Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,533

This is the grave of Guy Molinari.

Born in 1928 in Manhattan, Gaetano Kenneth Molinari (who later legally changed his middle name to Victor for some reason and of course went by Guy instead of Gaetano) grew up in a political Italian-American family. His father was the first Italian immigrant to win election to the state assembly. With the family quite upwardly mobile, Molinari got fancy private schools at a time when few Italian kids did. He went to Wagner College and graduated in 1949 and then was onto NYU for his law degree, which he received in 1951. Korea called and he was in the Marines from 1951-53. Upon his return, he started practicing law and getting involved in Staten Island politics, where he lived.

Staten Island became a political cesspool about the same time that Molinari became interested in a more active role in politics and he became a great personification of how the descendants of the southern and eastern European immigrants became awful politically. Molinari first went to the New York statehouse as a Republican in 1975 and served three terms. Then it was Congress, where he was elected in 1980. This was a big moment in Staten Island politics. He upset a nine-term congressman named John Murphy. He was even able to carry it despite it carrying the less Republican Lower Manhattan. But this was a time when someone like Reagan really tapped into the white ethnic resentment over the government doing things for Black people. Staten Island would never be the same. Democrats tried to take him out through redistricting after that, merging his district with a big chunk of Brooklyn, where he would have to take on another incumbent Democrat, the four-term congressman Leo Zeferetti. But he won that race too. Ugh.

As a congressman, Molinari was basically a pork guy. He worked hard to get Staten Island (and I guess the rest of his district, but not really) big transportation money and to clean up some of the oil pollution that had long plagued the place. His big move–and this probably bought him lifetime love–was to get the toll on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge reduced for Staten Island residents. Having seen the combination of white ethnic resentment and hatred of tolls happen in Rhode Island when Gina Raimondo attempted to implement tolls on I-95 (and this just for long-haul trucks!), I am sure that this was pure political gold for Molinari. He also fought to close the West Kills landfill, long the bane of Staten Island residents, who felt that the city was not only dumping their actual garbage on the good people of the island, but their metaphorical garbage too.

Molinari was a huge jerk. He called for the deaths of doctors who performed late-term abortions. He once tried to get into a fistfight on the floor of the state assembly. Of course this kind of stuff just made him more beloved among the cretins who populate Staten Island, a land of wealth and taste. He was the old-school pol who everyone could call by his first name, who would show up at every local event, and who channeled the growing Italian-American resentment into an alliance with the Republican Party that continues to dominate the politics of the place today. He voted against the MLK holiday, an amazing moment in people defining their awfulness.

Molinari became a mentor to a lovely young man named Rudolph Giuliani. As early as 1988, he endorsed Giuliani for the job, which the evil man won in 1994. What that meant was hating David Dinkins and boy howdy did the whites of Staten Island hate the Black guy as mayor, a preview of how they would hate the other Black guy as president. Dinkins and Molinari had a terrible relationship, largely over issues surrounding the Staten Island Ferry. At the time, you had to pay to ride it and of course the people of Staten Island don’t want to pay for any services. Now they don’t have to. But if anything, Giuliani wasn’t quite enough of a jerk for Molinari, which of course says a lot. When the new mayor supported Bill Clinton’s anti-crime bill, Molinari lambasted him for being soft on crime and a traitor to Republicans, which no one had ever said about our favorite fascist mayor before or since.

In 1989, Molinari stepped away from Congress to become Borough President in Staten Island. His daughter Susan replaced him in Congress, in case anyone was wondering who was really still in charge in Staten Island. Molinari started talking more as he got older and this made him look like the right-wing creep he actually was. In 1994, Molinari stated that the Democrats’ nomination for state attorney general was not qualified because she was a lesbian. This was just gross. He got called out for once by the New York Times on it. But she lost, as Democrats did across New York and the nation that terrible year.

Molinari also made everything super personal in the worst kind of way–if he didn’t get the respect he believed he deserved, he would engage in public temper tantrums. For example, he initially supported George W. Bush for president in 2000. But Bush didn’t choose him to run the campaign in New York. So he switched and supported John McCain. Then he publicly lambasted Giuliani and George Pataki for not also supporting McCain for the same ridiculous reason. I mean, you’re from Staten Island, why not just make your politics about personal resentment? Everyone else is.

In his later years, Molinari was the dean of Staten Island politics, the senior figure everyone had to bend a knee to. He also practiced law, or at least was known in the firm, which probably is more accurate. He worked as a bank director too. He and Giuliani had patched up their relationship by the time the latter ran for president in 2008 on his Noun Verb 9/11 platform, but of course that was the wrong horse to back and while he did later support John McCain, he never had the kind of influence in the McCain campaign he would have liked. Even as he got sick though in his later years, he was always available by phone for any local Republican to chat with. He wanted the homage and he got it. In 2016, he published a book titled A Life of Service. I doubt a single person outside of Staten Island has read it, though this is assuming literacy among a larger part of that island than is probably deserved.

Molinari died of pneumonia in 2018. He was 89 years old.

Guy Molinari is buried in Moravian Cemetery, Staten Island, New York.

If you would like this series to visit other figures from Congress in the 1980s, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Gillis Long is in Pineville, Louisiana and Bob Michel is in Peoria, Illinois. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.