Nonna Concetta
| 🧵 | |
| Era | The Seventies |
|---|---|
| Age | 72-78 |
| Home | Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, NY |
| Demographic | urban, Italian Catholic, retired garment worker |
| Lean | Lean Democrat |
| Race | white |
Concetta is a retired Brooklyn garment worker who has voted the Democratic ticket since Roosevelt and attends Mass every day. She is the cast's New Deal Catholic, more left-wing than her sons on wages and rent and more conservative than them on most other issues.
Who they stand for
The Italian immigrant women who sewed in Manhattan's garment district joined the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in the strikes of the 1910s and 1930s, and they stayed Democrats for life. By the 1970s they are the party's oldest loyalists in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Concetta's bloc depends on Social Security, Medicare and a rent-controlled lease, and the decade puts pressure on all three. Inflation ran ahead of the benefit increases of 1969 and 1971 until Social Security payments rose by 20 per cent and were indexed to inflation in 1972. Governor Rockefeller's vacancy decontrol policy of 1971 began the end of rent control in New York. The city's fiscal crisis of 1975 cut the services around her. New York's 1970 abortion law and the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 offend her Catholic faith, and the rise in crime in 1970s Brooklyn frightens her, but neither moves her vote. Bensonhurst Sal lives on the same block but reacted differently. He turned to Nixon over crime, while Concetta stayed loyal to the union and to the memory of Roosevelt.
Playing to them
Concetta is won over by the price of food, the level of rent, and the size of the Social Security cheque, and she is held by being treated with respect. A president who raises benefits, protects rent control, backs the garment workers' union against factory owners and importers, and speaks to old people as though they matter keeps her support. She will not forgive inflation, which she experiences as a loss of income she cannot replace, nor a president seen to side with landlords. Her Catholic faith limits what she will support rather than driving what she wants. She cannot be won over on abortion, but a president who supports abortion rights loses her support only by making a public show of it. She is neutral on the war in Vietnam and on the counterculture, so neither issue costs a president her support. Winning her support uses up a great deal of goodwill on the right, starting with Muncie Merle and Zeeland Dena. Any move to please the Church's position on abortion in order to reassure her loses the support of Upper West Side Ruth and Southside Colleen, for whom the Church's authority on the issue matters most.
Where they live
The five states where Nonna Concetta makes up the largest share of the electorate in the seventies:
- Rhode Island
- New York
- New Jersey
- Massachusetts
- Connecticut