YouSaid · the spoken record

Tony Fabrizio

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2022-03-31

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2022-03-31

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1. “It was, yes. One of the things I learned from him is he would always have in his surveys. Back in those days, you still had conservative Democrat. There was still a sizable chunk of Democrats that would define themselves as self-define themselves as conservative. And one of the crust tips he would always have in the survey is conservative Democrats. And white conservative Democrats. Because those were the Democrats that he felt we could get. Because back in those days, Republicans were still not at parity with Democrats in many places.”

   2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “He did. You know, one of the things that was interesting is he used to give an example about how a person could say a single thing about themselves, a political candidate, and tell voters so much by that single thing they say, because voters extrapolate it out. He would talk about symbolism. And the examples he would use was if a candidate came in the room and all they told you was they were against forced school busing. And he talked all about how forced school busing, being against forced school busing defines you in so many ways to so many different voter groups. It was symbolic to them about what your values and what your beliefs were, if you were for it.”

   2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Yes, I was working for author at the time as his aide de camp. And Pat introduces me, and we start talking, and I'm like, what do we need a pollster for? What do you tell us? And he started laughing. And he goes, well, I tell the campaign what voters think. I'm like, we know what voters think. And so we got into this whole like back and forth. And he's like, how do you think you win campaigns? I'll tell you how we win campaigns. We put up enough yard signing to do this. And he's just laughing. At the time, I didn't realize it, but he just found it so funny that somebody actually. And then he started gold. We started going back and forth. And I was like, oh, maybe this guy's making sense at some of the stuff. So fast forward, we kept in contact. He lost Greg narrowly. Came back and ran again two years later in 1980. I was basically the campaign manager for the rerun and I became a lot closer and saw what it was that Arthur did and how the polling worked and direct mail and TV.”

   2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “And so in this campaign, we actually had a real headquarters. They hired a campaign manager from not around here, like a professional campaign manager. And we had a postholster and a consultant. And so the campaign manager and I hit it off. And he sent me down to Washington. I did a Morton-Blackwall school. I did an NRCC school. And this was like eye-opening to me because now, you know, out of Nassau County, you know, what do you mean the county chairman doesn't control everything? And they're like, I don't even know who the county chairman is where I'm running. And I'll forget one day I go into the headquarters and the campaign manager's name was Pat. Pat says, come here, I want you to meet our pollster and our consultant. And I go into his office and there was off Finkelstein and somebody else who has become rather infamous, a fellow by the name of Roger J. Stone.”

   2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “So 1978, when I was Town Shaman, I became very close to all the elected officials and a town councilman by the name of Greg Carman, who went on to become a federal court claims judge, was going to run for Congress in the congressional district that I lived in. And he asked me to come on board and be like the political director of the campaign. Now, understand the campaigns I had been involved in up until that time were local campaigns, which, you know, they're, you know, they consisted of putting up yard signs, handing out leaflets. In the railroad stops. I mean, that sort of stuff. All local organizational stuff.”

   2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Yes, yes. And he was like, so you guys go along with that? And he said, if you can't go along with it, resign. And so basically I stepped down as young Republican chairman, but kept on doing campaigns and stuff like that. And later on, Marjorie and I had a, I would say reconciliation because he probably didn't recognize me to remember me, but it was funny telling the story to him back.”

   2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “So God rests Joe's soul. We ended being very good friends years later. But when I was town chairman for the town of Oyster Bay Young Republicans, we were having a fight over who should be the next young Republican president. At that point, I had already joined young Americans for freedom, and I was a Reaganite at that point. And the guy they wanted to make young Republican president, we consider to be a Rockefeller Ford type Republican. And so we had this fight and Margiata basically called us into his office and said, we're not having this fight. This is the guy who's going to be young Republican president. And did he pick the four?”

   2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It really kind of impacted me. And then I started reading, you know, more, you know, as I got to like 15, when I got to high school, a friend of mine, female friend of mine, was a member of the young Republican. And I joined the young Republicans. And before I knew it, I became president of the Young Republicans. And soon after that, I became town chairman of the young Republicans. And now this is in Nassau County, which you know.”

   2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “Now, relations with China, right? Right. And things that the modern Republican Party would never happen never happen in modern Republican Party. But my fascination with Nixon. I was always kind of interested. And when we moved to Long Island, I started paying more and more attention to it. And then probably one of the biggest things for me was in junior high school started reading Ayn Rand's books. And in fact, in one of my classes, we played out. That book. The trial. And I was the guy who was the lawyer for individual freedom. And I remember I'll never forget the guy who was the attorney for the government, for the state was a friend of mine. His name was David Sussman. I'll never forget. And we took him really seriously. And we had a mock trial in class. I won the trial, of course.”

