Yeah, I was curious to meet the Republican running for Bill deBlasio's City Council seat in the 39th district. I mean it's audacious being a Republican in the People's Republic of Park Slope.
And I was sort of missing my breakfasts with the candidates. It had been months since I'd met with any of the 39ers or the 33s.
So I told Joe Nardiello to meet me at one of my usual BOC haunts: Donuts on Seventh Avenue near 9th Street.
Of course Nardiello knew all about Donuts because he's a Brooklyn guy from way back.
I have to say he doesn't look like a Republican. I was expecting someone clean cut, non-ethnic and very middle America (sort of like 39er Gary Reilly, who happens to be ultra progressive. So much for cliches).
Wrong. Nardiello, born and bred in Brooklyn, has dark eyes, dark hair and strong Italian good looks.
He had the Brooklyn childhood of legend. "All we needed was a ball. My life was constantly filled with sports, resourcefulness, spending time with friends."
There was football and wiffleball on the Brooklyn streets. "Punch the ball, off the point, off the wall, corks, skellies," Nardiello recited a litany of the games he played as a kid.
In elementary school, Nardiello was plucked out of St. Agnes in Carroll Gardens for a progressive study junior high. "When I found out it was for underprivileged kids I didn't know what that meant. I had to look it up."
Clearly, Nardiello did not view himself as having an underprivileged background. It was a good life with a good family on the good streets of Brooklyn. "But I didn't know anyone who went to college in my youth. People went into trades and became union carpenters, longshoreman at the docks like their fathers."
Later he was placed in a special "Higher Achievement Program" at Xavier High School in Manhattan. He went to college at NYU. While there, he also worked part time at Citibank as a bank teller. "I'm from a blue collar background. If you're not working there's something wrong with you."
Ever the busy—and social guy, Nardiello started the NYU Social and Athletic Club, a club for students who didn't like fraternities and sororities. "I don't like exclusion. Something for the few and not for the most." There were 500 members and it was a place to give commuter students a sense of belonging," he told me.
At NYU, Nardiello majored in journalism he says "because I was a child of the 1960's up to Watergate. I wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein."
After graduation, Nardiello decided to go into advertising, where he found that he enjoyed the creative side. "I was making money. In my neighborhood if you made your age in salary you were a success. I had superstar status in the neighborhood. A wunderkind."
But he was restless and wanted to do something else after a while. "Nothing is ever about money for me. It drives my wife crazy. It's the challenge," he told me.
So he worked for advertising agencies developing business for companies like American Airlines, the island of Curacao, fashion accounts and even a Donald Trump board game.
And then he tried something else. During the Dinkins administration Nardiello became a member of an economic "think tank" led by Dinkins' Deputy Mayor Barry Sullivan. The mission of the NYC Economic Policy & Marketing Group, was to brand New York City was to support and develop the NYC economy during the recession of the early 1990s and to aggressively increase tourism to "hundreds of cultural institutions."
In this capacity, Nardiello worked with the Economic Development Corp and Small Business Services from 1992 until 1995, where it was his job to review the budget of the NYC Convention & Visitors Bureau for Deputy Mayors.
"The idea was to apply a private-sector approach to efforts to promote NYC worldwide," Nardiello told me. He also managed the “Mayor’s Tourism Office” and recruited & directed seven of NY’s largest marketing agencies to highlight attractions in 10 designated “development zones."
Nardiello is proud of his work at NYC Economic Policy and Marketing Group: "We brought East and West Harlem together. They weren't communicating," he says. The group also helped Brighton Beach and introduced Big Apple Greeters and "New York City: Yours to Discover" program. "The idea was to focus on the city (and tourism) outside of Times Square."
After 9/11 it was this experience that inspired Nardiello to approach individual companies in Lower Manhattan to help them comeback from the devastation of the attacks.
Then I popped the million dollar question. Why is Nardiello, a Republican in a predominantly Democratic district, running for City Council?
"I am giving people a choice. People should understand that a man can be a strong candidate and look past the branding.
Looking at his website, I gather that Nardiello sees himself as a Theodore Roosevelt Republican, a Mike Bloomberg Republican, a Park Slope Food Coop Republican. He writes on the site:
What would Teddy Roosevelt do with the MTA or even our NY State elected bodies?
Says Nardiello: "This is a moment in time in Brooklyn that we can finally focus on the underprivileged, the disconnected, those who need help who have no voice. People who need direction and assistance."
Funny, Nardiello doesn't sound like a Republican. But he is.
–I asked if he's pro-Choice and he said that he's 100% for women's rights. As to his actual view on abortion, he didn't say.
–I asked if he's for same sex marriage and he said "I don't think the government should decide what a family is."
–
-Did he vote for Barack Obama? Nope. He voted for McCain.
So Food Coop or no Food Coop he's a Republican, friends.
I asked Nardiello, who is likable, articulate and funny, about the "Ah Ha" moment that inspired him to throw his hat into the ring.
So here's what happened: He went to the City Council candidate's forum at the Church of the Gethsemane in Park Slope in the Spring of 2009. Remember that? It was the one John Heyer refused to participate in because he was being "attacked" for his pro-life, anti-same sex marriage views.
But Nardiello was an audience member. When asked if they supported residential parking permits, which would require locals to pay for parking, all the candidates said "yes." He was shocked.
"This is year three of a great recession and these people have no connection to the recession. No business experience. No connection to what it's like to live in Brooklyn in these times," Nardiello told me. "You have to protect the people of your district. Everything has to be in the public interest."
Practically apoplectic, he decided there and then to run. And it wasn't easy in Brownstone Brooklyn to even find 400 Republicans who would sign the petition needed to get his name on the ballot.
About Atlantic Yards, Nardiello initially thought the plan to bring a professional basketball team to Brooklyn was a slam dunk on many levels, including branding and economic development. "However, I was surprised at the sheer size of the relating residences," he says.
From the sounds of it, Nardiello backs a more holistic approach to development. He believes that there must be a process of communication that includes the city and the councilperson and "not the developer, to share a comprehensive vision and address issues like the traffic on Atlantic Avenue," he wrote in an email.
At the end of 90-minutes I told Nardiello that it was time for me to go. My sister had dropped into Donuts and the three of us walked down to Third Street (it can be hard to shake a politician once they start talking).
It was fun to get to know this Food Coop Republican and the guy running against Democrat Brad Lander and Green party candidate David Pechefsky in the general election on November 3rd.
As Nardiello told me in an email: "I'm running for our areas — which I will always live in. People have a
new, honest voice and the hardest working representative they'd ever
meet — if they want it. They have to vote the person, not the party to
wash-away partisanship in thelr lifetime, here and now! …I may have
just appeared on the political radar, but I've been here and doing my
best, day to day for quite some time."
photo of Joe Nardiello in Donuts on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope by Louise Crawford