Guy V. Molinari, Staten Island Power Broker, Is Dead at 89

"Mr. Molinari, one of the last of the city’s old-time power brokers, decided who would get patronage jobs" I heard years ago, over and over, from a public-spirited man concerned about the lives of families and education of children on SI, that Molinari, obstructing good deeds, behaved more like a mob boss than a public servant.

"Critics called his ego Napoleonic and often condemned his remarks, some of which made even his allies cringe. He once challenged a city councilman to a fist fight. He suggested death by brain suction for doctors who performed late-term abortions. In 1994 he called Karen S. Burstein, a former Family Court judge who was a candidate for state attorney general, unfit for the office because she was gay. All this hardly seemed to matter in the middle- and working-class neighborhoods he represented. Indeed, in Mr. Molinari’s heyday, from the mid-1970s through the mid-′90s, Staten Island was known in political circles as Molinari country. Lawns were dotted with his campaign signs. His name and face were on billboards, buses and ferry boats. (One boat was later named the Guy V. Molinari.)" Why does this remind me of Trump?

Reactionary politics will not be missed. The article fails to note recent support for protoge Michael Grimm, convicted felon.

Thanks for this article. I looked up Mr. Molinari’s name because a spaceship is named after him in the show, the Expanse. I’m binge watching it now. All the military ships that earth owns are named after famous people so I have been googling them. Today I looked up this name and was stunned to see he died today. But I was happy to have this article to read as a full tribute to his legacy. And I’m sorry to hear he passed. But if we have spaceships in the future, there will be one carrying his name!

I live on Broome Street, and I vividly remember the day after the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was changed to a one-way toll for vehicles traveling from Brooklyn to Staten Island -- because that was the day traffic over the (free) Williamsburg Bridge to the (free-to-New Jersey) Holland Tunnel jumped several-fold. For several decades now the noise from frustrated drivers honking their horns, the exhaust from the idling cars and traffic tie-ups affecting lower Manhattan from Union Square to Tribeca have been horrible due to this action. Nothing has been done since to address the unintended consequences of this scheme engineered with his Albany cronies -- and it's likely to get even worse when repairs to the L line create a dedicated bus lane across the Williamsburg Bridge. Molinari was a battler and did a number of positive things for the city, but this was one of his spectacular failures.

When we remember Mr. Guy V. Molinari, we should reflex on what he said in 1994. From wikipedia "In 1994, a week before the statewide elections, Molinari announced that Karen Burstein, the Democratic nominee for New York Attorney General, was not qualified to serve as attorney general because she was a lesbian." This was who and what he was.