TheDC Interview: Republican New York congressional candidate Michael Grimm

Ashley Killough Contributor










TheDC: Do you consider yourself a Tea Party follower?






MG: Not at all.




TheDC: You’ve rolled in some pretty big-name endorsements this year, including Sen. John McCain, former Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari, former President George H. W. Bush, and Congressman Mike Rogers. You’ve often campaigned against this idea of “career politicians.” So why would you accept endorsements by some of these politicians, many of whom have held office for much of their careers?

MG: I think that an endorsement by someone who has done the job before and says that Michael Grimm has the right ideas, because we’ve been there and we see what needs to be done, doesn’t take anything away from the fact that I’m not a politician. That I haven’t been corrupted by the system…

I represent that new blood that says, “Wait a minute. It’s time that we keep our word to the people. What we say on the campaign trail, we have to honor.” And as someone that has never been in politics before, I know that I will go in with a clean slate. I don’t owe anyone any favors. I don’t owe any party anything.

TheDC: You say on your website that the country should start implementing a promise that President Obama made during his presidential campaign, which was to eliminate earmarks. How would you distinguish between money that is good for your district and pork barrel spending?

MG: There are two things there. Number One: Good money for the district is money that is paid for. It’s coming from a budget where we’re taking funds that were allocated by taking away from failed programs and from waste, which we have tons of. We know of failed programs that we’ve been funding for years and years and years. We stop funding them, and we allocate those monies and those resources to projects that we need in the district, like infrastructure, transportation upgrades and so on. Bad money is when we just continue to borrow from China and borrow from countries that don’t even like us and indebt our future generations.

As far as earmarks are concerned, why can’t we just have a bill for each spending item and let it go through appropriations as necessary?  If we need to build a new bridge, like the Bayonne Bridge, there should be a bill that allocates money for that and we should know where it’s coming from and how it’s being paid for. Why do we have to sneak that in a massive whatever-type-of-bill, whether it be health care or something else, where people can’t actually see it and understand it? It’s a lack of transparency, and that’s what’s leading to no accountability. If we have bills that are clear and succinct and readable and put on the website for everyone to see, then we can hold our elected officials accountable.