STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – And you thought that a congressional race on Staten Island during President Donald Trump’s re-election bid was going to be straightforward?
The NY-11 House campaign took a detour into the surreal with the announcement that YouTube prank video star Joey Salads had thrown his hat into the ring against Democratic Rep. Max Rose.
Yes, “YouTube prank video star” is now a job description. Thank you, social media.
Salads is looking to run in the GOP congressional primary.
And you can laugh if you want, or cast aspersions on Salads’ controversial content. But some of the videos have gotten upwards of 17 million views on YouTube. That’s a lot of audience engagement, as we say in the news business. A lot of media outlets, my own included, would kill to get numbers like that on a regular basis.
But can Joseph Saladino (that’s the real name) bring anything of substance to a race that’s already going to be super-heated? Time will tell. His pitch is that he’s the pro-Trump candidate in the primary, and running as a rabidly MAGA Republican in a GOP primary on Staten Island can’t hurt.
Trump got 82 percent of the presidential primary vote here in 2016. It was pretty much his top county in the whole United States. There will be a lot of Trump in the air here with the president seeking a second term in the White House.
Not that the “rabidly-pro-Trump” tactic worked any wonders for Michael Grimm when the former congressman ran a party primary against GOP Rep. Dan Donovan in 2018.
Then again, Donovan got a big endorsement from Trump himself during that campaign, totally undercutting Grimm’s claim that Grimm was the more MAGA of the two. And even then, it took a final-hours, full-court press from establishment Republicans, including Rudy Giuliani and former Rep. Peter King, to get Donovan over the hump.
Would GOP Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, already in the race against Rose, get any such endorsement from Trump? Malliotakis was Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s New York state chair in the 2016 GOP primary. And she later said that she regretted voting for Trump in the general election, saying that she wished she’d written in Rubio’s name instead.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. YouTube stardom is one thing. Running an actual political campaign is another, even if YouTube will help Saladino get his message out. Saladino will have to raise money. A lot of money. He’ll have to get petition signatures. Video views are not votes. Social media “likes” are not donations.
Grimm has made noises about getting in the 2020 race, but things have been pretty quiet on that front lately. Not being able to beat the laid-back Donovan took some of the air out of the Grimm balloon.
Grimm did make an appearance at a Staten Island fundraiser for former Trump adviser Roger Stone, according to published reports. The ex-congressman, who resigned his House seat in 2015 after pleading guilty to tax evasion, will always have his followers. He’ll always attract a certain amount of media attention, not all of it flattering. But there doesn’t appear to be a major “we want Grimm” groundswell building out there.
GOP City Councilman Joe Borelli had also eyed the congressional primary. He’s this year running for city public advocate. Which doesn’t mean that he can’t run for Congress in 2020. He’s been a familiar pro-Trump face on cable news outlets, and you would think that puts Borelli in line for a Trump endorsement. Which would go a long way in a race against Malliotakis, despite her support from the GOP establishment in Washington. And would cut any MAGA legs out from under Saladino.
Could be a fun ride. Be sure to watch it unfold on YouTube.