YouSaid · the spoken record

Joel Benenson

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70
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2016-02-08
most recent
2016-02-08
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1
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  1. “In part, you know, I believe it is. I think he did have a certain, you know, intellectual discipline. And fortitude And I think he had lost before. Remember, he got beat by Ed Cotch running for mayor three times in six weeks, right? You know, primary runoff general election. I mean, it was really, so I believed it was true”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “He was such a giant, and it was a great opportunity. And about a year later I called him one day and we were just talking and I said, you know, I said, boy, I still think of the things we could have done differently. I still tear it apart. Like, how long did it take you to get over this thing? You know, like I'm still thinking about it. He said typical Mario fashion. He said, you know, I just compartmentalized these things. I just, you can't let them occupy too much space in your mind. I have to put it aside and moved on. It took me very little time. And I'm thinking, here I am a year later still kicking myself. Do you believe that was true?”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “You know, it's interesting. Excuse me. Not well, and in fact I remember, you know, I kept in touch with him and I really did like him. And I liked working for him. He was great. I remember the night he lost. We went downstairs in the elevator to do the concession speech. And my wife and kids were living in Albany at the time. The campaign was based in New York City. We were separated a lot. And I remember right before he went on stage, he gave my wife Lisa a hug and he said, well, now you can have your boyfriend back. And it broke my heart And you know, he died last year.”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Communications director on the campaign, and that's how I got into politics, and I've never regretted it. I've been, you know, for all that tortured path to get here, I have loved the things I've done. I think it's a great lesson I think I've imparted on my kids and my wife Lisa, who you know, her father always told her siblings and Lisa to do what you love. And I've been lucky. I really loved being a reporter and a journalist. I really love what I do now. You know, it's great.”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I covered him, he was the governor, and I was thinking to myself, you know, do I really want to go through another election pretending to be absolutely neutral when I think one candidate is actually much better than the other? And I was thinking about this and talking with my wife, never said anything to anybody else, but really about four weeks later, I had. Got a call out of the blue from his chief of staff at the time saying Mario Cuomo's chief of staff asking me if I wanted to be the...”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “But I was doing that for a while, and I'll tell you in about 1993-94, I started to think about other things to do. And I felt, you know, because I was coming to this later in life, I was having a harder climb up. And I thought, gee, I don't want to be an editor. What do I really do here? At some point, and it was right around the time I sensed George Pataki was going to run against Mario Cuomo. And I kind of said to myself Mario was the guest.”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “We did, I was a reporter, and I actually think I was introduced to you probably through the guy we were talking about last night, John Marino, who was state chair of the Democratic Party then. I was covering Mario Cuomo, and he would say, you know, a guy you should talk to is this guy David Axelrod. He's done this. He was a journalist. He's gone into politics. And we struck up a friendship over the phone in the 80s. And it's been an enduring friendship and partnership in the work we've done, which has been great.”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “The Institute of Politics and the University of Chicago. And it's great. The people I got lucky to meet people like him and Dan Balls. They all went to college together, my brother. But I sent a few columns off, you know, typed them on my IBM typewriter. This electric, sent them out to Roger, and he was encouraging. He said, you could do this. You have a nice flare. Go ahead And so I pursued it and got back into political journalism and was encouraged by a couple of teachers I took these classes with. And boy, when I got into journalism, I loved it. It was just when you.”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Well, I figured if I wanted to be a reporter, I ought to learn something about doing it, right? Actually, I was presumptuous. I wanted to be a columnist. I actually wrote a few columns to see, you know, if I could do this. And I sent them to a friend of mine, Roger Simon, who you know, a Chicago guy, who had gone to college with my brother. He's a little older. No political great columnist. Right, right. Wonderful guy.”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Maybe even some Bernie Sanders. And it was, you know, things kind of got back to normal in a day or so after that. But for me, I really was looking for something more to do. It was a stopgap and theater kind of faded away. And, you know, as I was starting to think about things really almost on a lark, I made up a list of things. I thought I'd like to do. You know, I was successful in the beer business, but I made up this list of things and I wrote down the pros and cons of each one. And being a sports writer covering the New York Yankees was the one I said, wow, this is what I really want to do. And I started taking some journalism classes at night.”