Joe McLaughlin, a former high school football star turned Republican candidate in the 81st Assembly District, is trying to script a Rudy-like underdog story as the general election approaches on Nov. 2.

Just as Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger overcame his diminutive stature to play football for Notre Dame, McLaughlin hopes to overcome near impossible odds to defeat Democrat Jeff Dinowitz, a 16-year assembly veteran. 

In the Bronx, Republicans are outnumbered nearly 6 to 1 by Democrats. There hasn’t been a Republican elected official in the borough since State Senator Guy Velella, who was convicted on bribery charges in 2004. (McLaughlin, interestingly, doesn’t mention his Republican party in any of his campaign literature.)

In the last general election, Dinowitz garnered more than 95 percent of the district’s votes and routinely takes home at least 75 percent of the vote.

Still, Joe “Mac” says he’s in the race and basically self financing his campaign to give people a choice.  He’s going around knocking on doors and asking people if they’re happy with how things are going in Albany with the state legislature. “I haven’t had a lot of people slamming the door in my face,” he says.

McLaughlin’s campaign motto is, “Vote for Joe Mac. He’s one of us.” His story is in the classic pull-yourself-up-by-the-­bootstraps mold. McLaughlin was one of seven kids raised by a single mom in Kingsbridge Heights. He went to college on a full football scholarship after starring at Cardinal Spellman High School.

He’s spent most of his career in the finance industry and now works for The Mulholland Group, a Queens-based housing company that specializes in acquiring and enhancing low-income housing. They do business in most parts of the country, except “New York and other areas with rent controls,” according to the company’s website.

Now living in Riverdale with his wife and two young daughters, McLaughlin, 42, says he “couldn’t sit on sidelines” and watch the problems going on in Albany.
Aside from running on the “Albany’s broken” platform, McLaughlin says he wants to bring fiscal responsibility to the state’s bloated budget and enact tax cuts to spur business and job growth.

He also wants non-partisan independent redistricting implemented (“to bring the power back to the voters,” he says), which is one of three pledges he signed on to as part of former Democratic mayor Ed Koch’s New York Uprising political reform campaign. The Uprising’s other pledges include bringing responsible budgeting and ethics reform to Albany.

McLaughlin called out Dinowitz for not signing on to Koch’s reform package in a letter he sent to the campaign of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo, who did sign on the pledge. In the letter, McLaughlin asked for Cuomo’s endorsement, saying they both wanted reform, whereas Dinowitz is an “enemy of reform,” according to Koch.

“Who died and made Ed Koch an expert on reform?” Dinowitz said in an interview after admitting he didn’t know anything about McLaughlin, including his name.

Dinowitz said he doesn’t sign pledges, “generally speaking,” but that he agrees with most of the reforms Koch outlines. Still, he placed most of the blame for Albany’s dysfunction on Republicans who, up until 2009, controlled the State Senate for more than 40 years.

Now, with Democrats hanging on to a slim majority in the Senate, little is happening in the way of legislation because Republicans are “the party of no,” Dinowitz says, meaning all 32 Senate Democrats need to agree if they want to pass legislation. Dinowitz said the recent ousting of Bronx State Senator Pedro Espada, Jr., who briefly sided with Republicans two summers ago, will help.

“Are there problems with Albany? Of course,” Dinowitz says. But he’s not worried that it will affect him in this year’s election.

“I’m sure I’ll get at least 75 percent of the votes. I don’t want to be cocky,” he said. “[Voters] may not agree with me on everything, but they know I work hard for the neighborhood.”

McLaughlin does have one thing going for him: he went to Holy Cross, the same school Rudy attended before transferring to Notre Dame. 

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.