Andrew Gounardes is on the phone, giving one word answers to a series of questions I can’t hear—yes, no, somewhat. I’m sitting next to him in the back seat of his press officer Evan Weinberg’s Audi SUV. We’re traveling east across New York State Senate District 22, from Bay Ridge toward Dyker Heights, for a press conference. Gounardes, a lawyer, Democratic Party activist, and Bay Ridge native, is running to turn the district blue for the first time since 2003.
The mood is light. It’s been a good day. At the presser, Gounardes will accept endorsements from former City Comptroller John Liu and south Brooklyn district leader Nancy Tong. As the dust settles from last month’s primary, progressive “resistance” groups—their IDC scalps in hand—have begun focusing on SD-22, one of a handful of races which could flip the state senate to Democratic control. Endorsements have rolled in, including the governor’s. Earlier that morning, Alyssa Milano’s people were in touch; the actress and activist (born in Bensonhurst) apparently wants to tweet about Gounardes. Eventually, she did.
At roughly the same moment, everyone in the car realizes they have no idea who the candidate is talking to. His laconic answers have an ever-so-slight ironic edge. I’m trying to eavesdrop when Gounardes puts the call on speaker.
It’s a poll. A young man’s voice rattles off the names of local politicians. Andrew Cuomo: “Favorable,” says Gounardes. Hakeem Jeffries: “Very favorable.” Bill de Blasio: A pause. “What are the options again?”—the pollster repeats them—“unfavorable,” says Gounardes.
“What about Marty Golden?” the caller asks. Without missing a beat, Gounardes replies with a played-up Brooklyn drawl, “very unfavorable.”
Republican State Senator Marty Golden (left) with former mayoral candidate Bo Dietl, at the John Travolta Day Proclamation last month (Patrick Lewis / Starpix / Shutterstock)
Gounardes is counting on the voters in south Brooklyn feeling the same way about Marty Golden. His opponent has held the seat for 16 years. The district—a gerrymandered monstrosity—encompasses Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Gravesend and parts of Bensonhurst, Sheepshead Bay and Marine Park. The tonier, whiter neighborhoods have historically helped Golden carry the district, even as demographics have changed. It went for Trump by a nose in 2016. But observers point out that the district is becoming even less white and much more Hispanic and Asian. In many ways, Golden is an anachronistic figure in today’s politics: a culturally-conservative retired cop whose popularity stems as much from his colloquial charm as his behavior in Albany.
“Marty’s a master of retail politics,” said Abdullah Younus, a board member of Yalla Brooklyn, a Bay Ridge-based Muslim political club which has endorsed Gounardes. “He shows up for everything, the gatherings in the community. He’s always there.”
“It’s a personality seat,” Republican State Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis told me, “Marty is someone everybody knows. They're comfortable with him. People know him and they know his family and his roots in the community.” Malliotakis, a Republican and close Golden ally, represents parts of Bay Ridge and Staten Island.
“As long as Marty Golden is a senator for this district it will remain in Republican hands,” said Malliotakis.
But glad-handing and inertia won’t necessarily win elections in 2018. The Trump presidency has enraged and energized Democratic voters, who outnumber Republicans in Golden’s district 2-1. Democratic turnout almost tripled in September’s state primary compared to 2014. And minority voters are flexing their power. Palestinian Lutheran pastor Khader El-Yateem earned a respectable 31 percent in a five-way primary in 2017, in large part by mobilizing Bay Ridge’s sizable Arab community.
Assemblywoman Malliotakis doesn’t buy the hype. “People on the outside looking in have convinced themselves this is a tight race. It’s not.” Gounardes may be competitive in Bay Ridge, she told me, but Marty will clean up in the rest of the district. “It’s a large district. And it’s a conservative district. I don't believe the Democrats have much of a game in Marine Park or Gerritsen Beach.”
Meanwhile Golden hasn’t exactly endeared himself to minorities in the district.
“Marty Golden has consistently sided with bigotry,” said Younus, who helped run Reverend El-Yateem’s 2017 campaign. “He’s supported the surveillance of mosques, supported Trump’s Muslim Ban, and even falsely claimed the 9/11 hijackers came from Bay Ridge. It’s time for a change.”
After 9/11, many Muslims in Bay Ridge withdrew from civic life and declined to participate in elections. “It got to the point where folks in this neighborhood wouldn’t even go to their mosques, their cafes, their bookstores because they knew they were being spied on,” said Gournades. “But I think now there's been a sea change, and they’re saying to themselves, ‘we can’t afford to stay on the sidelines.’”