   2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “I don't honestly, I don't know. I thought Nixon was an interesting political character. I thought he managed to straddle. And I didn't at that point in time. But Nixon managed to straddle the ideological divides within the Republican Party in a way that most people never did or could never do. I mean, at the same time as being, you know, Mr. Staunchly anti-communist, he did wage and price controls. And put in place the EPA, things that.”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “I was always kind of interested in it. I remember in 72, I'm a Nixon fanatic. I was a Nixon fanatic. I, you know, that was the, you know, think about it, you know, I was 12 when he won re-election. And I remember sitting at my grandparents' house in Brooklyn watching on the small black and white TV, you know, Walt Krakai and all of those guys talking about what was.”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Would become Republican operative? No, not at all In fact, my parents couldn't have been less political. My entire family.”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “My grandfather was probably the most political out of all of them to the extent that any of them were political. And he was a Republican. In fact, when my mom and dad got engaged, they got engaged at the local Republican clubhouse. That's what they had the engagement party, yes, in Belrose.”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “You know, we gravitated with the Italian people on the block, the Irish people gravitated with it. And so, you know, when you grow up in New York and you're from Chicago, there was a whole level of ethnic politics. This one, when I first moved, it was racially segregated and ethnically segregated too, in a lot of respects. It really was, which was, and so that was a shock. Also going from public Catholic school where the nuns would think nothing of, you know. Corporal punishment on a student to public school where the teachers would never do that. So that was another big difference. And not being around relatives, obviously. But if I hadn't moved to Pollen Island, I don't know that I would have Pursued a political.”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Because there was a lot of Irish and German. And this was the first time seeing how clicky. You know what I'm saying and how segregated people were, even though you lived on the same block, they didn't necessarily associate with each other. So there was still ethnic division aside from racial division. They sorted themselves.”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “This was 70 It was like 74, 75, 76 So that was one of the big differences. The other was that we were so used to being around other people that shared the same common heritage, that when we moved to Long Island, they used to call Massapeque or Mazza pizza because it was supposedly half Jewish, half Italian, which really kind of wasn't true.”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Black and Hispanic. When we moved to Long Island, we moved to a school district. We lived in school district 23, which went back in those days when people would sell houses. They would literally, one of the first lines they put in the for sale notice was home and school district 23. 4. All white schools. We moved. There was not a single black or Hispanic kid. In fact, it wasn't until I got to high school that I had any friends or that I knew any Hispanic kids in school.”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “Was strange for several reasons. One is I was in Catholic school in the 60s, right? In the early 70s. And my Catholic school was integrated. It was in East New York, Brooklyn. Those days, that was, I mean, my neighborhood was all white all Italian. Was nobody else, right? Everybody knew everybody. But our Catholic school was predominantly white, but we had a number of black and Hispanic students in the school. And, you know, even though they weren't in our neighborhood, we thought nothing of having them, you know, kind of in the class. I had friends that used to come play with me at my house and, you know, et cetera, go to parties together, like birthday parties and stuff.”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “And we moved out to Long Island, and we were the first ones to leave Brooklyn. Everybody else lived like in a seven-block square radius. And, you know, when you were that age, you couldn't get in trouble because there was always an aunt or an uncle driving down the block or seeing you what you were doing, et cetera, et cetera. And you knew everybody. Their parents grew up. My parents, their grandparents came over on the boat. Everybody knew everybody.”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “That was my old neighborhood. Literally, that was my old neighborhood. That was the people that associated with my aunts and uncles. One of my uncles used to bartend in the bar while they all used to hang out. I mean, I went to Catholic school with all of their kids. My father was a construction worker for years. He was a laborer at a union guy. And when I was about 12, 13, a little bit before that my father went into his own business with a friend of his, a home improvement construction type business. And finally, earned enough money to buy a house out in Long Island.”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Oh Matt, family is huge. Extended family is even huge. But. My mom's folks settled in New York. My grandfather's family was in the ice business back in those days and had refrigerators that had ice and they used to hold the ice up and put it. And my grandmother's family was also in the ice business. And they married and they settled. They bought a house. Finally, when they bought a house, they bought a house literally three blocks from where my father's family lived. And that's how my mom and dad met. as young teenagers in the same neighborhood and it was a very you've seen the movie good fellas yes i have”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Which was true. Yeah. Yeah. No, that was in our. Those true scandal, both sides had night kits. My father is the youngest of nine. My mom was the oldest of nine. I am the oldest of 38 grandchildren on my mother's side, and I'm in the middle of 23, 24 on my father's side. A lot of cousins.”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Up until Christmas Eve, it was interesting. And my maternal side, my mom's parents both were first generation. And they were from both were from Bari, which is kind of on the other side from Naples. And my grandparents were first cousins. Maternal”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “No, my grandfather was a died-in-the-wool Democrat. I mean, I don't remember much, but he was definitely pro Union, pro-Democrat, my paternal grandfather. And he came to New York and he worked in several jobs. My grandfather had a bit of a temper and had a hard time working with a boss. And eventually opened up his own produce stand in Brooklyn and sold produce for years. In the summer, we'd sell produce The winter we'd sell Christmas trees, they'd sell anything, you know, when I was a kid, I used to go with my father because my father still had to work to help his father because that's just the way it was. And I remember selling watermelons and cantaloupes and, you know, all those things. And at Christmas time, standing out by the 55 gallon drum, the fire in the drum warming my hands, selling Christmas trees.”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “But he went to Colorado to live with some relatives and met my paternal grandmother whose family moved there from the Naples area. And she, her family were sugar beet farmers. And back in those days, you know, sugar beets, you know, especially during the Depression, they were one of the few things that people could farm and they met and they got married. But during the Depression, there was nothing they can do. There was no work. So why they moved from Colorado to New York because my grandfather had gotten a WPA job or a CCC job. One of the New Deal jobs. And they settled in.”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “My great grandfather had three different wives And he was one of the youngest. And my great grandfather apparently had passed away.”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Well, my father's side of the family, my grandfather, Michelangelo Fabrizio. Came from there is some dispute. He claimed God rest to Saul that he his family came from Naples. And others say that they actually came from the outskirts of Rome. So I guess it's some disputed territory there about where he actually came from. Sounds like Italy.”

    2022-03-31 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 483 — Tony Fabrizio · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source