5 Questions with Joe Nardiello
With election day only a week a day, we provided a chance for the three candidates for the District 39 City Council seat to answer the same 5 questions. Today, we’ll start with Joe Nardiello, the Republican nominee.
Carroll Gardens is simply “home” - and I really don’t limit that comfort of a home-area to one block, but across many of an expanse of Brownstone Brooklyn. It’s a social place and the feeling is indescribable, as its just part of who I am, really. My upbringing on President Street, and would make the old Wonder Years tv show run home crying in comparison. My wife is from Boston, by way of Los Angeles and we’re raising 2 children who are at ease talking with neighbors, shopkeepers, interacting with scores of their own young friends in Carroll Park or families that just happen by, ringing our doorbell (which was the old way that I was used to, decades ago). Everyone’s community-minded, and this aspect is contagious across our local public schools, places of worship, and in/out of every store, across every friendly face you can meet — day or night. There’s simply hundreds of components to life, and many scores of friends we’ve met and continue to meet.
My parents also live nearby, and that makes it easy to check in on them, and my maternal grandmother. The children can visit plenty, have fun and experience their warmth/unconditional love. Because my family has been here for generations, there’s hardly a block where I don’t know someone, and there’s stories and old friends and ghosts of 1,000s of people that are no longer living in CG that still evoke memories. St. Agnes/St. Paul and Sacred Hearts/St. Stephens parishes have family history. Conversations had with older residents about their youth, come back to me. Little stories can be relayed as I walk with my 8 year old daughter, like pulling the tongue of a German Shepard every time I’d passed “its area gate” as a 6 yr old, on the way to grandma’s house. Mom and pop shops that are long gone, that served me free lime-rickeys & egg creams…or where I’d had to go after an elderly woman lowered a basket from a top-floor with $5 and a grocery list (which I’d done 100s of times in my youth). Guzzi’s pizza. Years and years of teenage fun, and sports/street games played between my friends and then, later visiting rival groups to challenge for softball, football or roller hockey.
But, our area is far, far more than nostalgia. We lived in Park Slope for 3 years to ‘06 (and do miss the peace & quiet, easy walks to Prospect Park, and friends we’d made, of course, and the Q train and Mr. Won Ton and Roma Pizza and the Brooklyn Academy of Music on 7th Avenue, and an easier walk home from the Park Slope Food Coop after shopping). In Carroll Gardens, people walk outside and stay outside for hours on end. A walk to get a newspaper & iced coffee can take an hour, across the many friendly people you’d meet that want to talk. And night, as Smith Street is a hotbed of nightlife across its bars/restaurants. Some people would complain about the noise, but we’re used to it. As if the sounds of emergency vehicles down Union St. and loud shouts by 40-something frat boys, emerging from bars at 3am have blended into the familiarity and history across generations that can be unspoken, but understood.
Where are you originally from, and how does it compare to Brooklyn?
Brooklyn, and nothing compares. Born in Long Island College Hospital…guess which Council candidate would fight tooth & nail for it to remain a strong health-care option across our areas. Was raised in Carroll Gardens, when it was called South Brooklyn much more commonly. Also lived in Cobble Hill for about 5 years, before being wed to Cindy and having the first Wedding Reception at the Brooklyn Marriott Downtown, which still has our pictures & story of how we met, before their 3rd floor offices. Essentially, we’ve lived in Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Park Slope and my life experiences have taken me across each area of District 39, long before I’d decided to run for Council.
How do you, personally, contribute to your community?
That’s easy, I do everything for anyone at anytime. For the Brooklyn Youth Association of Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill I coach softball all summer long. Within the Prospect Park Youth Baseball League, I also Head Coach for the Sacred Hearts Cardinals program — meaning running practices, dealing with 17 psyches, and carrying the equipment, setting the field up/bases in the Park (for younger teams) and generally leading boys and girls along from baseball skills to patience, focus, caring about the welfare of others (cheering).
Being there for others, with a watchful eye as well. Last month, for example I’d headed to the Brooklyn Tech ‘protest’ event when initial word was that others may join in from the flanks and provoke violence as Kansas hate cult was demonstrating. I went to make sure the students were protected from any nonsense, and ultimately helped 3 kids away from possible confrontations with NYPD officers (being the HS students didn’t understand why such hateful people can have police protection). Was able to also relay to community leaders closer to home, that these people weren’t threats at all, and were a bizarre family/band of attention-getters that were better off ignored (although I’d gone to a Kane St. synagogue too, just in case).
