An ‘Actual’ Republican, John Fleming Chases Votes One House at a Time
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

John Fleming is starting to wear. The pleats on the former city homicide detective’s pants are scuffed with wood chips from squeezing through hastily built picket fences, and the oxblood patina to the third pair of penny loafers he’s purchased for his come-from-nowhere campaign for state Senate are cracked from canvassing city streets 10 hours a day. (Weekends included.)
Mr. Fleming, 46, estimated that he has visited about 3,000 houses thus far, and despite the bone spurs in his feet and the cortisone shots to kill the pain, the fledgling candidate has continued to take his blue-collar conservatism doorbell to doorbell. He’s for lower taxes, against abortion, and for change in Albany. But when you get down to it, his pitch to voters is less policy, more party.
“I’m actually the only Republican running in the Republican primary,” he tells potential voters in a salty, Bronx bred accent. “Seriously. I’m actually a Republican.”
The former detective who now works at a mortgage company is a relative political unknown and one of two candidates running on the Republican line in a heated and politically intriguing match up in the September 14th primary to fill the vacant seat of Guy Velella, the longtime state senator imprisoned on bribery charges.
Mr. Fleming’s most dangerous threat in attracting Republican votes on primary day, ironically, will come in the form of a Democratic state assemblyman, Stephen Kaufman, a longtime Albany fixture who received the blessing from the state’s Republican leadership to run on the Republican line – a gambit designed to give Mr. Kaufman a second chance to run in the general election, should he be ousted in the Democratic primary by fellow state Assemblyman Jeff Klein.
The idea that the state’s Republican party bosses, led by the Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, would tap a lifelong Democrat to fill Velella’s seat irked Mr. Fleming so much, he said, that he decided to pull out of a congressional race and toss his first campaign hat into the increasingly competitive battle for the 34th district, which covers the East Bronx and parts of Westchester.
“When I read in the newspapers that Republicans were going to support this guy Kaufman, I was like, ‘Whoa, wait a second here,'” Mr. Fleming said. “If we’re going to coronate a Democrat who endorsed Dinkins and Hillary Clinton and in all likelihood will endorse John Kerry, then the Republican party might as well fold up the tent right now.”
Mr. Fleming’s long-shot bid has also led to more sparring within the Republican and Conservative parties. In running, Mr. Fleming, a 46-year-old who boxed in the amateur Golden Gloves tournament, crossed the wishes of Mr. Bruno, a 74-year-old who boxed in the army during the Korean War.
Mr. Fleming said he met personally with Mr. Bruno, who encouraged him not to run in the race.
“I was like, ‘Hey, I’m the Republican here!'” Mr. Fleming said, adding that challenging Mr. Bruno is a “fight worth fighting for, and a fight for the future of the Republican party in New York.”
Mr. Fleming, who once coordinated the security detail for Mayor Giuliani, also claimed party officials allied with Mr. Bruno have been contacting Republican donors and discouraging them from giving contributions to his campaign – a claim that a spokesman for Mr. Bruno, John McArdle, denied.
“The reason that donors aren’t supporting John Fleming is probably because he hasn’t served one day of public office,” Mr. McArdle said. “The reason we are supporting Steve Kaufman is that he’s served 26 years of public office.”
Searching for a breakout strategy, Mr. Fleming has also looked to pick a fight with Mr. Kaufman, who’s been endorsed by the city’s biggest unions and has filled his war chest with at least $147,000,including $13,900 from Mayor Bloomberg. In contrast, Mr. Fleming has no official union support and has raised at least $13,000, state records show.
“I may be an underdog with the funders and the unions, but what people forget is that I am not an underdog in the Republican party,” Mr. Fleming said, suggesting that he could easily have a fair shake at winning half the district’s near 40,000 registered Republicans, only a quarter of whom are expected to vote on primary day.
Until then, Mr. Fleming, armed with only a cellular phone, flyers, and a worn manila envelope filled with outdated voter registration lists, will be ringing doorbells.
“I’ve come into enemy territory, and I’m stealing voters,” Mr. Fleming said this week during his early evening shift down leafy side streets and crab shacks on City Island, an enclave that’s voted Mr. Kaufman into his assembly seat for the last 16 years.
Mr. Fleming buzzed firemen and army veterans and a pruned old man wearing nothing but his underwear who craggily identified himself as a “Rockefeller Republican, a liberal Republican,” to which Mr. Fleming kicked back, “I don’t think there is any such a thing as a liberal Republican.”
At one door, Mr. Fleming advocated the invasion of Syria. At another, he reminisced about September 11, 2001. But nearly all the potential voters he looked to find were either not home, or had moved away, or were simply not interested, leaving him to his stuff campaign flyers in mailboxes, all with the handwritten note, “Sorry I missed ya!”
The candidate’s best chance to lock in one solid vote came after two hours of walking at 51 Shofield Street, a simple house with a flag snapping out front. Francine Browning, a college student, described herself as an ideal swing voter: recently registered, somewhere between Democrats and Republicans.
Her father, Richard, had served in the police force, the fire department, and the Army, she said.
“Mr. America,” she said.
After 15 minutes of chatting, Ms. Browning, 33, said that Mr. Fleming earned an “A plus” for his persistence. Despite some vast ideological differences, she would vote for him anyway, she said, because she relates to his 17 years of service as a cop.
The catch: She had registered herself independent, and is therefore barred from voting in any primary among Republicans, real or newly minted.
Mr. Fleming kept on walking.
“Sometimes chicken, sometimes feathers,” he said.