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “To protect the store sitting in front be a presence, and it was the right choice because there was a lot of looting going on, people breaking into stores, you know, with the lights out and all over. And then the second night, so my girlfriend's older brother was licensed and everything. He did a lot of work as an accident investigator and whatnot. And he said, well, if you go in there, you ought to have a gun. I said, I've never had a gun in my life. What am I going to do? He showed me basically how to hold it. He said, just keep it on your lap. And, you know, it'll probably be.”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “But it was also in an area, it was right around the corner from Mebitzfield where there was a lot of poverty and you could go a few blocks and at that point a lot of distress. And my partners in Brooklyn got there the first night. There were no traffic lights. They spent the night out front. That night there was a lot of protection.”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “During the blackout in the mid 70s, I think it was 77 or 78. There was a night where the lights just went out. I remember it vividly. I was at that time sitting out at a girlfriend's house out in Long Island and the lights went out and I had two partners who lived in Brooklyn. The store was in Crown Heights, one of the most diverse communities in America at the time. Everything including Hasidic community, emerging Muslim. Really diverse.”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “But I took a lot of courses in politics. I was always very active. It was the 60s and 70s. And I was an avant-garde theater and had some, I wouldn't even call it success, but some minimal professional experience we performed at a couple of off-Broadway theaters. I was more on the directing side and at the Cubiculo in La Mama and Baltimore Theater Project and Lincoln Center Street Theater Festival. But there was very little money in it and it was really hard. And I was working a bunch of odd jobs. And an uncle of mine said, you know, if you want to do this, that's fine. He was an accountant and he had a lot of these businesses. They were small businesses. They were bureaistribus ships where you could sell beer, retail, and wholesale. And he said, you know, I could help you get up with a couple of guys who want to put some young guys in a business with an older fella they know and go do that for a few years, make some money while you're pursuing your theater. And I did that. So, yeah.”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I did. I did. I started. I was supposed to graduate in, I think, in 1973, and I didn't finish until 79. I took a little hiatus there as a baseball fan. You'll appreciate this. So I started college in September of 69. And when I went back to finally finish my degree, they gave me the degree. I certainly didn't go to a ceremony after all of that. But they gave me the degree in September of 1979. And I thought, maybe I should hold out for January or February of 80 so I could say I went to college in three decades. Call you, who played baseball in three decades. But I was a theater major and I was passionate about theater. I loved it.”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “and progressive government exactly. And that was the way I got to go to college. My mom, her dream was for all three of her kids to go to college. We did. It took me longer. Yeah. It took me”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Well, you know, at that time, though, it was a very different time, and the immigration, particularly from Puerto Rico, had just really begun. But I remember in French, you know, when they'd ask you your father's name and your mother's name, you know, saying, I don't have a father. I was, you know, eight years old and nine years old, and it struck me as odd then emotionally. I never realized that nobody taught me. They didn't bother to teach me to say my father died, right? Which would have been so much different. Of course I had a father. And so, you know, it was reality for me. That was the way I grew up. I have no memories of him. But we had a strong family. But the bottom line is the only way we got to go to college is if we could go to the city university of New York. I went to Queen's College because it was free. At that time, the city and state had put a program largely because of children of immigrants and minorities and people of color like.”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yeah, three kids. Three kids. And as I say, you know, this was in the 50s. When my father died, and there was a lot of difficulty. Socially, people didn't know how to deal with a single mom. Then did you invite her to the movies? Did you invite her to dinner? You know, it was a very kind of tough time. And I think I was the youngest, and I think my siblings, you know, I've learned more from them about the experience because you probably don't have a lot of memories of this stuff before the age of five, you know? Although I do remember in school, you know, difficult moments, actually, I remember. People had just started taking foreign languages in school in the 60s, and I took French like a lot of people then because Jackie Kennedy was the first lady.”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “She was a bookkeeper and office manager for a couple of different kinds of companies while she worked. She worked for an artificial Christmas tree company and then a jewelry company.”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Well, it wasn't my shotgun. I borrowed it. Okay. Well, I'll try to do it quickly. Look, I grew up in Queens, in New York City, one of the outer boroughs. My mother was a single mother. My father had died when I was very young. I was 18 months old. I was the youngest of three kids. And she was a single mom in the 50s when the term didn't even exist, right? And we grew up. What did your mom?”

    2016-02-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 29 - Joel Benenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source