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Maverick Minded Macrini

Republican State Senator Frank Wagner exits the WNIS-AM studio sharing one final laugh with talk show host Tony Macrini. The two spent nearly an hour on the air discussing energy solutions and fielding questions from listeners. Within seconds, producer Christie Lynn Hodge politely barges in with a list of potential guests eager for a time slot before Election Day.

"Jim Gilmore wants to come on some time next week," says Hodge.

"Gilmore can come on any time he wants," responds Macrini.

Done deal.

Macrini is a rare bird in talk radio. The self-professed Libertarian Constitutionalist is bullish on individual rights and limited government. He’s a maverick with no allegiance to either major political party, and will openly take both to task, especially if he senses any hint of hypocrisy and general buffoonish policy-making. No focus group meetings are conducted to pander to his listenership. In a booming baritone voice, Macrini speaks his mind, and his keen intellect, quick wit and smart sense of humor keep listeners actively engaged, even if they don’t agree with him. And most don’t.

"He doesn’t fit the mold of a typical news talk radio host, and frankly that bothers a lot of people," says station owner Bob Sinclair. "On the other hand, a lot of people appreciate him because they might not agree with him on everything; it’s obvious he’s not saying what he thinks the audience wants to hear."

Macrini was born in New York City in 1950. His family soon moved to New Jersey, where Macrini spent his formative teenaged years. After graduating from South Brunswick High School, he joined the Marine Corps, serving one tour of duty of Vietnam. Following an honorable discharge, he went to broadcasting school. Macrini found his way south to a small military town called Tidewater, where he landed a Top 40 radio gig at WGH, and then later at Z104. As anyone in the broadcasting business will agree, job security can be day by day. Macrini’s hit spinning days were about to come to an end.

"My career had taken a downturn," says Macrini, "and Bob Sinclair was the only person who would take a chance on me."

In 1991, Tony Macrini joined the Sinclair Communications cluster group where he found his calling on talk radio station WNIS-AM 790. Over the last 17 years, Macrini has developed a large following in the Hampton Roads market. His morning news team includes Hodge, the show’s producer, information researcher and call taker, and Dave Parker, known to many as WTKR’s most popular weatherman.

According to Jay West, program director for WNIS, Macrini’s show, which airs weekday mornings from 6 to 10 a.m., garners a largely male audience, though it has experienced a 10 percent increase in women tuning in over the past year.

TEAM MACRINI: (From left) Weatherman Dave Parker, Macrini, and producer Christie Lynn Hodge.

In the political realm, anyone running for local or statewide office makes an all-out effort to express their views on Macrini’s program. He has become the Tim Russert of regional talk radio.

"We are so fortunate to have someone with as broad a knowledge of politics, history, the region and the medium of radio as Tony," says On the Record host, Joel Rubin. "He is far superior to many of the national talk show hosts in how he conducts his program, but what makes him even better is how fair he is, how he looks at issues critically and how he arrives at conclusions based on principles, not partisan politics. He is a joy to listen to every day, and I am always pleased when he invites me on as a guest and how he makes all of his guests, on air and over the phone, feel so welcome and valued."

Macrini invited Port Folio Weekly into his studio last week for a lively conversation on local, regional and national issues and politics. The following is just a piece of that off-air interview.

We have an identity crisis of sorts here in southeastern Virginia. Some folks still refer to our area as Tidewater, while others label us as Hampton Roads. Then there is Joel Rubin’s campaign identifying it as Hampton Roads: America’s First Region. Finally, Port Folio Weekly and others have promoted 7 Cities as a better alternative. What do you think we ought to be calling this place?

Tidewater, because if it’s good enough for Chuck Berry in the song "Promise Land," where he actually gives the phone number, "Tidewater four ten O nine"…I think once it’s been memorialized in song for us to change it would be an attack upon tradition, an attack upon American history; it would be an attack upon the framers who had the good sense to call it Tidewater. And as Kerry Dougherty has recently pointed out, if you see it from the air that’s exactly what it is—Tidewater. I love Joel Rubin to death, but if we can’t get Hampton Roads to stick, what chance does America’s First Region have?

