Brooklyn GOP Vice-Chair David Storobin: The banks did not bailed themselves out. Politicians did.

By Ilya Galak, Ph.D.

Mr. Storobin, why are you a Republican?

Because I believe in small, efficient government. The government should provide the necessary services without “overcharging” taxpayers. We all need government services such as roads, police, schools and when we are older, Social Security. These services need to be protected, but they can’t truly be protected if we waste money on useless programs and fraud. We also can’t allow the economy to grow if we tax businesspeople until it is no longer profitable for them to invest.

Why did you decide to run for the position of a vice- chairman of Brooklyn Republican Party?
In 2009, Brooklyn Republican Party Chairman Craig Eaton was looking to build a team of young professionals. He reached out to me and to other Republicans and asked us to participate. It is obviously a great honor, but that is particularly so at this point in history. The Republican party in Brooklyn took tremendous leaps forward since 2007 when Craig Eaton took over. We now have a full time office, excellent leaders, active volunteers, a great Young Republicans operation.
In the last 12 months, two Congressional seats that are partly in Brooklyn were won by Republicans Michael Grimm and Bob Turner. Mr. Turner actually lost the Queens part of his district, but because he won the Brooklyn side by a margin of 2 to 1, he’s now a Congressman.
We also saw Nicole Malliotakis win an Assembly seat that is partly in Brooklyn. With her victory, Democrats no longer have a super-majority in the Assembly, so it was a very important win. We also expect that in 2012 we will win the State Senate seat currently held by Carl Kruger, who has been indicted in Federal court on criminal charges.

David Storobin

Speaking of replacing Carl Kruger, several news sources reported that you may be the Republican candidate. There is even an active “Draft Storobin for Senate” campaign with hundreds of people signing in support of your candidacy.

I am honored and humbled that Republican and community activists are asking me to run for public office. I’ve been asked to run before, but always rejected it, preferring to help recruit other candidates. But if a corrupt politician like Carl Kruger runs for re-election or if a leftist radical like Lew Fidler, who is rumored as the Democratic candidate, runs for this seat, then we will definitely need a strong candidate. I will have to consider whether I am the strongest candidate because we really can’t afford to be represented by an indicted defendant like Kruger, nor by an extremist like Lew Fidler who voted for every possible tax hike, who not only supported Gay Marriage but was the leader among City Councilmen who supported it, and who otherwise completely does not fit in with this moderate-to-conservative district. If the Democrats pick someone as liberal as Fidler as their candidate, it will be nothing short of an insult to our community.

David Storobin. AJC Global Forum 2011

Craig Eaton was just re-elected as the Republican Party Chairman in Brooklyn. Can you please tell few words about him?

Craig is easily the best Chairman the Republican party has had in a long time, probably in my lifetime. I am not just saying it because he’s my friend. If you look at the facts, it’s not something that any reasonable person can deny. We were not in good shape when he took over and things have radically changed. It’s not just because of the anti-Obama bounce. Even in 2008 and 2009 when Barack Obama was very popular, the GOP was growing in Brooklyn. We have more money, we actively help campaigns with volunteers and fundraising, we have vibrant and diverse leadership, we have an office and a radio show run by Gene Berardelli, also Vice Chairman of the Brooklyn GOP, we have observers at polling stations on election days. Quite simply: we now matter. All of that is due to the efforts of Craig Eaton. None of that was happening before him.
I honestly can’t imagine that Bob Turner would have won his Congressional race without Craig. First, it was Craig who took the lead in trying to draft Mr. Turner. He took him for an interview on national television as soon as the Anthony Weiner scandal broke. Then he insisted that Brooklyn and Queens unite around the Turner candidacy and not others. And when it was time to campaign, Craig regularly organized dozens of volunteers to come out for Turner. Without a Chairman like Craig Eaton, it would be impossible for a Republican congressional candidate to win over 66% of the vote in the Brooklyn side of this congressional district. After all, Republicans are still outnumbered 3:1 by Democrats in these areas.

Left to right: David Storobin, Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, Chairman the BrooklynRepublican party Craig Eaton

What do you think about the political activity of Russian Community in Brooklyn?

I think a lot more people need to get involved. Many people have an aversion to politics from their Soviet days. But this is America, this is different. Three out of four main officers in the Brooklyn Young Republicans are Russian, and I’m proud to say that I recruited all of them. But we need much more. We need to get businesspeople involved. We need journalists. We need professionals. We need more college students. But it’s not merely that the Republican party needs these people – the Russian community needs the Republican party also. The Russian community needs to ask itself, “why does every other community participate in politics?” There must be a reason businesspeople, professionals and college students of all other backgrounds participate.
We are glad to see more Russian-Americans vote, not just because they mostly vote Republican, but also because we believe every community should participate. Without the Russian vote, both Michael Grimm and Bob Turner would have lost their elections. Russian-Americans are key to the Republican renaissance in southern Brooklyn. And this community would be well-served by getting engaged. We welcome everyone, regardless of their ethnic background, to come join us every Wednesday at 8 pm in the Brooklyn Republican Party Headquarters located at 7620 17 avenue. Just come over. Everyone who shows up is our friend as soon as they introduce themselves, so don’t worry if you don’t know anyone yet.