Golden’s historic support from labor has also slipped. The firefighters, the police, and the public sector workers of DC37 are sticking with Golden, but the rest of labor is backing Gounardes. With a flagrantly corrupt president in office, Golden’s history of questionable behavior is coming back to haunt him as well. Over the years, Golden’s campaigns have spent $776,643 at Bay Ridge Manor, a catering hall he sold to his brother Patrick in 2002. In the past three months, Golden’s campaign has spent $18,300 at Bay Ridge Manor. According to tax records, Marty himself still owns the building that houses the business.
“Like Trump, Marty Golden benefits from directing GOP business to his own property,” Working Families Party state director Bill Lipton said. “Bay Ridge Manor is Marty’s own personal Mar-a-Lago.” WFP has endorsed Gounardes.
Malliotakis told me it’s really just a matter of convenience. “If you want to have a large event with a few hundred people in Bay Ridge, it's really the only option,” she said. “I mean, if they were paying an exorbitant amount of money per person per event then it might raise red flags, but you know, I think that's not the case.”
Malliotakis had a fundraiser at Bay Ridge Manor in 2010 but said she mostly sticks to smaller venues for her events.
“I’m sure Marty's real estate and hedge fund donors don't care that he’s using campaign funds to enrich himself and his family, but voters in the 22nd should be disgusted,” Lipton said.
According to the most recent campaign filings, the Golden campaign has three times the amount of money in the bank as Gounardes; approximately $392,000 to Gounardes's $100K.
This past weekend, protesters outside Golden’s office demanded that he fire campaign office manager Ian Reilly, who in his capacity as chairman of the Metropolitan Republican Club hosted Gavin McInnes and the far-right Proud Boys in Manhattan on October 12th—an event which culminated in violent brawls between Proud Boys and anti-fascist activists. Golden has taken no action regarding Reilly.
Teachers unions and pedestrian safety groups have also hammered Golden for his record on traffic safety. This past summer, Golden backed a GOP plan to get rid of speed cameras in school zones and replace them with more traffic lights and stop signs, before he eventually reversed course and supported turning them back on.
“Marty Golden is an obstacle to pedestrian safety, both in his public and his private life,” said Dave Paco Abraham, a board member of StreetsPAC, a transportation advocacy group that has endorsed Gounardes. “He has a windshield-only perspective.”
Golden’s own Cadillac has been caught speeding in school zones 10 times since 2015; three times in 2018 alone. Last December, a cyclist accused Golden of impersonating a police officer to intimidate him after a dispute over the bike lane. And in 2005, Golden was behind the wheel of his Chevy Blazer when he hit 74-year old Hariklia Zafiropoulos while she was crossing Third Avenue; she suffered a brain injury and died some months later.
In a recent debate, Golden was asked about the incident. He reiterated the NYPD’s finding that Zafiropoulos had “crossed against the light.” Then he said, “It was found at the hospital that she had cancer of the stomach [and] she died 6 months later.”
Golden’s subtle implication was not lost on his critics. “Wait, wait, wait: did Marty Golden really just try and excuse the fact that he hit and killed a pedestrian with his car because the woman had cancer and would die soon anyways?” asked one transportation reporter.
Golden’s online supporters took the senator’s logic a step further. A twitter account with the handle “@JimmyMacMAGA1” wrote, “Marty Goden [sic] did not kill the elderly woman with his truck. He saved her life!!! Because if Marty had not hit her she would have never found out that she had stomach cancer at the hopsital [sic].” The tweet was retweeted by the Verrazzano [sic] Republicans, a south Brooklyn Republican club run by Golden ally Liam McCabe. Marty’s wife Colleen also retweeted Jimmy Mac.
Golden’s campaign paid $2,087.50 to McCabe’s old consulting firm, Steeplechase Strategies, in July 2018. (McCabe sold Steeplechase in 2017, and is listed on the firm's website as "Founder & Former CEO.")
For what it’s worth, ‘Jimmy Mac’ appears to be a bot account, one of several that consistently tweet out pro-Golden content. Jimmy Mac’s profile features a Dale Earnhardt profile picture and a “re-elect Marty Golden” cover image. The account has only five followers, including Billy Mac—another pro-Golden anonymous account—and Gerry Kassar, Golden’s chief of staff.
Gounardes, perhaps unsurprisingly, has made pedestrian safety central to his campaign. It’s the first issue listed on his website. The second is MTA reform. “We should have a speed camera up at every school. That’s a no brainer,” he told me.
