Plenty Of Americans Like The Corruption

It's Easier To Persuade A Politician With No Morals Than One With Rigid Principles

The support my disgrace former state assemblyman, Anthony Seminerio, left, received even after he went to prison gave me great insight as to why people are willing to support obvious criminals like Donald Trump

In 2009, just as I started my first print journalism job at the Queens Tribune, my longtime state assemblyman, Anthony Seminerio, was indicted. He was a conservative Democrat who had been in office for 30 years. He only once had a close race – in 1994, when he faced a Republican who once told parents at my private Catholic elementary school that we should bring back segregation, at least for private schools.

Everyone respected and loved my state assemblyman, and he often ran unopposed. Even my Republican grandmother voted for him. I remember going into the voting booth with my dad as a young kid, and when he got to the State Assembly line, he said, “Anthony Seminerio. Obviously, we’re going to vote for him.”¹

He only faced a primary once—against a similarly conservative Democrat when their two districts were combined in redistricting. His district included several increasingly diverse middle-class Queens neighborhoods which straddled the border with some of the poorest, most crime-ridden Brooklyn communities.

As I became more politically active in the early 2000s, I could not understand what anyone saw in the old man. He was very clearly corrupt, and people openly joked about it. He had ties to the mob. Ultimately, federal prosecutors snagged him for taking bribes from a local hospital in an investigation assisted by another corrupt but well-liked Queens assemblyman who went down in scandal.

I covered the trial. He pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to federal prison and served his term as a correctional facility in Butner, North Carolina. He died there less than two years later.

After his death, I was tasked with writing his obituary, which included talking to former constituents—my neighbors. You would think they wouldn’t have nice things to say about a man bounced out of office in a corruption scandal.

Nope.

Constituent after long-time constituent, including civic leaders, praised Seminerio, and dismissed the corruption conviction, either saying they didn’t believe he did what he went to prison for, or that if he did, he did it for “the right reasons.” His successor, Michael Miller, shocked many reporters when he openly praised him.

"His caring and commitment needs to be remembered," he told NBC4 after Seminerio’s death. "He did a lot of great things for the district. I'm sure the people here are going to remember him for all the good things he did for them."

Some suggested his conviction was a sinister plot by “liberals” and “minorities” to drive him out of office and replace him with a more liberal, non-white candidate.² At the time, the neighborhoods in his district had become increasingly diverse and far more liberal than when he was first elected in the 1970s. The year before, the incumbent Republican state senator, who had been relatively close to Seminerio and had been in office since the 1980s, was ousted on President Barack Obama’s coattails. The communities Seminerio represented were changing. His constituents, grappling with the fear and anxiety of that change, clung to that as the reason for his ousting, not the reality that they had always been wrong about the man.

The same community Seminerio represented included mob boss John Gotti’s hangout, the Bergen Fish and Hunt Club, where he ran a criminal enterprise under everyone’s nose, including mine. The club is only five blocks from where I grew up and next door to the bank where my mother worked. Through the 1980s, Gotti helped fund Fourth of July street fairs and worked to secure the resources for a full-on casino operation in the auditorium of my Catholic grammar school every June, coinciding with the parish bazaar. Imagine walking past blackjack tables and slot machines on your way to your second-grade class. It was all for fundraising, except for the cut of the proceeds, which everyone knew Gotti took.

Meanwhile, Gotti developed a reputation as a protector. The communities I grew up in and Seminerio represented were nestled between East New York, Brooklyn and Jamaica, Queens – poor, crime-ridden and more terrifying to my community – black. Gotti ensured the “riff-raff” to the east and west of us never broke through our bubble. Once Gotti was gone, the neighborhoods changed. What was once an epicenter of New York Italian and Irish culture became increasingly West Indian, South Asian and Hispanic. Whether Gotti was the reason the communities never changed, or the timing was coincidental, was of no matter.

“These people would never be here if he were still around,” my neighbors would complain as they saw people in traditional Indian garb and others speaking fluent Spanish unload moving trucks. As the neighborhoods changed, so did those representing them, and Seminerio’s ousting was another domino falling.

If this all sounds familiar, it should. The vast majority of my classmates strongly support Donald Trump today, as do their families. The corruption we experienced with our assemblyman and with Gotti is the same type thriving under Trump – along with constituents turning a blind eye to the criminality and cruelty.

Why?

Much like with Seminerio and Gotti, Trump’s corruption serves their supporters. My community turned a blind eye to, or openly supported, the corrupt behavior of men like Seminerio and Gotti because, in their minds, they kept the neighborhood safe and stable and delivered money and resources to our community – especially our schools.

It didn’t matter that they were for sale. It’s much easier to convince someone with no principles to do what you want than someone with a rigid moral code, who may disagree with you and be immovable – like many idealist progressives my neighbors despise.

This is how many family and community power structure dynamics work in this country. People generally like this corrupt dynamic because it tends to feel like equal opportunity without the monetary and social sacrifices (e.g., taxes, and equity programs) progressivism asks for. With Trump, like Gotti and Seminerio, everyone has an equal chance to please the king and get what they want. Daddy doesn’t see black or white; he only sees green.

It’s not just my community. Corrupt politicians from both parties often get reelected repeatedly all over the country – as long as their constituents feel the corruption doesn’t impact them, or worse, serves them.

People generally like this type of corrupt dynamic because it tends to feel like equal opportunity without the monetary and social sacrifices (e.g., taxes, and equity programs) progressivism asks for. With Trump, like Gotti and Seminerio, everyone has an equal chance to please the king and get what they want. Daddy doesn’t see black or white; he only sees green.

As for Trump, he is a mob boss and unless you grew up in Ozone Park, Queens like I did, you do not understand what people are willing to let mob bosses get away with if they believe the mob boss looks out for them. The people I grew up with would've elected John Gotti president if they could have, even AFTER his criminal conviction. They defended him to the point that they rioted when he went to prison and handed out hats with “Free John Gotti” embroidered on them³, while also voting for people like Rudy Giuliani and George Pataki and Seminerio to “restore law and order.” When he lay dying of cancer in a Missouri prison, my neighbors openly seethed that “we treat terrorists better than we treat our own people.”

When Gotti died, his funeral procession lurched through the communities Semenerio represented like a monarch’s. When Seminerio died, he got a similar send off.

The corruption and the criminality did not matter. For Trump supporters, as long as he delivers what they want, his corruption and crimes won’t matter either. It served the public.

1. Seminerio’s nephew was an ex-brother-in-law of his. Even big cities are small towns.

2. Miller was ultimately unseated in 2020 by current incumbent Jenifer Rajkumar, who is the daughter of Indian immigrants. The district has a huge Indian-American population today.

3. Someone in the world there exists a photo of me, an 8-year-old, wearing one.