Bobby Zahn, the 9/11 responder, Tea Party warrior, and fearless conservative rabble-rouser who never let the DA forget the name William Peck — and never let the machine bury the truth.
LUTHMANN NOTE: Bobby Zahn was my friend, and this one hurts. He was a Staten Island original — funny, stubborn, faithful, fearless, and impossible to intimidate. Bobby understood politics as a civic duty, not a cocktail-party game. He remembered what the machine wanted forgotten, and that is why the William Peck story still matters. But Bobby was more than politics. He was a 9/11 responder who fought cancer with the same discipline and grit he brought to every campaign. Staten Island lost a patriot. I lost a friend. Bobby was a warrior for Christ and Liberty, and I will miss him. This piece is “I’m William Peck.”
By Richard Luthmann
(STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK) – I have written about politics, court fights, and public scandals for years, but this is different. This one hurts. Robert J. “Bobby” Zahn, Jr. died on May 8, 2026, at just 60 years old, and with him, Staten Island lost one of its most original and unbought political characters. His wake and funeral Mass were held this week on the island he loved, and there is something fitting about that, because Bobby was never really made for anywhere else.
Bobby was my friend. He was also the best friend of Sam Pirozzolo, now a New York State Assemblyman. He said it plainly in the interview he gave me.
“Bobby was a mentor; he was loved by many people, and even those on the other side of the aisle respected him and knew they would miss him. That tells you almost everything you need to know,” Sam said. “Bobby could fight like hell, but people still trusted where he was coming from. He was hard-edged without being fake. He was fierce without being hollow.”
There are many pieces to the political Bobby I knew so well. He called himself a native New Yorker, a fiscal conservative, a social conservative libertarian, and a community organizer for the center-right. That was not résumé language. That was Bobby exactly.
He believed conservatives had to stop whining about the left’s tactics and start learning how to organize, persuade, and fight. Long before the rest of the country gave it a name, Bobby was living the politics that would later become MAGA. He was MAGA before MAGA, not because it was fashionable, but because his political bearings never changed.
By 2009, Bobby had already become attached to Tea Party organizing on Staten Island. He later became the Staten Island organization’s President, and no one will deny that without the Tea Party, there would have been no Red Wave in 2010. Without Bobby Zahn and like-minded Staten Island patriots, there would have been no Michael Grimm.
By 2016, Bobby and I were running “Staten Islanders for Trump,” with Bobby identified as recently retired from and aligned with the Conservative Party. That all tracks with the man I knew. When Donald Trump came down the escalator, Bobby did not need a consultant to explain what was happening. He recognized it instantly. He had already been fighting the same establishment instincts, the same stale Republican caution, and the same country-club timidities for years.
He gave his labor, his mind, and his shoe leather to causes and candidates he believed in. Sam’s own recollection makes clear how much Bobby shaped him, challenged him, and helped him think like an insurgent rather than a placeholder. Bobby also stood with people like Michael Grimm and Nicole Malliotakis when he believed the cause was right and the fight was worth waging. He was not interested in the safe lane. He was interested in the true lane.
“I’m William Peck.”
If I had to explain Bobby Zahn to someone who never knew him, I would tell them the William Peck story.
Not because it was the biggest political fight we ever had. It wasn’t. Not because it changed the course of Staten Island history. It probably didn’t. But because it captured Bobby perfectly: the memory, the mischief, the fearlessness, the working-class contempt for political arrogance, and the absolute refusal to let the machine bury a story just because the machine wanted it dead.
It was 2015, and Mike McMahon was trying to become the Staten Island District Attorney. Bobby, Sam Pirozzolo, and I (and others not to be named) were working on Joan Illuzzi’s campaign. It was the kind of local race Staten Island insiders think they own before Election Day even arrives. The machine had its candidate, the petitions were filed, the newspapers were supposed to yawn, and everybody was supposed to move along like good little citizens.
But then we started looking at the petitions.
And there they were: names that should not have been there. Signatures that raised serious questions. And then the one that became legend in our circle: William Peck.
William Peck was dead.
That was the whole point. McMahon’s Democratic petition had names on it that looked like they came from the cemetery, not the neighborhood. The dead, apparently, had risen from the grave in true Democrat Party fashion to sign petitions for Mike McMahon.
We called it a Lazarus moment. Bobby loved that. He absolutely loved it. He could smell the absurdity, and once Bobby got hold of absurdity, he turned it into political artillery.
For Bobby, William Peck was not just a name on a petition. William Peck became a symbol. He became shorthand for everything Bobby hated about the Democrat Party nationally and the Staten Island political machine: the smugness, the sloppiness, the sense that rules were for regular people and not for the connected.
Bobby wrote about it. He talked about it. He sent letters. He kept needling. He kept reminding people. He would not let McMahon forget it.
