Max Rose to run for old seat
Former congressmember throws his hat into the ring for rematch in 2022
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COURIER LIFE, DECEMBER 10-16, 2021 3
BY BEN BRACHFELD
It’s a re-max!
Former Democratic Congressmember
Max Rose announced
Monday that he is
running again for his old seat,
after losing it to incumbent Republican
Nicole Malliotakis in
2020 following a single term in
Washington.
In his campaign launch
video, Rose noted that Americans
are going through a multitude
of simultaneous crises,
including COVID-19, infl ation
and unaffordability, climate
change, and gun violence.
He then said that those
tasked with representing people’s
interests amid crises are
instead lying for their own political
advantage, shown over
footage of the Jan. 6 riot at the
US Capitol — a clear shot at
Malliotakis, who voted against
certifying Joe Biden’s election
victory based on bogus claims
of voter fraud, even as a violent
right-wing mob stormed the
Capitol to try to overturn the
election results.
“The alarm bells, they never
stop ringing,” Rose said in his
video. “And the people we trust
to fi x it, they divide us, they lie
to us, tearing America apart
just to hold onto power.”
Rose won his lone term as
the Representative for Staten
Island and part of southern
Brooklyn (including Bay Ridge,
Dyker Heights, Bath Beach, and
Gravesend) in 2018 as part of
a national “blue wave” where
Democrats won the House of
Representatives. He narrowly
beat incumbent Republican
Dan Donovan to win the 11th
Congressional District seat, the
city’s only swing district.
In presidential races, the
district voted for Barack
Obama twice and for Donald
Trump twice. The seat has
had fi ve holders in the past
12 years, with incumbents
cycling through as partisan
winds shifted or when they got
indicted, in the case of Michael
Grimm, and Rose’s hold on the
seat was never secure.
The speculated death knell
for his reelection campaign was
when Malliotakis, challenging
him for the seat, said that Rose
was in favor of “defunding” the
police after he attended a racial
justice march following the
murder of George Floyd.
Malliotakis, formerly an assemblymember
and a 2017 candidate
for mayor, heavily hammered
Rose on the charge, and
despite his fervent denials that
he was in favor of such a policy
(and campaign ads calling Bill
de Blasio “the worst mayor in
the history of New York City”),
the Republican beat the Democrat
in his 2020 reelection effort
in a district home to scores
of fi rst responders.
Rose seemed to allude to the
controversy in his video, saying
that he campaigned publicly on
his heartfelt beliefs instead of
what would poll best. “People
tell me if I had listened to the
polls, instead of doing what I
thought was right, I would have
won,” he said. “Maybe that’s
true. But for me, some things
are much more important than
elections.”
After losing, Rose briefl y
mulled running for mayor but
eventually decided against it,
and became an advisor to Secretary
of Defense Lloyd Austin
at the Pentagon.
Before the Park Slope native
can against face off against
Malliotakis, he will have to
win the Democratic primary.
He’ll be facing Brittany Ramos
DeBarros, a fellow combat veteran,
an Afro-Latina, and a
democratic socialist who could
not be reached for comment.
Another candidate, Mike
DeCillis, dropped out last week
after determining he didn’t
have a path to victory.
The district’s fate could
be heavily infl uenced by the
outcome of New York’s redistricting
process, depending
on how the district’s boundaries
are drawn. The state’s Independent
Redistricting Commission
currently has two
map proposals, one favored by
the IRC’s Democrats and the
other by its Republicans. For
New York-11, the Republicans’
map largely preserves the district’s
borders as-is, while the
Democrats’ map cuts out bits
of Bay Ridge and most of Dyker
Heights while adding Coney Island
to the mix.
In a statement, Malliotakis
said that the district had overwhelmingly
rejected Rose in
2020 (she only won by 6 points),
said Rose had supported defunding
the police and implementing
bail reform (a state-level policy
dating to the pre-pandemic era,
which Rose had nothing to do
with but for which he did signal
support), and argued without
evidence that Biden’s policies
Max Rose. File photo
Continued on page 14
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