Congressman Bob Turner

What is something most Republicans in Brooklyn don’t know about David Storobin?

We meet at least once a week, on Wednesday nights, and usually more often than that. The leaders of the Republican party have seen me in every possible situation so I am not sure what they don’t know. I doubt there’s anything.

Mr. Storobin, we are both from the former Soviet Union. We know what the “war with the rich people” is. In Russia we had it in 1917. Result is poverty, GULAG, KGB. What do we have to do in order to stop this war?

You came here as an adult and I came here as a child, but we both have very striking memories of the dysfunctional Soviet system. Even as a child, you couldn’t help by pay attention to the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. There was a shortage of everything: food, clothes, you name it. I’d walk into my classroom and most students had nothing to write on because all the stores were out of notebooks and it was dark because there wasn’t a single light bulb for sale in a city of half a million residents. Then the government began legalizing private business and like magic things would suddenly appear in private stores.

In Eastern Europe, nobody wants to fight the rich anymore. In the 1980s, someone commented that in a normal country, the government fights to make sure that nobody is poor, but in the Soviet Union, they fight to make sure nobody is rich. East Europeans are done fighting the rich. The goal should be growing the economy. Everyone should have more.
Leftist extremists say that business owners, if left unchecked, will take advantage of everyone with high prices and low quality. But that’s false. Imagine you were opening a business today. What would your first question be? It’s obviously, “why would someone buy from me?” The only answer to that is that you are able to provide something of better quality and/or lower price than your competition. This is why American products made by private enterprise were always superior to Soviet products made by the government.

This is why I am opposed to “crony capitalism” where the government bails out failed corporations. I repeatedly stated on TV and other media that I am opposed to the bailouts when they were being proposed. If a business fails, it should disappear and another business will succeed in its place. The government should not be in the business of giving welfare to corporations. But we should remember that corporations did not give themselves these bailouts. Politicians on both sides, Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama, as well as others in Congress, were the ones who decided to give welfare to corporations.

I am an American first and a Republican second. If Republican politicians are wrong, we should not be afraid to condemn them. And those Republicans who voted in favor of bailouts were wrong! But it was even more wrong for Barack Obama to come back with more and more of these bailouts, under all sorts of different names. In the end, Obama’s “bailouts” and “jobs bills” turned out to be mislabeled old-fashioned leftist wish-lists. Obama used the crisis to promote the far-left agenda, under the false guise of trying to save corporations and create jobs.

Some people believe that people born poor no longer can move up in the United States and those who are successful are just privileged. That’s why they should pay more. What do you think?

The radicals want to vilify business owners and other successful people. “People make too much, it’s not fair!” Well, I’m a business owner. I was raised by a single mother working for $5-$6 an hour from the time we came to the US when I was a child and until I was already in law school. We didn’t have electricity our first two or three months in New York. I only had used clothes from flea markets until I was a junior in college. When I was 25, I started my business by maxing out my credit cards because nobody else would give me any other type of loan. But now that I have multiple people working for me, I have to hear from radicals how I’m a bad, overly-advantaged person. Really? Was I really that privileged?

Mr. Storobin, as you well know, many Russians in Brooklyn and on Staten Island aligning with Republicans. How do you explain that?

Because people who experienced the War Against The Rich know what it leads to. Additionally, most Russian immigrants are Jewish and very Zionist. They are deeply troubled by the policies towards Israel by Barack Obama and other liberals. Even Bill Clinton, a moderate Democrat, attacked Russian Jews for being too Zionist in one of his articles last year. In all the polls, Republicans are twice as likely to say they support Israel as Democrats. In fact, surveys show that non-Jewish conservatives are more likely to say they support Israel than liberal Jews. Over the last couple of decades, support for Israel has more and more become a right-wing issue.

Republican presidential candidates. Your thoughts?

I think it’s a very talented field. Mitt Romney is a successful governor and businessman. Rick Perry created more jobs than any other governor during his term. And Herman Cain is not just a very success entrepreneur, but also seems like a great all-around person. It’s great to have candidates who actually have a record of success before running for office, and not just running on empty slogans about hope. The truth is that hope comes from having leadership that knows what it takes for a business to succeed, expand and hire more people.