Congressional Candidate Peter Chatzky Says Revelation Of “Bawdy” Facebook Posts Won’t Drive Him From Race

By Barrett Seaman—

Last May, Peter Chatzky, founder of the software firm NAPA Group, which provides technology and consulting for the financial industry, entered an already crowded Democratic field vying to unseat Republican Congressman Mike Lawler. As the former Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Briarcliff Manor, he had limited political experience but lots of energy and lots of money.

That came in handy as the candidate field, once eight-strong, began to shrink and donations began to loom larger as a differentiating factor. So when Chatzky tossed in $5 million of his own money to his campaign in December, it bumped him out of the also-ran category, making him a contender. A poll, taken in February and paid for by his campaign, placed him in third behind Army combat veteran and former National Security Council staffer Cait Conley and Beth Davidson, a Rockland County legislator and Nyack School Board member who was the first entry into the Democratic primary, to be held on June 23^rd.

Granted, at 12% (versus Conley’s 18% and Davidson’s 17%), Chatzky was a distant third. His numbers were closer to those of fourth-place candidate Effie Phillips-Staley, a Tarrytown Trustee and leader in Westchester County’s Latino community, than they were to the two front runners. Still, with only three months to go until the primary, any one of these four could rise to the top.

Two other candidates are still in the race: Former TV journalist and attorney from Peekskill, Mike Sacks, and John Cappello, an Air Force veteran who was until recently a registered Republican from Rockland County.

This past week, the election calculus changed. First the New York Times, then the New York Post and Politico ran stories that dug progressively deeper into a trove of Facebook posts Chatzky made over the course of a decade on his personal Facebook page. Generally “jokey” in flavor, the posts included daydreaming about having sex with Melania Trump, masturbating, having it off with the redheaded Olsen twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley and speculating whether Barack Obama had sex with Joe Biden.

“Sophomoric” would be an apt characterization of those posts, which were interspersed over the years with anodyne exchanges with friends and even his wife Susan—and lots of pictures of their pet dogs. Unlike the notorious 2016 Access Hollywood videotapes in which then-candidate Donald Trump bragged how his fame allowed him to do anything he wanted with women, Chatzky’s “bawdy” musings had a puckish high school locker room flavor to them.

The reaction wasn’t so funny, however. Some Democrat activists wondered whether Chatzky could survive. Others voiced astonishment that he hadn’t swept his social media sites clean once he entered the race for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The 17^th District incumbent, Republican Mike Lawler, early on had dismissed Chatzky as part of the “clown car of radical Democrats” running against him but has not yet specifically addressed the Facebook posts.

The New York Post story quoted Sonia Ossorio, former president for the National Organization for Women’s New York City Chapter, saying that the posts showed Chatzky isn’t fit for Congress. “It’s astounding. His millions of dollars are not going to save him in this campaign,” Ossorio was quoted as saying. “We’re in a new era. No one has the tolerance for such poor judgment, character, and juvenile behavior.”

Chatzky’s primary opponents have largely chosen not to comment. Only one has spoken out. Effie Phillips-Staley, who earlier this year wrote a highly personal account of her own ordeal as a sexual assault victim, issued a statement that said in part, “The sexually-charged and misogynistic posts by Peter Chatzky reveal a troubling lack of judgment and a crass objectification of women and girls. His statements are difficult to laugh off, especially when the Epstein scandal, Trump’s own past statements and the rise of toxic influencers like Andrew Tate are normalizing sexist and sexually abusive rhetoric.” She called for Chatzky to end his campaign.

It would appear at this point that that’s not going to happen. Chatzky’s campaign manager, Alyssa Verrelli, suggested to the Times that one of his rivals was responsible for digging up old posts “to attack fellow Democrats.” In a statement released early this week, her boss also blamed “my opponents” for “mining two decades of social media posts because they’d rather talk about anything other than housing, healthcare, rising utility costs and a broken political system.”

But he also did what many local Democratic leaders were hoping he would do: ‘fess up.

“Over the years,” the statement began, “I made crude, over-the-line jokes on my personal Facebook page among close friends. They were stupid, they were inappropriate, and I own them completely. I regret offending anyone, and I sincerely apologize.”

That said, Peter Chatzky declared that “the DC insiders and packaged candidates who answer to the party establishment, not the people” would not force him out of the race. “The voters of NY-17 deserve a candidate who shows up for them, and that’s exactly what I intend to keep doing.”

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