Remembering a GOP 'rock star'

It may have been John Powell's worst public moment. Yet minutes after his sentencing in 2000 to more than 2 years in federal prison for bribe-taking and involvement in an illegal truck chop shop, Powell could not resist his natural political instincts.

As the former Suffolk GOP chairman was leaving in his attorney's car, he saw prosecutor George Samboulides outside the courthouse. He had the car stopped and rolled down his window. As Stamboulides approached, Powell got out and shook his hand -- the prosecutor who only minutes before called him a corrupt political boss.

It was the kind of disarming gesture that fueled Powell's career, and likely will be remembered by those who attend his wake today and Monday in Patchogue. Powell died Wednesday in his Medford home. He was 51.

"The first time I saw him it was [like] meeting Mickey Mantle," said Frank MacKay, Suffolk and state Independence Party chairman, recalling the night in 1995 that Powell became county GOP leader, with Gov. George Pataki putting his name in nomination. "Everyone has their flaws, but he was like a rock star with a throng of followers."

Other longtime friends recall more personal moments. Raymond Perini, Powell's former defense attorney, once told Powell about a friend who had lost his child.

Powell's 2-year-old son was hit by a truck and fatally injured in 1989. "John said, 'No one knows that kind of pain. Let me talk to him,' " Perini said. "He spent two hours with the guy that did a lot of good."

Joan Hudson, veteran GOP activist, said she was the first Republican Powell met when he showed up to volunteer for the Brookhaven Town GOP in 1980 in Farmingville. "He said, 'I want to get involved in politics,' and I told him he came to the right place."

Hudson said Powell did everything from handing out pumpkins off a flatbed truck to showing up at railway stations at 5:30 a.m. to give out literature. Powell, she added, soon began to learn from late GOP chairman Tony Prudenti, Highway Superintendent Harold Malkmes and former town GOP leader Walter Hazlitt. "They were like his godfathers. They tutored him and he soaked it up like a sponge," she said.

Nick Caracappa was a teenager when Powell, then a town highway department worker, knocked on doors campaigning with Nick's mother, the late Legis. Rose Caracappa (C-Selden). Nick Caracappa, now president of the 400-member Local 393 Utility Workers of America, said that when his mother died, "John was one of the first people at our door."

Caracappa concedes that his relationship with Powell became strained last year when the former party boss sought successfully to block him from running against Democratic Highway Superintendent John Rouse, a Powell client, who got the GOP cross-endorsement. Later, Caracappa said, "We were able to sit down and have a cup of coffee, share some old stories and we left with a hug."

Caracappa said that because of his blue-collar roots, Powell was a master of the "Tom Sawyer effect" -- recruiting people to get involved in the party and making even grunt work seem like fun. "John could pack a room, get the foot soldiers to hit the pavement and make them feel proud of what they were doing, because they knew he rose through the ranks himself," Caracappa said.

Recalling the days when Republicans under Powell controlled Brookhaven, the county executive's seat and the county legislature, Caracappa said, "A lot of people who started with John tasted what it was like and crave to have it back. . . . John was a master motivator and that's missing from the party today."