'It’s the rare campaign between two veterans who embody the tension of what Americans think about the military — following the country’s longest war and in the city’s most conservative borough'
Brittany DeBarros Ramos in Sunset Park and Max Rose on Staten Island in May. Photo: OK McCausland Last summer on Staten Island, two combat veterans of the war in Afghanistan met for breakfast at the King’s Arm Diner, a local institution. Over eggs and coffee, Max Rose and Brittany Ramos DeBarros discussed the hasty U.S. exit unfolding before them, throwing into some doubt what they and thousands of others had sacrificed during the war.
Max Rose was feeling especially nostalgic about his service as he knocked on doors next to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn on a cold weekday in March. Even when he hit conservative households, residents still heard him out because of his service. “He spent some time for his country,” said a Vietnam veteran named Julian.
Max Rose addressing a crowd at a rally for abortion rights, alongside on Staten Island on May 4. Photo: OK McCausland Once in office, Rose stayed on-brand as an unflappable officer, serving on the homeland security and veterans affairs committees.
Just as Rose hasn’t completely overcome his trauma, Brittany Ramos DeBarros still struggles with hers, one she recalled standing next to one of Staten Island’s two 9/11 memorials, on the borough’s northern tip overlooking Manhattan. The connection wasn’t lost on her: Last September, on the 20th anniversary of the attacks, she spoke here to victims’ families grappling with their loss and, in some cases, for “the ways that that loss has been politicized and weaponized to promote further violence.
Brittany Ramos DeBarros addresses her support team of canvassers at a kick off event in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, on April 30. Photo: OK McCausland Her first public turn against the war occured years later, when she was on the Army’s payroll as a reservist. In 2018, she tweeted out a series of missives against “the horror being carried out by our war machine for profit,” remarks that sparked a Pentagon investigation. Then she was arrested for protesting the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Both candidates have been running in what’s practically been three different districts so far this year, after the map was redrawn twice for the 11th Congressional District covering Staten Island and a swath of southern Brooklyn. First, the Democrat-led legislature gerrymandered the district to be more blue, mostly by wedging Park Slope inside of it, in the hopes of dooming Malliotakis. That map was recently thrown out by a judge citing political “bias” and redrawn by a nonpartisan expert.