new building<\/a> for a special needs school. When I first went from the Assembly to the council, I promised myself, if I do nothing else, I\u2019m going to make the kids at P.S. 37 not have to be housed in dilapidated, run-down trailers. And I said to myself, if I accomplish nothing else, my time in the council would be successful.<\/p>\nWhat\u2019s your best memory in the council?<\/p>\n
My best memory of the City Council actually is sort of ironic, because it was a low point for the city, and that was during COVID. Because in hindsight, so much of what I was saying proved to be right \u2026 because I used my bully pulpit to stake out positions that were plainly obvious, and, you know, years later, proven right.<\/p>\n
Can you say more?<\/p>\n
Like, closing schools, that was fucking stupid. And as a consequence, I pulled my kids out of public school and put them in Catholic school. Not every parent had that option and it\u2019s disgusting that the schools were closed as long as they were.<\/p>\n
What was your worst memory?<\/p>\n
I can honestly say I enjoyed every minute of being a member of the council. I\u2019m not exaggerating. I just did. I genuinely love people, and enjoyed working with all of my colleagues in the council and the Assembly throughout my career. I cannot point to one person and say I strongly dislike them.<\/p>\n
A lot of people don\u2019t talk like that these days.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t hate the player of the game kind of thing. Like, I don\u2019t take things personally. I do the Abby Phillip show probably once a week, right? We yell at each other on camera for an hour, and then the public doesn\u2019t see how we just go back to the green room and are wiping the makeup off our face, laughing. Like over something silly someone said in a jovial way. If you saw me yelling at Neera Tanden and her yelling back at me, you would never assume that we were laughing on the elevator ride going there, talking about how silly something else was. That\u2019s just how I view things. I don\u2019t have any real personal hatred.<\/p>\n
Speaking of the player, the game and the stage, I\u2019m interested in what you made of the recent Mamdani-Trump presser.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t surprised. I said as much in the media ahead of it. They will undoubtedly have fights, no question, but each man had a reason to surprise his critics. And I think both are actually \u2013 neither is the character that their critics make them out to be.<\/p>\n
How are you feeling about Mamdani\u2019s New York? There\u2019s a lot of doom and gloom among Republicans.<\/p>\n
I have a wait-and-see approach. I don\u2019t mind being a critic when there\u2019s stuff to criticize and I don\u2019t mind being openly optimistic when there\u2019s things to be optimistic about. That has the effect of usually pissing everyone off, but it\u2019s how I\u2019ve operated for the last 20 years.<\/p>\n
I mean, like I talk about all the time, I had a great relationship with Bill de Blasio, I still do. I occasionally went on TV and bashed him, I mean, regularly went on TV and bashed him. But when I had some handicapped kid who needed to be transferred from one school to the other, no questions asked, I would call him on things like that, and he would help.<\/p>\n
What drew you to the role at Chartwell?<\/p>\n
I think anyone who\u2019s in elected office has a tolerance for risk and an ego, so starting my own thing in conjunction with a D.C. firm made sense, because I get to still play the game with my own life. That\u2019s a big part of running for office, and building a business gives me the same thrill. If I didn\u2019t have that thrill \u2013 I look at some of my friends and colleagues who\u2019ve taken more or slower paced jobs coming out of office, I realized that wouldn\u2019t have made me happy.<\/p>\n
Do you like it better than elected office?<\/p>\n
I like that I don\u2019t have to cringe at the bill if my wife orders a second martini at dinner.<\/p>\n
Do you ever think of running for office in any capacity again in the future?<\/p>\n
Yeah, I intend to run for Collier County commissioner when my kids are out of high school and I move to Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You\u2019re moving to Florida? You\u2019re not going to miss Staten Island?<\/p>\n
I will be buried on Staten Island. I don\u2019t know if I want to live my sunset years here. I\u2019ve lived in the same ZIP code my whole life.<\/p>\n
Do you have any advice for incoming council members?<\/p>\n
This is the advice I give everyone. On Day One, go into Room 9, give every reporter your cellphone number and say you\u2019ll answer the phone anytime they call and give an answer. That\u2019s how I was able to build my public presence way beyond anything previous council members have ever had. \u2026 In 2025, if you have a press secretary, you\u2019re doing it wrong as a council member.<\/p>\n
Interesting, why\u2019s that?<\/p>\n
Because news is 24\/7 and journalists don\u2019t even have a deadline now, it\u2019s more how quick can the information be transmitted from your mouth or text to X. So you\u2019re missing it if you consult with the press secretary, have them draft a statement, then mark it up and then issue it \u2013 you\u2019re doing it wrong. I laugh at some of my boomer politician friends who put out press releases three days later on stuff and can\u2019t figure out why they\u2019re never in the paper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After 10 years in the New York City Council and a prior three-year stint in the Assembly, Joe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[12617,9,24,63,7159,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-65527","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-interviews-profiles","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-personality","13":"tag-staten-island","14":"tag-staten-island-headlines","15":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}