Ex-con tax felon Grimm...

Ex-con Grimm could create the wildest House race of 2020

The former GOP congressman and tax felon says he's '90 percent of the way there to run' against freshman Max Rose on Staten Island.

By LAURA BARRÓN-LÓPEZ

Michael Grimm is trying to come back from the dead — again.

The former Republican congressman and tax felon told POLITICO in an interview that he’s very close to launching the second bid for his old seat in as many years. The move by the scandal-tainted tough guy, who once threatened to throw a reporter off a balcony, could jeopardize Republicans’ chances in a district key to the party’s hopes of recapturing the House in 2020. And national Republicans appear to be closing ranks behind a different candidate: state Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island), the GOP nominee for mayor of New York City two years ago.

But Grimm is undeterred. “I’m 90 percent of the way there to run,” he said.

The one-time FBI agent said he was railroaded by his political enemies — “They don’t want rising Republican stars in New York City,” he said — when he was sentenced to less than a year in prison. And Grimm’s opponents all happen to have one thing in common: They’re President Donald Trump’s enemies, too.

“Who signed off on my indictment? James Comey,” Grimm, stirring his tea at the Z-One Diner here, said of the former FBI director whom Trump fired. “It’s the same exact players and the same exact playbook.”

He compared his felony charges for tax evasion to the “witch hunt” Russia investigation carried out by special counsel Robert Mueller, Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. But there are obvious differences: Grimm pleaded guilty to concealing more than $900,000 in gross income and admitted failing to report hiring busboys “off the books” when he owned a Manhattan restaurant, Healthalicious.

New York’s 11th Congressional District, encompassing the conservative-leaning borough of Staten Island and parts of south Brooklyn, was the only Republican-held seat in New York City until Democrat Max Rose won in November. The district is one of the most competitive in the country — Trump won it by roughly 10 points in 2016 — and the race will provide strong clues about the durability of Democrats’ House majority.

Grimm's first comeback bid, in 2018, crashed and burned in the GOP primary when he was trounced by incumbent Dan Donovan — whom Rose defeated in the general election — by a 26-point margin. But this time around, Grimm says the shadow cast by his felony guilty plea is no longer a factor. He’s spoken to multiple people at the National Republican Congressional Committee, Grimm said, and he's in the process of setting up a meeting for an upcoming trip to Washington.

“The cloud is gone. It’s over; it’s in the past,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of colleagues call me and tell me they’d love to have me back.”

Officials at the NRCC did not respond to requests for comment about Grimm's potential candidacy. If Grimm doesn't run, he'd likely back city Councilman Joe Borelli, who is "considering a run" and has met with people in the Trump administration, donors and the NRCC.

In what could be a sign of the battle to come, Grimm and Rose are already attacking each other gleefully more than a year before the start of the general election.

Grimm took issue with Rose boasting about passage of legislation that allows construction and maintenance of a seawall along the east shore of Staten Island. He said he’s the one who got the plan and the funding for the wall approved. What Rose passed was equivalent to pulling a permit, said Grimm.

“If [Rose] was a gentleman, and he wasn’t insecure because I know he is about me — he’s terrified I’m going to run — he’d be honest and say, ‘My congressman, Grimm, funded this wall, and I’m now making sure it’s getting done,’” said Grimm.

Rose — a blunt-spoken Army veteran — gladly fired back at his would-be opponent.

“There’s absolutely no doubt that Mike played a part, and then he had to pass the baton to Dan Donovan when he took a vacation in federal prison,” said Rose. “And then Dan Donovan passed the baton to me after I beat him.”

"God bless him," Rose added of news that Grimm is close to launching a campaign. "He's just the gift that keeps on giving."

Nearly three months on the job, Rose hasn’t shied away from defying party leaders. He voted against Nancy Pelosi for speaker. He isn't embracing proposals championed by leading progressives in the party and sided with Republicans on a symbolic procedural measure saying authorities should notify ICE when an undocumented immigrant buys a gun.

At the same time, Rose is being squeezed by an emboldened left flank of the party that dominates the news cycle and increasingly threatens primary challenges. And Rose, in particular, may end up feeling more of the heat because his district is just miles away from the one represented by fellow freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Speaking to fewer than 100 constituents at his second-ever town hall last weekend in the auditorium of a high school in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, Rose got five questions about freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), two about the Green New Deal, and went round for round with a constituent about why he opposes "Medicare for All." (Rose supports lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 50, instituting a nationalized system of all-payer rate-setting and a public option.)

Rose was pressed the most on policies boosted by Ocasio-Cortez and his response to comments made by Omar that were widely considered anti-Semitic. “Someone in this country does have a right to criticize Israel. Someone in this country does have a right to criticize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” Rose said. “All I ask is that they do it without causing Jewish people pain by bringing up anti-Semitic comments."

Rose panned the "economic unorthodoxies" of the Green New Deal and said instead, he wants an “Apollo project for battery technology” to advance solar and wind energy and a cap-and-trade system to get the U.S. to a carbon-free economy by 2050.

While Rose works to position himself as more centrist than some of his Democratic colleagues, Republicans are eager to hit him from the right. As with other Trump-district members, Republicans plan to tag Rose as the tip of a socialist spear — hoping that by tethering Rose to Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi they can make him a one-term member. That playbook failed in 2018, after Republicans spent millions labeling Democrats running in red districts Pelosi soldiers.

“As the daughter of a Cuban refugee, the threat of socialism is something I don’t take lightly," said Malliotakis, who calls Rose "a Park Slope liberal," labeling the Democrat an off-island Brooklynite. "When I see individuals like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who's from New York City, trying to move our country more to the left, it really bothers me."

Rose has an answer to that charge at the ready, one he test-drove at a Staten Island town hall earlier last week. “I’m not a socialist. Everyone here knows I’m not a socialist,” he said in an interview. “It’s very obvious I’m not a socialist.”

But Rose could also benefit from a fractious Republican primary. Malliotakis touted establishment Republican support she’s quickly lining up, noting that New York Reps. Lee Zeldin and Elise Stefanik are backing her bid. Stefanik’s new Elevate PAC, formed to boost female Republicans in primaries, is “supporting” her. Malliotakis has also met with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy “personally,” she said, and “he’s very supportive.” (McCarthy did not respond to a request for comment.)

Looming large over any Republican primary is Trump, who endorsed Donovan over Grimm in the 2018 primary. Grimm said he doesn't harbor a grudge, but he'd be less enthusiastic about a run this time if the president is going to back another candidate in the race.

"The president got involved to save an incumbent, which I respect," Grimm said. "I wouldn’t want to be in a position now where the president would jump in again."

Malliotakis wouldn't necessarily be a natural fit for a Trump endorsement, but neither was Donovan, who voted against Trump's tax overhaul. In her failed campaign for mayor in bright-blue New York in 2017, Malliotakis said she voted for Trump but later regretted it.

“I agree with the president on most policies," Malliotakis said in an interview at a The Coffee Club Diner in South Brooklyn. "When I disagree with him, I’ll disagree with him. I’m not anybody’s rubber stamp. I’m my own individual person.”

Grimm thinks he's the best shot at taking the seat back, calling Malliotakis too "liberal" to win. And he claims his recent history as a criminal defendant makes him the right person to send back to Washington during Trump's reelection campaign.

"Bad things happen to good people every day, and my experience would make me a better legislator because I look at how it's happened again to Donald Trump," said Grimm, returning to his felony. "My love for this country just exudes from me. It just comes out of me."