Yes, Vickie Paladino is for real

“Go fuck yourself.” 

“Go fuck yourself, how’s that?”

That’s how Republican New York City Council Member Vickie Paladino responded to a man she thought was a squatter outside a Whitestone, Queens, home after she called the dilapidated property “a disgrace.” The August 2022 exchange between the small, straight-talking lawmaker and a very surly large man smoking a joint was filmed by her staffer. Paladino chose to post it online, and, like much Paladino content, it went viral. 

Paladino drove by the house on her way to work after a constituent complained, not expecting to meet the man face to face. “We won’t have this goings on in this neighborhood,” she tells the man shortly before he exhales his marijuana smoke in her face. “It won’t happen. It just won’t happen.”

Paladino flipped “this neighborhood” red by a razor-thin margin in 2021. Months after his loss to her that year, Democratic former state Sen. Tony Avella said, “It may be necessary to create an unofficial government in exile in order to show the rest of the city she does not properly represent Northeast Queens.”

That’s the thing, though: She does represent Northeast Queens. Everything about the alleged squatter video – Paladino’s nerve, her husky voice and her intolerance of the appearance of the man’s house and his blasé attitude – is just so Northeast Queens, and so Vickie Paladino, the Republican lawmaker known for her silver hair, direct confrontations and extreme right-wing politics.

She carried the district by 20 points in her 2023 rematch against Avella. President Donald Trump – who Paladino passionately supports – won back the White House in November with the strongest show of support in New York in decades, making dramatic gains in New York City. That rightward shift has been brewing in Queens for several election cycles, as Paladino’s popularity evinces. Many may find her extreme online rhetoric about immigrants and transgender people, congestion pricing and vaccine mandates abhorrent, but when you visit her in her district office and see how people respond to her in real life, it’s difficult to deny that what she is doing is working politically.

“I think if you’re going to talk objectively and talk about what’s going to lead to the most electoral success (for the GOP) – especially on the heels of President Trump’s results in the city and state – the only direction is to embrace a more populist, MAGA tone and direction,” said New York Young Republican Club President Gavin Wax. “And that’s embodied by Vickie Paladino.”

“Hey, Vic, look, there’s the mayor”

The list of Paladino’s greatest hits is long. Her very own Whitestone Republican Club became a punchline when it rang in the new year in December 2020 with a conga line at its maskless holiday party at the now-infamous Il Bacco Ristorante. Paladino refused to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination on her first day in office and was turned away from the council chamber. “I don’t need to show you my papers,” she said. “This is not Nazi Germany.” (She ultimately secured a religious exemption.) Her 2022 comments on Drag Story Hour – which she called “child grooming” – resulted in her removal from the Mental Health, Disabilities and Addictions Committee. Despite her own resentment toward ghost plates and accessory dwelling units, reports have suggested that her older son had a car with fake plates and that she may have been renting out her home illegally. Just this month, she posted specific instructions on how to disable congestion pricing cameras with “a high-powered green laser pointer like the ones you find on Ebay for under $30.” 

Paladino is aware of her reputation. When I tell her the question my Gen Z friends and millennial peers have asked me most often about her over my three years covering her – “Is she actually crazy?” – the 70-year-old laughs. “I love it when they ask that.”

Council Member Chi Ossé, the progressive, TikTok-loving 26-year-old lawmaker from  Bedford-Stuyvesant, has been among Paladino’s harshest critics, particularly online. So you can imagine my surprise when, at the end of a contentious council meeting on Mayor Eric Adams’ City of Yes housing proposal, I saw Paladino and Ossé among the few still lingering in the council chamber, laughing together – hard. What was so funny? “We said we’d be, like, the best of friends if we weren’t living in alternate universes – but we do,” Paladino said, “alternate universes,” meaning “far left, far right, whatever you want to call it.”

“We have so many disagreements … I would say she’s my rival, in a way, my tether,” Ossé said a few minutes later. “But … whether you like what she says or not, she tells it like it is – she’s truthful, she’s upfront. And I think in a world of politicians who bundle a bunch of things up through niceties and fakeness, Vickie’s 100% herself.”

Nearly all 18 people interviewed for this story mentioned that notion. Paladino’s interpersonal skills are – face to face – so disarming even her foils can’t help but like her. “The idea is to be real – to be a person, not so much the elected official,” Paladino told me in an interview last month.

It’s been the theme for Paladino since her first moment in the spotlight – before becoming an elected official. It was 2017. Paladino, then 63, saw her path completely altered the moment her husband, driving her back from the nail salon, pointed out then-Mayor Bill de Blasio standing on the sidewalk near Francis Lewis Boulevard. “We laugh to this day: That was the worst day of his life, when he said, ‘Hey, Vic, look, there’s the mayor,’” Paladino said. She made him pull over, leapt out and stormed toward the mayor, furious he left to protest the G20 Summit in Germany just a day after a New York City police officer was killed.

