Government Shutdown

Freshman Republican: 'Extreme Wing' Of GOP Risks Huge Mistake On Budget

Brian Beutler | March 14, 2011, 3:55PM

This won't go over well with a lot of his fellow GOPers. Freshman Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY), the Staten Island Republican who defeated Democrat Michael McMahon in November, just launched a broadside against conservative members of his own party who are threatening to defect from spending legislation that seeks to prevent a government shutdown.

"The extreme wing of the Republican Party is making a big mistake with their flat-out opposition to a short-term continuing resolution," Grimm said in a statement. "I know that there is some opposition to working with Senate Democrats from the extreme right of the tea party who would rather see a government shutdown than pass a short-term solution; however, as long as we continue to cut spending each time, we are keeping our promise to the American people to reduce the deficit and fix the economy."

File that under statements that will make Chuck Schumer very happy. Counter-intuitively, though, John Boehner might also be breathing a sigh of relief. Not because he's happy about the rifts within his party, or because he secretly agrees with Grimm on the merits. But Grimm and others like him represent a potential buffer for Boehner if the right flank of his party becomes too unwieldy and he has to legislate, as Schumer suggested, with the help of a lot of Democrats. For now he's shown no signs of moving in that direction.

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Topics: Chuck Schumer, Government Shutdown, John Boehner, Mike Grimm, Spending

2010 elections

Dem Rep Fires Aide After Distribution Of 'Jewish Money' List

Evan McMorris-Santoro | July 29, 2010, 9:02PM

Rep. Mike McMahon (D-NY) is in full-on damage control mode this evening after the New York Observer revealed that an aide to his reelection campaign attempted to highlight an opponent's out-of-district donor base with a list of donors entitled "Jewish Money Q2."

The basic summary of the situation, from the Observer piece: McMahon's finance director, who is Jewish, pored through the campaign finance reports from one of one of McMahon's Republican opponents, former FBI agent Mike Grimm, and compiled a list of donors to who she claimed are Jewish to showcase money raised Grimm raised from outside the Staten Island, New York district. A spokesperson for McMahon's campaign told the Observer the finance director labeled the donors Jewish because "she knows a lot of people in that community" and could, presumably, recognize their names.

"Where is Grimm's money coming from," Jennifer Nelson, McMahon's campaign communications director told the paper. "There is a lot of Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and Manhattan, retirees."

The campaign provided "a list of over 80 names, a half-dozen of which in fact do hail from Staten Island, and a handful of others that list Brooklyn as home" on the "Grimm Jewish Money Q2" list provided to the Observer. Nelson "stressed" to the paper "that the point of compiling the list was not to show that Grimm had a lot of Jewish support, but that he had little support in the district."

Not surprisingly, that's not how Grimm saw it.

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Topics: 2010 elections, Mike Grimm, Mike McMahon, NY-13