Ben Nadeff-Haffrey
speaker
1,009 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 6 Aug
Ben Nadeff-Haffrey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.
Appearances
He said, if you strike this down, the city is going to fall apart.
This thing was really all about Staten Island.
The lawyer from the Civil Liberties Union countered, every time a big citywide initiative comes up for debate, we got to get those guys from Staten Island to agree to it.
The city's lawyer was arguing that Staten Island was holding the rest of New York back.
In the end, the court agreed.
They ruled that the structure of New York City government was unconstitutional because ultimately, the population of a place should determine the representation it gets.
The entire system of government in New York City was being redrawn.
And one thing was certain, Staten Island was gonna lose a whole lot of power.
That's when secession kicked into gear.
But the reason this movement took off wasn't because everyone was intricately following this new voting system.
It had to do with something a whole lot deeper.
With people who didn't just want to get their old votes back, but who wanted to get their old island back.
That's after the break.
One day on the island, in my attempt to understand the secessionist mind, I sat down with a local attorney named Bobby Scamardella.
I'd seen Scamardella in those videotapes alongside Dan Singletary.
He was an absolute bruiser on the debate stage arguing for secession.
I met him in his law office, which had these LED lights on the ceiling that changed color as we spoke.
Unlike the Singletary's, Scamardella grew up on Staten Island.
He remembered it from way back when.
The great irony of Staten Island's secession is that back when the city consolidated, no borough had been more enthusiastic about joining, but they regretted that decision almost immediately.
Showing 921–940 of 1,009 · page 47 of 51
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