District 26 Carrozza vs. Tabone
Long before the Tea Parties there was Queens. These people take their politics very seriously. Being an outsider I can give you an objective opinion on this. The present Assemblywoman is AnnMargeret Carrozza. If it sounds familiar it could be from her well documented attendance problems in the Assembly. Mrs. Carrozza herself has called her 37% show-up rate abysmal. It also could be her dual residencey claims. Her husband and 2 children are out in Glenn Head and supposedly her mother is in a co-op in the district who she claims to live with. Yet she claims tax rebates in both locations. Sounds a little fugazy but when we have the man in charge of the IRS as a documented Tax Cheat it doesn’t sound so bad. Or our Attorney General who in his private practice defended terrorists and now defends us against them by attacking the C.I.A. makes sense right? I digress.
The man looking to challenge her is Vince Tabone. I’m from Brooklyn and kept calling him Vinny and he politely said “Andy we’re in Queens it’s Vince” I obliged. I met Vince for the first time at the Halloran campaign. I instantly got a good vibe from him and was pleased to find out he would be running for the seat. He has impressive credentials when it comes to economics and education and was under both the Gulianni Administrations and Bloomberg. Now you can fight back and forth about the good and or bad those fellows did but what you can’t deny is the knowledge you glean from working so closely with heavyweights of that nature.
Vinny much like Halloran has a stake in the community. He lives here his kids go to school here his friends are here and the special interests he represents are plenty. They’re the residents of District 26 and he wants to improve their lives along with his own of course.
When I sat down with him and saw the people working late on a saturday stuffing envelopes and smiles all around you get that feeling like you can make a difference. It’s not always about money or connections or who you know. Just ask Martha Coakley A.G. from Massachusetts she was running for the Senate and that guy with the truck beat her. That guy was Scott Brown and he now sits in Ted Kennedy’s seat even though Martha knew that guy from Chicago….mmmmm what’s his name ? …. he had 2 names mmmmm oh yeah Barry Sotero wait now he goes by Barack Obama the President. Or what most Campaign Advisors call “The Kiss of Death”
Any incumbent is low hanging fruit right now. People don’t like being told what’s good for them. They like to make those decisions for themselves and it all starts on a local level. Go get ‘em Vinny oh I mean Vince!