A few years back, I’d caught a staggering man at Jay St./Boro Hall just before he could fall before an A-train and ultimately walked/carried the drunk man from the Carroll St. station to Henry Street (stopping for him to be sick, 4-5x). No big deal. Early on I’d taught inner-city kids with college aptitudes across every summer and also coached softball. There’s an aspect of volunteerism from simply being a good friend and neighbor, and where I’m from that even extends to taking in the trash pails of your neighbors, if you see them around the sidewalks before they do. There’s plenty that goes on without anyone knowing, like shoveling many walkways/gates, during a snowfall (especially the elderly). Brooklyn born and bred, means something. There’s no pretense about life, here.
If you could change one thing in your neighborhood, what would it be?
Two things. The cost of renting or owning homes. The way local realtors have pulled off what seems like sure collusion and disregard to comparable pricing, in keeping prices high and not releasing homes for sale or relaying all bids to owners (holding them for 6-8-10+ months until their prices are met). It seems to me, that instead of lowering prices in accordance with the Recession and borrowing difficulties - Asking Prices of home went up by percentages above their value, in anticipation of lowering them back down to an amount that was originally simply overreaching in the first place. (But, all you need is one buyer, playing that game.) The cost pressures on families, seniors, young singles just starting “prices out” a staggering number of people.
Secondly, excessive car speeding on our streets has to be curtailed by stronger penalty and enforcement. Careless driving is rampant, from drivers slowly impeding on where pedestrians are walking across crosswalks, to not seeming to care about slowing down near schools or stop signs, for that matter.
What is you favorite restaurant/hangout?
Kind of like the low lighting, friendly feel of the Red Rose or Union-Smith Cafe. Hangout? I’ll go with Smith Social Club [sic], although with a great number of extended family/friends & 2 kids my days of hanging out are long over… (but, I certainly do miss the Montague St. Saloon).
Posted
: October 26th, 2009 at 8:54 am by Diana Rosenthal under Election 09, Government.
Tags:5 Questions, 5 questions with district 39 candidates, district 39, joe nardiello
Comments: 10
Comments
Comment from Rob
Time: October 26, 2009, 7:29 pm
If its the GOP their all the same
Comment from Joe Nardiello
Time: October 27, 2009, 5:12 am
Here’s a Republican that’s defying everything you know, then.
This read was too nostalgic for you? OK. Think non-conformist — with a much more enlightened way of seeing the world around us that you may guess. Well-traveled. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Organic, 5 yrs at the Food Coop working each month, supporter of the Brooklyn NAACP for that matter… doesn’t play games, nor deal for endorsements.
You should know that this Republican is a pure independent — and just proved it like no one in the 39th district ever had.
The 1st GOP primary in anyone’s lifetime was forced, defended in State Supreme and won by a 71% landslide.
*25+ year professional career that’s unmatched by any candidate (including working for the last Democratic mayor and setting the stage for the Harlem Renaissance)? yes. Doesn’t take credit for accomplishments of organizations, and in fact downplays his own. Is this typical, so far?
*Unbiased, non-partisan and without any political debts to pay. Pure, 100% focus on public service. Not a career-track politician. No backroom deals, here. Uncomfortable, in fact even taking donations in a Great Recession. Choose to take $0 in public matching funds, rather than use tax money for self-promotion. Especially when so many others are wasting $100,000s and millions on what could have been services for real Working Families, actually saved a firehouse and I’d rather have it go to salaries for educators or officers.
*In a time when no one trusts any elected official in NY, you get unquestioned character, sincerity of purpose.
This typical Republican also,…taught inner-city, low income children across his youth… was raised in blue collar Brooklyn (100 years of union experience in my old household alone in UFT, ILA and pressmen)… organic and volunteers at the Park Slope Food Coop for years… was recruited into a Democratic NYC mayoralty (and among many accomplishments, worked with a Dem. Fed. government on the Clean Air Act), is a supporting member of the Brooklyn NAACP. How about has been using public transportation since 6th grade — that’s 35 years.
Look elsewhere for nannies. Worked throughout 2009 and had to build a campaign on nights & weekends — just to provide people finally with a real choice vs. the Status Quo…
Comment from Matthew
Time: October 27, 2009, 8:25 am
Another Democrat on the Republican line? Does this mean you’re as cynical as Bloomberg about it? So what’s the point of being a Republican if you’re not a Republican? Character is all well and good, but who you associate with is also telling, don’t you think? The argument that you’re a new (or old, Lincoln-Roosevelt-Rockefeller style) Republican doesn’t hold water, because there is no such thing anymore and there won’t be soon as the party slides further into the cesspool of the lunatic fringe. After all, who has the bragging rights if you win? Today’s GOP. (Don’t think I’m partisan here, since the Democrats since Carter have aided and abetted the GOP’s radical transformation of America in the name of the wealthy and the corporations.)