Paladino’s husband, Thomas, filmed her yelling at de Blasio as he turned to flee and she demanded to know why he went to protest “against our country!” Soon after the family posted the video, CBS reporter Marcia Kramer called, asking to interview Paladino at her home. Paladino’s older son, Thomas Paladino Jr., has had a large influence in the council member’s campaigns and online presence from Day 1. He said her brush with de Blasio drew an “overwhelming amount of attention,” estimating “hundreds, if not thousands” left messages in various forms.

“That really struck a nerve with people in this city,” he said. “It’s hard to overstate how (many) – I mean, phone calls from police officers, phone calls from firefighters, there were just messages on the machine. ‘I just want to say, God bless you, Vic, thank you so much, you don’t know’ – I don’t know how all these people got the number.”

The personable instincts that would eventually win her a seat on the City Council kicked in, and Paladino returned every single one of the messages that she got after the CBS interview. It was while making those calls that she met Lori Torres, who’d go on to volunteer for her campaigns and now works at the front desk in her district office. Within a day of the episode, Nicole Malliotakis, then an Assembly member running for mayor, contacted her. Paladino would meet Robert Hornak at Malliotakis’ election night party, who eventually floated the idea of Paladino running for state Senate. Hornak served as her campaign adviser.

“She was the voice of unheard Whitestone, and I guess District 19 at large,” said Becky Olivera, who is now City Council Member Inna Vernikov’s communications director, but had a hand in Paladino’s 2023 City Council campaign. “That’s why it spread so fast, because so many people wanted to do exactly what she did, but didn’t have the opportunity. … And so many people coalesced behind her because they felt exactly the same way she did.”

“Who is this person? And what makes her think she could run for state Senate?”

The state Senate bid was an uphill battle, since 2018 was a strong year for Democrats nationwide and in New York, especially those further left. But arguably the largest challenge for Paladino in 2018 was, as Paladino Jr. put it, a “hostile” relationship with the Queens County GOP.

To the party and its then-chair, Council Member Joann Ariola, Paladino was an outsider. “I think they saw me as this person who chased de Blasio, and, ‘Maybe she's crazy. Maybe she doesn’t have it,’ you know, like, ‘Who is this person? And what makes her think she could run for state Senate?’” Paladino said.

The divisions in the party go back many years (some geographic, some ideological and some indiscernible). As Paladino entered the fray, members of the Queens Village Republican Club were pushing to take over the Queens County GOP – the latest installment of the decades-old conflict. Coming from outside the Queens GOP, then, they and Paladino had a common foe.

Ariola said the faction put a “wedge” in their relationship. And things got ugly. An August 2018 Queens Chronicle article described Paladino as being “at war” with the party, which endorsed her primary opponent, Simon Minching. “I think that Vickie Paladino is a radical who is very much what we don’t want our party to be affiliated with,” Ariola said at the time. Paladino – ever the straight shooter – said then the party was “having their power threatened for the first time in a while.” She wrote in a Facebook comment after the endorsement, “The GOP here is fighting me at every turn. I didn’t kiss a ring nor will I ever.”

It would have been easy for Paladino to disappear from public view after losing her first campaign to John Liu in 2018. Before her confrontation with de Blasio (save for some volunteering for former Council Member-turned-felon Dan Halloran), she had never been involved in politics or even considered being a politician. She got engaged when she was 18, got married at 20 and had her first son at 23 and helped her husband with bookkeeping at the family landscaping business. Paladino grew up the middle child of five kids to a widowed mother. Paladino’s father, who served in World War II, died when she was 6.

“The idea is you don’t ever feel defeated,” Paladino said. “You could feel defeated for a minute. You’ve got to get over that right away. That pertains to everything in life.” After her loss in 2018, Paladino got to work. She threw herself into the revival of the Whitestone Republican Club, strengthening the base she built on the campaign trail. Despite that, the Queens GOP chose again not to endorse her in her 2021 council bid, instead backing her opponent, John-Alexander Sakelos.

That’s now a distant memory for Paladino and the party after her 2021 victory, and her dominant follow-up in 2023. Ariola and Paladino both agree their feud is a thing of the past.

As Wax sees it, the Queens GOP – and the whole party – is at something of a crossroads. “The party may go kicking and screaming towards a Vickie Paladino direction, or it may continue to shoot itself in the foot and stick with the Joann Ariola-style politics,” he said. Stefano Forte, who ran Paladino’s 2023 campaign, said Paladino “has an instinctual feel for what the voters – not just Republican voters – voters want.”

Symbiotic outrage

There is, at times, a stark difference between Paladino’s in-person and her X personas. Democratic Queens Borough President Donovan Richards recalled marching in a Memorial Day parade with her one year when a woman saw the council member coming down the street from inside a hair salon, and ran into the street, hair curlers and all, just to say hello. “I left that parade like, ‘Wow, she has a real connection to her district.’ She has a sincere connection. And that’s very rare in politics,” he said. But he later added: “If I don’t separate out her Twitter … I arguably, probably, wouldn’t work with her, because some of this stuff is just too out there.” 

