best foot forward and work for Staten Island and New York City together.”
Despite a long record of conservative votes in Albany, Malliotakis, facing a broader electorate than ever, has run largely on three Ts: “traffic, transit and trash.” She’s frequently criticized the mayor for running “social experiments” or development. One attendee having ambition beyond his municipal sympathetic to the candidate office. called it a “missed opportunity.”
“Let’s get back to the basics It was a much more hot-button here of city government. Meatless issue that propelled her into Mondays are great,” she said the mayor’s race — immigration, after the mayor rolled out veggie and the city’s effort to destroy lunches in some schools. “But records surrounding its municipal people want, like, their garbage ID program. picked up.” After talking about the issue of
Her focus on those issues has sanctuary cities on “The Brian Lehrer at some times felt misplaced. In a Show” — she argues the speech to the Association for a city’s current rules offer protection Better New York, an influential for crimes she deems too serious business group, she offered only to shield from the federal government her standard platform, and had — people encouraged to be prompted to discuss economic her to run, she said.
“So I said, ‘Maybe I should run for mayor. I don’t know, maybe, like, I should?’ ” she said with a shrug. “Because I really am not happy with what’s going on.”
On the Thursday she spoke to The News, she held a news conference about property taxes with Borelli, and in the evening stumped at several events — expertly navigating the cocktail hour at a gala for good government group Citizens Union on the Upper East Side, even if her boot might not have been her first choice in footwear to match a blue suit.
After, she headed up to East Harlem and worked out her notquite-fluent Spanish on the crowd at an Operation Equivalency gala in Taino Towers. She was warmly received, especially by an 11-year-old girl named Abigail who recognized her, unprompted, and said she’d seen her on CNN.
Before she was candidate for mayor, Malliotakis said her weekends and evenings were pretty simple. She dotes on her two Chihuahuas, Peanut — he’s the one who tripped her up — and Olympia, who once caused her mother to fall and break her arm. She likes yoga and bike riding, and lamented she hasn’t had much time to work out. But, if elected, she said she won’t travel back to Staten Island to hit the gym, a veiled swipe at de Blasio, who continues to travel to Brooklyn to exercise.
“If I’m in Gracie Mansion, I’m probably going to have gym equipment there. I know there’s a CrossFit and a yoga studio nearby, so I’ll probably sign up for them — walking, not taking three SUVs to the gym,” she said.
She’s single, but she doesn’t