I think it says good things. I think one of the reasons is because so many people in our part of the country have some association with the military, so the war in Iraq and Afghanistan are real. They’re not something that is distant. I think when you see the demographic breakdown of African-Americans here in Hampton Roads, I think a lot of people are very excited about politics and the race, and that is one of the reasons they were watching it. I think also the promotion that it got on my show probably put it over the top (laughing).

I think that the numbers would be very small. I saw no less than Reverend Al Sharpton say he thought the numbers would be very small. That someone would say one thing to a pollster and then go in, and in the final analysis, vote against Barack Obama because he’s black, I think that will happen, but fortunately very few people will vote completely on that basis.

More than usual because they’re fired up. I think people are concerned. I don’t understand the financial mess. You try to make some sense out of it, but then if I see two people who are far better educated than I am, and they have all kinds of degrees, and they disagree completely…also because of the war and a myriad of issues, I think that people are concerned because it’s a bread and butter issue. Republicans always try to play the cultural thing, but when it comes to bread and food, that will come before any moral equation. You have to feed yourself and feed your family. So I think these newly registered voters will be more likely to go out and vote than would have been the case in the past.

Without giving away any confidence, I was talking to someone who is a higher up in the Republican Party, in the General Assembly, and I actually gave him the opportunity during an interview to talk about Gilmore. He didn’t want to talk about Gilmore. All the polls indicate that he is very far behind. It is puzzling to me that Senator Warner would not be able to endorse Gilmore because of Gilmore’s thoughts about the bailout, when it appears to me that if you wanted just to find someone who was your A1 conservative, traditionalist Republican, it would be Gilmore. So I wonder if there’s something else going on that we’re not privileged enough to see. But we’ve seen this back in the ’90s when Senator Warner was unable to back Oliver North, the candidate of his party, and had his own candidate, Marshall Coleman, running as an Independent, which resulted in the election of Chuck Robb.

He [John Warner] is an independent thinker. But if you’re going to call yourself a Republican, and time and time again you find yourself unable to support your party’s candidate, perhaps you should start calling yourself an Independent.

I think Thelma Drake has been on the scene for a long time. People know that she is a competent individual. That said, I think the Republican star in Virginia is on the decline. If you look at the demographics of the district she is in, if a Democrat were going to win it back—since Owen Pickett left—this would be the best opportunity they would have to do it. I think the national ticket is going to bring out so many people, and it looks like Virginia is right there on the edge, and so this could be the best possible time for Nye. I think it will probably be very close.

They’ll be exploring for natural gas, and, yes, the Navy does have some reservation. There is some debate as to what is exactly in Virginia’s jurisdiction and what would be available to us. But to answer your question as to why the Democrats came onboard, I think it has to do with reducing a concept to the perceptual level. If one says "alternative energy," what does that mean? Windmills and solar energy? We’re going to have batteries in cars? Then the guy thinks to himself, "How big a battery would they need for an 18-wheeler?" We’re going to drill. That’s easy to embrace. It’s easy to understand. It’s a technology we’re all very familiar with. That’s how we get the oil. We’re going to drill. And so I think they have embraced the slogan that is working.

Well as a Libertarian Constitutionalist, I think the function of government is to protect individual rights, not to protect business interests from those making bad decisions that impacted them negatively. That said, if I were as convinced as a lot of our representatives are, without this bailout there would be no credit. The wheels of the American economy would stop. Payrolls would stop. People’s credit cards wouldn’t work. The bottom would fall out. That certainly gives me reason to pause and be concerned about it.

In the end, the first lesson you learn as a little kid is to clean up your own mess. I do not understand, and perhaps I’m a simple fellow, how rewarding negative behavior and by bailing somebody out and having the consequences of their actions be non-existent, how that would keep them from doing it in the future. To be honest, I am not educated in that field. I see people who know far more about it than I do, and they disagree. So what are left to me are my Libertarian principles, and that is that you clean up your own mess. So I don’t like the bailout.

