Carmen Bucco has lived a few different lives.
A long and winding path as a tailor eventually led to his creation of Bucco Couture, the small business he considers his pride and joy. He said his mobile men’s boutique is the first of its kind on the East Coast — enough of a success that he’s apparently reached the second round of Shark Tank applications three separate times.
But Bucco has a side job.
The moderate Republican has run for office about a dozen times since 2007, most recently losing last month’s special congressional election to replace the late Rep. Donald Payne Jr. Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark) won the seat by 65 percentage points and was sworn in as the New Jersey 10th district’s representative days later.
The tailor’s electoral endeavors haven’t been wholly unsuccessful: In 2007 he won a school board seat in Belleville, but lost re-election in 2010. But he’s since lost 11 elections.
Bucco, who quickly acknowledged his defeat and pushed for McIver to be sworn in, promptly set his sights on November, when he’ll be back on the ballot for a rematch.
Bucco admitted his fight is one of “David and Goliath” proportions. A Republican hasn’t won NJ-10 since 1946. Since Bucco’s 1990 high school graduation, no Democrat has failed to clear 70 percent in the district.
Beyond that, Bucco’s fight is his and his alone.
“The Republicans don’t have the finances to do it in District 10, because who’s going to? It’s a business move, right? Who is going to put money into a losing election?” he said.
Bucco’s path to politics was circuitous and, at times, unlikely. He bounced around foster homes during his youth and eventually developed a drug problem. He said one night, after doing lines of cocaine and shots of vodka, he “saw the light.”
“That was the beginning of me saying I’m either going to be dead or I’m going to be a part of society,” Bucco said.
After training further in tailoring, he managed a handful of shops until eventually founding his own business. It’s those personal experiences — the fall, the rise, and everything in between — that he hopes can convince voters he’s serious when he reappears on the ballot in November.
“I’ve still got to go to work the next morning,” Bucco said. “I’ve still got to pay my mortgage. But when people see my background, it’s making a difference.”
Bucco shares the GOP’s tough-on-crime, anti-illegal-immigration viewpoints. But almost more than anything else, Bucco appears frustrated with the public’s lack of participation in politics.
Part of that sentiment stems from his partisanship. As the national GOP further disseminates distrust in the electoral process, some New Jersey Republicans have asked their fellow party members to not give up before the fight has started. Bucco feels similarly.
“We’ve got to stop the mindset that we’ve been beaten in the beginning, right before the competition starts,” he said. “We have to wake up, and we can’t sit home.”
But on a broader scale, Bucco insists that New Jerseyans in tough situations must do away with the “typical politics” that has allowed a fall in the first place.
“If the voters would just stop and think positively, change their mindset, if we go out and vote, we can make a change,” he said on Election Day last month. “But we have to take a chance, right? We can’t let failure be an option.”
Barring one of the most extraordinary upsets in political history, Bucco will not win a congressional seat in November. But if you thought you’d seen the last of him, you haven’t.
“I will not give up. Losing this election just prepares me for the next election.”