Comment from Danyak
Time: October 27, 2009, 9:26 am
Matthew is a neanderthal. Don’t ruin an otherwise good candidate by resorting to stereotypical party labels, particularly when there’s enough to go around in both camps. Evaluate the man as an individual. Then again, you’re probably a supporter of people like Pedro Espada and Charlie Rangel. How’d that taste?
Comment from Matthew
Time: October 27, 2009, 10:17 am
Read my last line again, Danyak. I’m not a Democrat, and Joe’s the one who has resorted to a party label. My point is that that label is grotesque and disgusting, conjuring up McCarthy, Nixon, Helms, and all the no-nothing nativist fundamentalist yahoos in Congress today, not to mention the party’s greatest sin, taking the South’s Jim Crow Democrats into their poisoned heart.
Comment from Danyak
Time: October 27, 2009, 10:51 am
Matthew, you’re clearly delusional. If that’s your idea of taking ownership for a party’s actions, its laughable. And it was you, not Mr. Nardiello, who resorted to party labels. Look at your first post, caveman.
Just evaluate him as an individual, instead of painting him with such a stereotypical broad brush. You just might see he’s not the demon you make him out to be.
Let that rage against history go. You’ll feel better. Then again, you probably still live in your parents’ basement apartment.
By the way, humor me and explain how the Pedro Espadas and Charile Rangels of the world are the Republican’s fault.
Comment from Matthew
Time: October 27, 2009, 11:27 am
We’re all delusional in some ways, Danyak, but you seem to enjoy making up other people’s delusions for them. Where do I say that those corrupt hacks Espada and Rangel are the GOPs fault? They are the fault of a corrupt system, which is completely bipartisan. That said, there is a difference among the dominate parties. Nardiello actually sounds like a nice guy, but if he and you think you can escape the history of your party, well, good luck there! Those Augean stables need a good hosing, but it’s clear that since Reagan the moderates have been nothing but window dressing for the nativists, racists, plutocrats, and Protestant Ayatollahs who are today’s Republican Party. To give these forces legitimacy, as you will do when you pull that button in the polls, makes you complicit in their project.
Now, carry on insulting me since that’s your best line of argument…
Comment from Danyak
Time: October 27, 2009, 12:37 pm
Wow. I think you need to up the dosages of those meds. Party affiliation is just window dressing. Its needed to gain entry on election ballots. I vote based on the individual running, and have crossed party lines more than a few times.
How was the Price Is Right episode this morning? LOL.
Comment from Joe Nardiello
Time: October 28, 2009, 1:32 am
Thanks to you both, Danyak and Matthew for your perspectives and for giving me something (else/additional) to read/write in the early AM hours — there always is ‘enough time in day’ but sometimes its the sleep that’s got to be cut. By the way, that 5am wasn’t a wake-up time…
I’ve been in the Republican Party for 30 years - and because it is the party of Lincoln and TR. It’s irreplaceable that there’s 2 on Mt. Rushmore and that MLK was with the GOP with good reason. My perspectives are than fiscal responsibility still goes hand in hand with social responsibility, especially for those that are in need. Seniors for instance, need housing and meals, and a local government that can support, care and protect their longevity. Maybe another Republican may see seniors as taxpayers for 60-70 years, etc. but to me, there’s a care that has to be out front and in me, it’s genuine.
Right now, we are voting the PERSON and not the party.
Please check out wwwjoe439.com for clear differences, issues and greater understanding of why I’ve undertaken this campaign — to wipe away partisan behavior and focus on greater achievement. No excuses. And imagine if/when I’d win, just how many critics I would have? That’s what you want, as well. It’s win win.
Reflecting on it here, is easy because I’ve hear it said many 100s of times across the District — as I’ve taken my campaign, personally to people’s doorsteps. While the association with neo-cons or those that would bring a rifle to a presidential event, etc. is an unfair to me, well as labeling my Democratic opponent an Acorn/Working Families type of candida.. oh, wait…
Comment from Matthew
Time: October 26, 2009, 9:41 am
Missing question:
Which branch of the GOP does Joe represent?
Plutocratic
Ayn Randist
Theocratic
Angry White Populist
?