Donovan’s involvement in the Garner case has proved a nonstarter. Prosecutor in Garner case nears election to Congress On Staten Island, home to many police, the chokehold death never became an election issue.

A little more than a week after riots convulsed Baltimore in the aftermath of Freddie Gray’s funeral, voters in a New York City House district are poised to send an elected official involved in the response to the killing of another unarmed black man to Congress.

While there hasn’t been any public polling, Daniel Donovan, the Republican district attorney on Staten Island, is heavily favored to defeat Democratic City Council member Vincent Gentile in a special election on Tuesday.


Donovan rose to prominence last year after his office did not secure indictments from a grand jury against the police officers involved in the killing of Eric Garner, who died after officers put him in an apparent chokehold. The grand jury’s decision sparked protests across the country — and when Donovan decided to run for the House after GOP Rep. Michael Grimm resigned in December, some national Republicans worried that Donovan’s role in the Garner case could inject controversy into the race to keep Grimm’s seat.

David Catalfamo, a former top aide to former GOP New York Gov. George Pataki, warned that Donovan’s candidacy could turn the race into “a complete and utter circus.”

But Donovan’s involvement in the case — aside from a Jon Stewart segment that mocked him in January — has proved a nonstarter. “I got it wrong,” Catalfamo said on Monday. “I got it 100 percent wrong.”

While many people in the district remain angry about the grand jury’s decision not to indict the officers, the case “hasn’t come to the fore in this election whatsoever,” said Bob Olivari, a longtime Democratic operative on Staten Island.

Voters on Staten Island — traditionally home to many New York City police officers and firefighters — were never likely to hold Donovan’s actions against him. A January poll sponsored by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee showed a majority of likely voters in New York’s 11th Congressional District, 58 percent, said they approved of Donovan’s handling of the Garner case, including 38 percent who said they strongly approved. Only 32 percent said they disapproved.

A whopping 80 percent of registered Republicans said they approved of Donovan’s handling of the case, with only 12 percent disapproving. Registered Democrats were divided, with 43 percent approving and 46 percent disapproving.

With the Garner case not a major campaign issue, Gentile is facing a familiar uphill climb for Democrats: He, like Grimm’s opponent last November, is from the wrong side of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the span that connects the Brooklyn side of the district to the more conservative Staten Island side.

That alone might be enough to doom his chances.

“You can’t win it if you don’t live in Staten Island,” Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic consultant in New York, said of the district. “A candidate who does not live in Staten Island should save his money and buy a house [there].”

Just last year, Democrats were confident they could unseat the embattled Grimm, who was running for reelection despite a 20-count federal indictment against him. But Grimm won in a landslide, taking 56 percent of the vote and embarrassing Democrat Domenic Recchia, who had been highly touted by the party when he entered the race.

Grimm’s victory was short-lived: He resigned shortly after pleading guilty to one count of felony tax fraud.

The district — defined by the split between its Staten Island and Brooklyn segments — is something of an oddity. In the 2008 presidential election, it was the only urban district carried by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Four years later, immediately after Hurricane Sandy, voters in the district went for President Barack Obama.

Staten Island — the least densely populated and most isolated borough of New York City — doesn’t have enough people to merit a congressional district of its own, so the 11th District takes in a swath of Brooklyn, about a mile across the water. But most voters live on Staten Island; Brooklynites cast less than a quarter of the ballots in last November’s election.

The House seat has also proved to be rough terrain for Democrats, despite its recent presidential election history — Michael McMahon, who won election in 2008 only to lose his seat to Grimm in 2010, was the only Democrat to win there in decades.

But it’s even more difficult for candidates without a Staten Island address. A Brooklynite hasn’t represented the district in the post-World War II era.

Recruiting a Staten Islander to run in a special election, when low turnout gives Republicans a greater advantage, is difficult, New York Democrats said.

“It was everybody’s preference initially to run a Staten Islander,” said Jonathan Yedin, a Manhattan-based Democratic consultant whose firm has worked with the Gentile campaign. “But they took their names out of consideration.”

Democrats did nominate a Staten Island candidate in 2012: Mark Murphy, son of former longtime congressman John Murphy. But Grimm defeated him by a 5-point margin.

The DCCC poured about $5 million into defeating Grimm last year, but national Democrats are sitting out the special election for the most part. The DCCC hasn’t committed resources to the race this time around, and Gentile’s campaign had raised about $196,000 through April 15. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who’d backed Recchia’s bid in the fall, even declined to endorse Gentile before reversing himself last week.

Donovan, meanwhile, has raised nearly $615,000, including donations from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; John Catsimatidis, a billionaire real estate and grocery magnate and former GOP mayoral candidate; and Douglas Band, a longtime associate of Bill and Hillary Clinton. The only major outside spending in the race was a $125,000 outlay by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for television and digital advertising supporting Donovan.

The district is not overwhelmingly conservative, despite Republicans’ firm grasp on the House seat. More voters are registered as Democrats than Republicans, and the district went for President Barack Obama by a slim margin in 2012, even as voters reelected Grimm.

Asked how Democrats could be more competitive in the district, McMahon, the former Democratic representative, responded in two words: “Increase turnout.”

“The Obama voters, the more reliable Democratic voters, are not coming to vote,” McMahon said.

Olivari, the Democratic operative , suggested that Gentile could have done a better job pushing back against the Donovan campaign’s efforts to link him to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is deeply unpopular on Staten Island.

“The other side’s messaging is all negative,” Olivari said. “In the past, they tied Democrats to [former Mayor David] Dinkins. Now they’re trying to tie Democrats to de Blasio and Al Sharpton.”

Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), the former DCCC chairman, defended the committee’s decision not to spend in the race, saying it would have been foolish to invest in a race that was almost impossible to win. He thinks Democrats should focus instead on unseating Donovan in the 2016 general election.

“Once the special election is behind us, I do anticipate the DCCC will do a full-court press to recruit candidates,” Israel said.

Their recruiting targets will likely include two Staten Island Democrats — state Sen. Diane Savino and state Assemblyman Michael Cusick — who might fit the district better than off-Island candidates like Recchia and Gentile. Neither state lawmaker responded to requests for comment on Monday.

“Assuming Hillary Clinton is the nominee,” Israel said, “that district will elect her and produce a very strong wind at the back of a credible congressional candidate.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that former Rep. Michael McMahon was the only Democrat to represent Staten Island in Congress since World War II. Before McMahon, the previous Democratic representative was former Rep. James Murphy, who held the Staten Island seat from 1963-1981.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Hannah Trudo @ 05/05/2015 04:23 PM CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that former Rep. Michael McMahon was the only Democrat to represent Staten Island in Congress since World War II. Before McMahon, the previous Democratic representative was former Rep. James Murphy, who held the Staten Island seat from 1963-1981.