What indictment? Rep. Michael Grimm wins bizarre New York race

Well, someone had to win -- even if the race was a national punchline.

Republican Rep. Michael G. Grimm on Tuesday retained his House seat in New York’s 11th congressional district despite threatening a reporter on camera and despite facing a federal indictment on charges of fraud and perjury.

Grimm will continue to represent Staten Island and part of Brooklyn after defeating former New York City Councilman Domenic Recchia, who had his own woes on the campaign trail. At one point, Recchia summed up his foreign policy experience by discussing a student exchange program.

Staten Island is the lone conservative enclave among New York City’s five boroughs, and in most years Grimm would have been a heavy favorite. But he became a regular target of late-night comedians in January after threatening to toss a television reporter off a balcony and break him in half, “like a boy.”

A few months later, Grimm was swept up in a 20-count federal indictment that included charges of wire fraud, mail fraud, healthcare fraud, perjury and defrauding the Internal Revenue Service.

The series of public relations fiascoes made Grimm seem ripe for an upset. But Recchia made a number of head-scratching comments that put him in Jon Stewart’s crosshairs and vaulted the race into the national spotlight.

Discussing his foreign policy knowledge at a campaign event, Recchia went on a bizarre tangent about running a foreign exchange program with Japan as a member of a borough community board.

“I’ve been to Israel, I’ve been to Italy, I’ve been to many, many countries across this world,” he said.

Weeks later, Recchia walked away from a TV reporter who asked him to define the Trans-Pacific Partnership, referring to negotiations for one of the world’s largest free-trade agreements. The video of that incident went viral.

The Staten Island Advance, the borough’s hometown paper, described Grimm as a “moderate conservative.” In perhaps the most telling moment of the race, the newspaper endorsed the incumbent in an editorial that had all the warmth of a shotgun wedding.

Grimm won 55% of the vote to Recchia’s 42%.

“They hit me with everything they had, everything you could imagine, but we’re here tonight victorious,” Grimm said late Tuesday night, according to the New York Observer.

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