The Sunnyvale Sun

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Mayor is personable, but he can be tough

By Cody Kraatz

Mayor Tony Spitaleri won his seat on the Sunnyvale City Council in a hotly contested and incredibly expensive 2005 election.

He came with a reputation for strong-arm tactics that, along with his Italian heritage and South Bronx accent, make him perfect fodder for caricatures and controversy.

The first two-year Sunnyvale mayor since the early 1990s, Spitaleri honed his political battle chops as president of the Palo Alto Firefighters' Union, a post he still holds.

"I've been accused of everything. Sometimes I get labeled abrasive. You have to stand up for what you believe in, stand up for what's right. If that means being aggressive in getting your point across, I think it's valid," he said.

"Do I see myself like that all the time? No."

In the months before becoming mayor, Spitaleri was relatively quiet on the dais and led study sessions efficiently and casually. As mayor, he has blended a firm hand with amiable and sometimes self-deprecating humor.

He does not lose his temper when meetings get tense, fulfilling a promise he made to his mother long ago not to get into fights.

Spitaleri was born and raised in the diverse and sometimes rough South Bronx in New York City. His mother was a housewife; his father was a carpenter.

Spitaleri said his move to California--he joined the Navy at 18 and was stationed at Moffett Field--took him out of that explosive environment but involved a lot of culture shock.

"I came from the streets of New York. As a kid growing up, you stood your ground. I had a bit of a temper back then," he said with a chuckle.

He said he came to like California despite the challenge of keeping the peace with locals he found "standoffish."

As a case in point, he told the Sun about the time he went to a movie at a Mountain View theater, and someone repeatedly knocked his Navy hat off a shelf behind him. He kept his cool, but told himself the next time it happened he would jump up and let the joker have it.

When he did, he found a young usher who had been knocking it off flirtatiously--the woman who later introduced him to Nancy, his wife of 42 years. They got married after his 2 1/2 years in the Navy and have lived in Sunnyvale since 1966.

Professional

Spitaleri, who played some gigs as a drummer in his youth, left the Navy and worked briefly at the General Motors plant in Fremont, now called New United Motor Manufacturing.

Then he worked briefly as a bill collector in East Palo Alto for a magazine subscription company.

He had another job with a high-tech vacuum manufacturer for about a year, starting in shipping and then moving into the lab.

Then, his brother-in-law made him an offer he couldn't refuse: a job with the Stanford Fire Department. During his 36-year career, fighting fires, building a union and advocating for his colleagues became central to his identity.

"Inside of me, I guess I always wanted to be a firefighter," he said.

He learned one more thing, which he hopes to finish encapsulating in "The Beginning Firefighter's Cookbook" one day:

"You have to cook in the firehouse," and there are two rules, he said. "It's gotta be good, and plenty of it."

His Uncle Paul Spitaleri, who ran for New York State Assembly in 1965, gave him his first taste of politics.

"I'm very proud of him. He came up the hard way," said Paul Spitaleri in a telephone interview.

"He was a little quiet at times. He was always looking to do something, to get busy or to do something," but "he never showed up at times when I wanted him to show up. You know how kids are," said his 78-year-old uncle, who still lives in the South Bronx.

Attraction to politics, which grew as he became frustrated with the treatment of firefighters and was instrumental in forming a union, became one of his passions.

Politics

His personal and political past leave him open to criticism.

He guided the Independent Business Owners and Concerned Citizens Association through a 1987 city council election in which it backed three candidates and refused to reveal its donors or financial information.

Former vice mayor Tim Risch brought up bankruptcy, unpaid property taxes, over-claimed Department of Veterans Affairs educational benefits and a minor lawsuit about a business debt in their bitter 2005 campaign as evidence that voters shouldn't trust Spitaleri.

Risch did not reply to a request for comment for this article, but in the past he and his wife, Yolanda, have also pointed to Spitaleri's coziness with former mayor and developer lobbyist Pat Castillo as ripe for corruption.

Others worry that Spitaleri's advocacy for organized labor--his license plate reads UNION--could spill over into his role as mayor.

Spitaleri, a former Parks and Recreation commissioner, said he didn't know if he would ever run for higher office, or even for re-election in 2009.

"I don't know what his next step is," said his Uncle Paul, who flew out when his nephew became mayor. "If he's going to go for higher things he better make it fast because I don't have that much time."