I think Barack Obama is going to win the election because all the polls indicate that. Karl Rove said if you look at the electoral map, it looks pretty good. You’ve got John McCain jumping out of states like Michigan. I think if the McCain camp takes the tactic—and they seem to have a new tactic every week—that they’re going to take down Barack Obama because of some association with William Ayers, an non-convicted alleged terrorist…I think the culture wars using that tactic trying to diminish Barack Obama by some faint association with someone he’s never endorsed in any way, shape or form, I think won’t work. It’ll be seen for what it is. It gives Barack Obama the opportunity to say, "I’m not like him. I’ve never endorsed any of William Ayers’ views. I’m here to talk about the economy. I’m here to talk about Middle America. I’m here to talk about energy. I’m here to talk about ending the war. I’m talking about your future." So I think if that’s the best tactic McCain can take, Barack Obama is going to be the next President of the United States. It’d be hard not to [see that] given American politics is cyclical and the people seem to be off the Republicans.

I would say yes. None of the other candidates that would have been available to McCain had he not picked a woman would have the charisma of the one he did pick. As far as the vice presidential debate goes and firming up the democratic base, yes Hillary Clinton would have been a good idea. But we don’t know if he [Obama] would have found it unworkable, and whether he had reservations as to what the former president’s role would be, and that he didn’t need all this drama. I understand what he did, but it would have helped him with the Sarah Palin issue. In the end, he would have won anyway.

A lot of votes on talk radio. She has those guys really fired up. She’s got Pat Buchanan fired up. But I don’t think too many. She’s a very polarizing figure. She’s a first rate entertainer, but as many people as she draws to the McCain ticket in the Midwest, the far West and in the rural South, she will alienate people in New York City and Boston. I think it does firm up the base and it gets the talking heads to be more on his side, but if you’re asking if it will tilt the election in his favor, I think not.

I think it’s absurd. One of the reasons it makes it so difficult for me to vote for any major party candidate is that NATO does not exist so that the United States can defend Ukraine. The Russians have a naval base, and have for hundreds of years, in Ukraine. They’re not going anywhere. I think a war with Russia is unthinkable. It is not on the table. It is not a possibility. The Russians have said as much. I think the day needs to come when we look at war the way we look at child molestation: It’s something that people do not engage in. We cannot have a war with Russia. I get tired of hearing all this cavalier talk from both the Republicans and the Democrats. A billion dollars for Georgia, a nation of four million people who have as their idol Joseph Stalin?

Certainly, America has a place in the world. There are countries that are allies. There is a line that must be drawn, but it is not Ukraine.

Are we overextended? Obviously. If we weren’t overextended we’d be winning in Afghanistan.

Sure. We’ve seen all those photographs of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill sitting there with Joseph Stalin. They did what they had to do to win World War II. As Winston Churchill said, "It’s better to jaw-jaw than war-war." I certainly don’t want to see the President of the United States in his first day in office invite Ahmadinejad to the Oval Office, but I can see where cooler heads in the Iranian government could be contacted by our government and say, "Isn’t there someway we can work this out? You’re not going to destroy Israel. We don’t want a war with you." Yes, that is something I believe we need to do. Usually, the only countries that want to negotiate are the ones that don’t have a military big enough to enforce or inflict their views on other countries. But it is difficult to negotiate with a fellow who begins with his premise that he’s going to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and the Holocaust didn’t happen. So right there we’re dealing with someone who is in denial and irrational.

I think it’s a good thing for the country because there are people in the United States of America that think there are opportunities that are not available to them, that they get the backseat, and that the Land of Opportunity does not exist for them. When they see a guy like this whose dad came from Kenya, his mother was a 17-year-old girl, and he was on food stamps and for a while was brought up by his grandparents, I think it is truly an American story. And they will see that this guy did it.

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