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COURIER L 6 IFE, MARCH 6-12, 2020
Party politics
Nightlife icon running for state
Senate in southern Brooklyn
BY ROSE ADAMS
A 1980s nightlife icon who managed
the disco featured in “Saturday Night
Fever” is running for state Senate in
southern Brooklyn, telling voters he
wants to paint the town red!
“Over the last few years, Brooklyn
has changed for worse,” said Vito
Bruno, a conservative Bay Ridgite running
against Democratic incumbent
Andrew Gounardes in the November
elections. “I came into this race to save
our community.”
Bruno, a Bensonhurst native, got
his start at age 19 when he landed a job
at Bay Ridge’s famed 2001 Odyssey club
while studying architecture at Pratt Institute.
He then opened an after-hours
club called AM/PM in Tribeca in 1980,
which drew stars like Robert De Niro,
Dan Ackroyd, and Andy Warhol.
“We became the hottest club on the
planet at that time,” Bruno said.
Bruno went on to manage the Roxy,
a Manhattan club where he booked
artists such as Madonna and Marc
Antony, and founded an entertainment
company that scored 50 Billboard No.
1 hits called AM/PM Entertainment
Concepts.
But in recent years, the former
nightlife impresario has traded
raging soirées for the Republican
party, staging an unsuccessful run for
borough president in 2017, and serving
as president of Brooklyn’s Edmund
G. Seergy Republican Club. Now, he
hopes to restore “law and order” to
the state senate district encompassing
Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Marine
Park, Gerritsen Beach, and parts of
Gravesend and Midwood, he claimed.
“We need to respect the cops, we
need to get a cap on our real estate
taxes,” he said.
Bruno, who described himself as a
supporter of President Donald Trump’s
policies, spoke unfavorably of expanding
bike lanes in his district, saying that
he doesn’t “believe the people are for
them,” although he has yet to nail down
a policy position. Bruno also vowed to
roll back bail reform if elected, claiming
the new law — which bars judges
from setting cash bail for many nonviolent
misdemeanors and felonies — has
caused an uptick in crimes.
“Local police say that crime is up
43%, and they blame it on bail reform,”
he said.
Bruno’s promise to crack down on
crime, however, contradicts his past
life as New York’s clubbing king, when
his “outlaw” parties at AM/PM lasted
hours after the city’s curfew. In 1983,
he told the New York Times that he
gave hefty cash Christmas presents to
police offi cers, implying that he bribed
Nightlife veteran Vito Bruno will run for state
Senate in southern Brooklyn.
Photo by Vito Bruno
them to turn the other cheek to AM/
PM’s late-night, drug-fueled parties.
Bruno would also fetch drugs for
his celebrity friends, retrieving cocaine
and Quaaludes for his good
friend John Belushi, according to Bob
Woodward’s 1984 book “Wired” — a
claim that Bruno now denies.
“I never gave drugs to anybody,” he
told the Brooklyn Paper, arguing that
his former club life is water under the
bridge. “Talking about that is a waste
of time. Nobody is the same person today
that they were 40 years ago.”
Bruno, who has received the backing
of Brooklyn’s Republican party,
will face off against Gounardes in the
November election in what’s bound to
be a nail-biting race. The swing district,
which voted for Trump in 2016
and Obama in 2012, elected Gounardes
in the 2018 race with only 50.9-percent
of the vote, ousting the 14-year Republican
incumbent Marty Golden.
Gounardes has focused on pushing
for progressive reforms during
his time in offi ce, sponsoring pedestrian
safety bills and supporting gun
violence prevention, and says he hopes
to continue fi ghting for democratic
change if re-elected.
“I’ve been proud to deliver on
changes New Yorkers have been waiting
for for such a long time — to restrict
illegal guns, allow victims of
child sexual assault to have their day
in court and make our streets safe
for all, among many other things,” he
said. “We have much more to do, and
we’re not going back to the days when
we were told not to worry about climate
change, crushing student debt,
affordable healthcare, LGBTQ rights
and street safety.”