Senator Golden’s campaign declined multiple requests for comment for this story.
Andrew Gounardes and Senator Marty Golden during the debate (Gwynne Hogan / Gothamist)
The Gounardes campaign’s focus on traffic safety heightens my awareness of Weinberg’s driving as we weave through the streets of south Brooklyn. Only once do I wince, as we cut off a bus to make a late right turn. I look over and see Gounardes is also clenching his teeth.
At 33, Gounardes is three decades his opponent’s junior. But he’s an old man’s idea of a young man. He wears an unfashionable suit, a blue flower-printed tie. His hair thins at the front. He strikes me as the sort of person whose interest in traffic medians and subway infrastructure is sincere. He’s a rule follower, a class president-type. (“I was actually one of the first two student advisory members on the Panel for Educational Policy,” he tells me.) When Gounardes is out of earshot, a staffer tells me that when he misbehaved as a child, his mother would take away his reading privileges.
It goes without saying, but Andrew Gounardes is no Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Unlike other young candidates hoping to ride the “blue wave” to victory in November, Gounardes is not an outsider. Quite the opposite. Right now, he serves as general counsel to Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams. Before that he was an aide to city councilman Vincent Gentile. He ran a non-profit with Justin Brannan, another Gentile aide who now holds their former boss’s city council seat. Gounardes ran against Golden in 2012. From the perspective of Brooklyn Democratic politics, he’s done everything right, paid his dues. He isn’t trying to upset the applecart; he’s trying to be the one who pushes it.
But Gounardes is more than a wonk or an empty suit. For one thing, his staff seems to genuinely like him. They razz him affectionately, remind him to “smile more” on the stump. I watch him scamper across the street to buy one of them a deli turkey sandwich, and no one appears to find this odd. They have to dissuade him from going door-knocking in a downpour before an important meeting. “I have a rain jacket!” he says. “But your shoes, Andrew!” He rolls his eyes.
At the end of our day together, I see Gounardes in his element. The campaign hosts a town hall on racial bias and Islamophobia in the community at an old Democratic club in Dyker Heights. It’s the second of two meetings the Gournades camp has organized in collaboration with Somia Elrowmeim, an Arab community leader and educator, in the wake of a bias attack against a Muslim woman on the S53 bus in July.
“We have seen more anti-Muslim harassment since Trump’s election,” Elrowmeim tells me, “People are afraid to report to the police, or when they do, nothing happens. Andrew wants to know what’s going on in our community. He shows up. Senator Golden has never even asked.”
“We’ve all worked together in Bay Ridge, Republicans and Democrats, in response to these incidents,” insists Malliotakis. “We have a unity task force—elected officials, the NYPD, religious leaders—and we’ve denounced acts of hate toward any group. We put politics aside.”
But Elrowmeim says he hasn’t done enough. “Marty doesn’t care what happens to Arabs in Bay Ridge because he thinks we won’t vote,” says Elrowmeim, “But he’s wrong.”
At this town hall, Gounardes’s nice-guy geniality really shines. He stands at the front of the room, leaning against the side of a podium in his shirt sleeves, hip jutting out. Middle-aged women in hijab occupy the first two rows. They pepper Gounardes with questions about his plans and describe their experiences. “Arab women [aren't] safe in Bay Ridge,” one woman says. Gounardes insists that we treat bias incidents as hate crimes, “because that’s what they are.”
Gounardes doesn’t offer hard and fast answers. “I could give you more of my ideas,” he says, “but today I want to hear new ideas from you as well.” He seems to really listen, summarizing questions and stories for the back of the room like a good teacher in a lecture hall.
“My family is Greek-American,” Gounardes says, “And we have a word in Greek: philoxenia. It means ‘love of strangers.’ If someone has philoxenia it means they love everyone unequivocally. They want to do anything they can to help their neighbor, their friend, a stranger, just because they’re human. We need more philoxenia in our community.”
It’s a bit didactic—and canned; he talked to me earlier about ‘philoxenia’ too—but it plays well in the room. And it’s true. In an ever-changing south Brooklyn, people don’t have a choice but to learn to love strangers. Marty Golden is trying to win yet another election with an appeal to the familiar. Andrew Gounardes hopes voters are ready for something slightly different.
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that Steeplechase Strategies was "[Liam] McCabe's consulting firm." In fact, McCabe sold the firm in 2017, and the story has been corrected accordingly.