Asked about the discrepancy, Paladino said, “You know who helps me write my Twitter.” 

According to both members of the mother-son duo, the ideas for some posts originate from Paladino Jr. and others from the council member. “And then we’ll have a conversation like, ‘Well, what’s our angle here, and what do we want to talk about?’” Paladino Jr. said. From there, he writes the post. Take Paladino’s recent viral post implying drivers fed up with congestion pricing could buy the green laser pointer to damage toll cameras. While Paladino Jr. and the council member discussed the idea – which both maintain was a joke – he was the one who “knew about the lasers.”

“It’s the same idea. He just has better vocabulary than his mother,” Paladino said of her son. Paladino Jr. admits the account is sometimes hyperbolic. “There’s obviously an element of entertainment, all of this, social media in general,” he said. “Obviously, you got to keep it interesting. You want people to be engaged. You want to hit the right notes. And I think that we do.” In other words, they want lefties to get pissed off. And they want conservatives who are tired of Never Trump Democrats talking down to them to get riled up too. Attention is always good, even if it’s fury.

One of Paladino’s most infamous X debacles starred Ossé, who led a chorus of council members in 2022 objecting to Paladino’s comments on Drag Story Hour, calling them “wildly homophobic and bigoted.” The incident was, in a way, “beneficial” to her, Paladino Jr. said. “(We knew) there’s going to be some (backlash), but at least we will establish ourselves as being different.” And putting Paladino in the role of the bigot, condemning her right-wing politics and brash approach, is also advantageous for Democrats in some parts of New York City. Symbiotic outrage.

Even if she gains from the sizable following and persona her son has crafted on X, Paladino isn’t necessarily a fan of the divisive partisan facade. When I asked why so few Democrats are willing to work with her publicly, she replied, “I don’t get it, either. I really don’t.” 

“If we go for dinner – and I do, and we chat – we go to a regular restaurant out in the open,” Paladino said. “We’re not hiding behind any closed doors. If I go out with Linda or Sandra or anybody else, we go to wherever – ‘Where do you feel like eating? Want to go to Bell (Boulevard)?’”

To that end: A number of Democrats, both on and off the council, declined interview requests for this article, including City Council Members Linda Lee and Sandra Ung – though their offices confirmed they have had dinner with Paladino from time to time.

“The little secret is that a lot of members of the City Council really like her personally, but are too afraid of their woke base to admit that in public,” City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli said.

All politics is local

It was a big day in District 19 when Paladino and other officials cut the ribbon on Flushing’s Bowne Park in May 2023, which had been under renovation for more than a decade. Until recently, Paladino considered that her biggest achievement – now, she says the completion of the long-maligned College Point sewer project last fall has taken the crown. And her office got heavily involved when a new water fountain for College Point’s MacNeil Park went missing for about a year. She hasn’t landed every local issue, though. Arguably her biggest misstep while in office was a flip-flop on her decision to support an upzoning for Douglaston restaurant Mizumi, enraging the typically mild-mannered Community Board 11.

Paladino’s strength is not just that she cuts to the chase, but she couples that attitude – down to every missing water fountain – with her knack for local grip-and-grin politics. She’s folksy. “That’s just a natural instinct for her,” Richards said. Throughout my interview with her, multiple people enter her Francis Lewis Boulevard office – mere blocks from where her husband spotted de Blasio in 2017 – for assistance or even just to wave and grab a piece of candy. Paladino says area cops occasionally stop by on the beat to heat up their lunches.

Being so well-liked locally allows Paladino to, at times, look like the voice of reason as she delivers unpopular news. At a contentious May 2023 town hall, Paladino gave her constituents, some furious about an already approved shelter for senior women, some tough love. “There are 74,000 migrants crossing the border that are living in this city right now – and we are here tonight to talk about a homeless shelter with elderly women living in it,” a testy Paladino yelled in defense of the plan. She added later, “District 19 is not going to be immune to the migration that’s coming over the border. … This is going to look like peanuts. So just buckle up, buttercups, because this is just the beginning.”

By and large, Paladino is the same person she was when she took office. She made sure to tell me her jeans are (always) Banana Republic and that her silver hair is totally natural, turning around to show me some black hairs in the back. “Even in 2018, I was always jeans and boots. And I always said: You will never find this elected person – should I ever be elected – in a powder blue suit. When I see these women walk around, looking like – I want to throw up.”

Without a doubt, there is only one Vickie Paladino. The bigger question is: Will other Republicans try to emulate her? Or is she impossible to replicate, and will the party try to promote her to higher office? Back when Republicans began searching for someone to replace ex-Rep. George Santos in Congress, Paladino told me she wasn’t interested. Now, when I ask whether she has aspirations for higher office, she says, “I would say ‘no’ to nothing anymore.” Buckle up, buttercups.

She’s the same person. Yet, everything has changed. “Nobody’s looking at Vickie anymore and just saying, ‘Oh, she’s just the lady that yelled at the mayor,’” Olivera said.