By the age of 7, Glenn Nocera already identified as a Republican. And already, he was outnumbered.
Nocera’s father was a union pressman, and pretty much by definition that meant a Democratic household, in step with the Democratic households surrounding theirs in the Kensington section of Brooklyn. So when Nocera became captivated by Ronald Reagan at a young age and soon decided his personal party affiliation lined up with the Gipper’s, he was putting himself in a distinct minority.
Eventually, Nocera converted his immediate family, he says. But his days of swimming against the tide had just begun.
Now the president of the Brooklyn Young Republican Club, he’s a GOP activist in an area where registered Republicans are outnumbered nearly eight to one, and where young ones in particular are prone to being regarded like Ted Nugent crashing a PETA convention.
“The Alamo — that’s my analogy,” says Nocera, 37, of waving the GOP flag in a borough awash in one Democratic constituency after another — union members, young bohemians, African-Americans, Jews, Prius-driving graphic designers. For those of his leaning, he says, “It’s a wild wasteland.”
Some 30 members strong, the club has deep roots: It was founded in 1880 and was a force to be reckoned with in the years that followed. Presidents McKinley, Hoover and Taft all addressed the club, says Nocera, sitting at his kitchen table in front of a glass case holding various artifacts — a newspaper clip from 1884, an autograph from Seth Low, the club’s first president, who later became mayor of the city.
Today, members meet monthly to hear speakers and “talk about topics of the day and how we should move forward into the future,” says Nocera, who majored in political science at Brooklyn College and now works as a campus police officer. (He’s also run for office twice: for state Assembly in 1998 and state Senate in 2008.) Members also raise money and occasionally hit the streets for local candidates.
Efforts to wave the flag for the man at the top of the GOP ticket have been frustrated by the Romney campaign’s failure to deliver promotional materials — a big point of aggravation for Nocera, who attributes the lack of response in part to a belief that Brooklyn’s not worth any significant effort.
“Look, even though this city is, so to speak, a lost cause, if people who come here see a Romney sign, it sends a message,” he says. “All I see is Obama-Biden stickers all over the place, and it’s driving me crazy.”
Of course, stumping for a GOP presidential candidate in these parts can be a fraught pursuit. Jonathan Judge, who ran the club for three years before stepping down last year, recalls the horrified reactions he got while stumping for George W. Bush in 2004.
“It was more from older people,” says Judge, 26. “They’d look at me like I was single-handedly destroying the United States of America.”
Living in Greenpoint, 28-year-old club member Paul Hanson is no stranger to disdain and downright hostility toward the R-word.
“I get that all the time,” he says, noting how conversations can take a quick turn when “I’ll start talking to a girl, and I’ll forget not to mention it. Sometimes that’s it — they’ll just say, ‘Don’t talk to me.’ ”
A Long Island native who supported Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential bid at the age of 8 — and has since gone from a “strongly conservative Republican to more of a libertarian” — Hanson, who works for a hotel firm, found a political home when he heard about the club last year and showed up at a meeting.
To add to the club’s enemies list, it faces opposition within its own party: There’s a second young GOP group, Brooklyn Young Republicans, that’s more closely tied to Brooklyn’s party leadership. The relationship between the two clubs is fractious, and prone to getting mired in what Nocera bemoans as “petty crap.”
“We can’t afford to fight each other when the real enemy is the Democrat Party and we’re outnumbered,” he says.
Nocera sees real potential for building the GOP’s base in the borough, especially in socially conservative immigrant communities. And no matter what the reception, he says, “You have to get your message out and try to build your base. You don’t just go into the fetal position.”
Club vice president Moshe Muratov likes the “challenge of converting people.”
Besides, as a lifelong Brooklynite, he says other, more like-minded places in America exert limited appeal.
“Would I rather live in Wyoming?” he says. “I don’t know about that.”