On Labor Day, I attended a festive dinner that the legendary New York raconteur publicist and book agent, Doug Dechert, hosted at the popular uptown Manhattan meeting spot, Orsay.
The guest of honor was Caroline Shinkle, a Republican running for Congress on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Also present were the New York Post's Miranda Devine; New York Social Diary's editor-in-chief, David Patrick Columbia; and Tom Kenniff, former Manhattan DA candidate, novelist, and the defense attorney who got the New York City subway hero, Daniel Penny, acquitted of murder charges last year.
Other than the guest of honor, all five others present (Dechert, Devine, Columbia, Kenniff and I) attended the well-publicized Robert F. Kennedy Jr. New York City Press Dinner that Dechert hosted three years ago.
Shinkle, the Republican nominee for outgoing New York Democrat Rep. Jerry Nadler's 12th Congressional District, is a graduate of MIT and Harvard Law School, and a distinguished international attorney with one of the most impressive bios in recent years for a congressional candidate.
Only 25 years after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the Islamist-Socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is ruining New York City. He is known to be sympathetic to the ideology of the men who killed 3,000 people on that day. Millions of New Yorkers are already complaining of Mamdani's radical agenda and managerial incompetence, only nine months after he was sworn into office.
Local New York City Republicans now have a rare opportunity to fight back against the DSA-Islamist tide, after Nadler announced that he would not seek reelection.
His district, which covers both the west and east sides of Manhattan from 14th Street to 100th Street, contains the highest concentration of registered Republicans outside of Staten Island.
"Caroline is Manhattan's congressional antidote to Sandy Cortez," said Dechert, referring to the DSA-affiliated congresswoman in the Bronx.
"New Yorkers need to cross the aisle For Caroline and send a message To Mamdani!," he added.
Shinkle told her fellow dinner guests she would be a voice for every New Yorker who finds Mamdani's socialist policies disgusting, as they are destroying the city, and who oppose his open support for anti-Americanism and antisemitism.
"On the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on our city, all New Yorkers should unify to condemn the shameless revisionism being used to obscure the true victimhood of our dead," Shinkle said.
I also spoke with David Patrick Columbia, who had previously attended the RFK Jr. press dinner with us. For over half a century, Columbia has covered New York high society and culture as the editor of Quest Magazine and New York Social Diary. He admitted that although he was not a conservative Republican, Shinkle's passion for New York and her "common sense policies" left him "highly impressed."
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We also spoke about Kenniff's recent political thriller, Tuxedo Park, which was just published this month.
Devine, having just finished Kenniff's novel, said this about the book: "Thomas Kenniff brings his gritty experience as a prosecutor and defense lawyer in New York City to this rollicking tale of murder, politics, and justice. Tuxedo Park is fiction, but its insight into the machinations of the power elite is real and fascinating."
Meanwhile, Dechert announced his planned 2027 expedition to see the ancient Seven Churches of Asia in modern-day Turkey, with Pastor Ross Collette of Deeper Life Ministries.
Dechert told me that his one of his backers in Turkey will guarantee him official escorts to protect him from arrest, in case he makes statements that offend his Turkish hosts or Islam.
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