That was Bobby’s gift. Other people moved on. Bobby filed it away.
Then came 2019.
McMahon was running again for District Attorney. If I remember correctly, he was basically unopposed, but he was still doing the politician routine, showing up at block parties, shaking hands, pressing flesh, pretending to be everybody’s best friend on the South Shore.
![Nancy Pelosi [L] and Michael McMahon [R]](https://nynewspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Pelosi-McMahon-279x300.jpg)
![Staten Island District Attorney Michael E. McMahon [L] and Brian Laline [R] at an event at the Richmond County Country Club.](https://nynewspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/McMahon-Laline-295x300.jpg)
One of those block parties was Bobby’s block.
So there’s McMahon, moving through the crowd, hand out, full “Smiling Jack” mode, doing the standard “Mike McMahon, running for DA” routine. He comes up to Bobby and does not recognize him at first. That was the beauty of it. McMahon sticks out his hand and introduces himself like he is meeting some ordinary voter.
“I’m District Attorney Michael McMahon,” he says, extending his hand.
Bobby takes it.
Deadpan.
Perfect timing.
And Bobby says, “I’m William Peck.”
That was Bobby Zahn.
McMahon froze for a second. You could almost see the gears turning. Then it hit him. He realized who he was actually shaking hands with. This was not William Peck. This was Bobby Zahn, the guy who had been writing those letters, pushing that story, and refusing to let the dead-petition scandal disappear into the Staten Island fog.
McMahon snapped back at him, something to the effect of: “You. You’re the one who writes all those terrible things about me in the Staten Island Advance.”
And Bobby, without blinking, gave him the answer that should be carved into the granite of Staten Island political history:
“Yeah. And it’s all true.”
That was classic Bobby.
No speech. No grandstanding. No overproduction. Just one line, right between the eyes.
That is why William Peck matters in Bobby’s story. It was funny, but it was not merely a joke. It was Bobby’s politics in miniature. He believed memory was a weapon. He believed truth had to be repeated because powerful people count on everyone getting tired. He believed citizens had a duty to confront officeholders, not worship them. And he believed that if a politician could not survive a voter telling him the truth at a block party, then maybe that politician had chosen the wrong line of work.
Sam Pirozzolo called Bobby his best friend, his mentor, and a man respected even by people on the other side of the aisle. That is exactly right. Bobby could fight you hard and still be fair. He could laugh while he was landing the punch. He could turn a petition scandal into a running joke that lasted years because underneath the joke was a serious civic point: somebody has to remember. Somebody has to keep score. Somebody has to say the thing out loud.
Bobby Zahn remembered.
And whenever I hear the name William Peck, I will not just think of a dead man whose name showed up where it never should have been. I will think of Bobby at that block party, shaking Mike McMahon’s hand, smiling that Bobby smile, and delivering one of the greatest Staten Island political lines I have ever heard.
“William Peck.”
Then, when confronted:
“Yeah. And it’s all true.”
That was Bobby. Faith, liberty, family, memory, humor, and guts — all packed into one handshake.
Bobby’s Private War After 9/11
There was another side of Bobby Zahn that people in politics did not always see. They saw the letters, the jokes, the campaign fights, the Staten Island Advance shots, the Tea Party energy, the Trump loyalty, the numbers, the strategy, and the street-level political guts. I saw that too. But I also saw Bobby when he was sick, when the fight was not against Mike McMahon, the Board of Elections, or the Republican country-club crowd. It was against cancer.
Bobby was a 9/11 responder. He was there when America was attacked, and like so many men who answered that call, he paid for it with his body. He developed a rare form of cancer that medical experts believe came from his work at Ground Zero. From my perspective, the death blow against Bobby was struck on September 11, 2001. It just took years for the enemy’s poison to finish its work.
When I was still practicing law, I represented Bobby in a matrimonial matter. It was one of the uglier moments in his life. He was sick, fighting cancer, and then he was forced out of his Staten Island home. He was traveling back and forth from a shore house in New Jersey while trying to keep up with court, life, stress, and a medical routine that was not optional for him. It was survival.
Bobby had built a whole system around juicing. That sounds simple unless you saw what he actually did. This was not a glass of orange juice and a vitamin. Bobby had a full daily process. He combined juices, supplements, and materials in a detailed routine that took him two to three hours to prepare. He believed it was keeping his cancer numbers low, and from what he told me, the numbers backed him up. When he could stay on that routine, he felt better. When the divorce chaos disrupted it, his numbers started going through the roof.
So my office became Bobby’s apartment for a few weeks.
We had a “War Room” before Sloppy Steve Bannon. Ask the Comey Feds or the McMahon Machine, and I used the room “to run the Italian and Chinese mafias from a Staten Island strip mall” and “bilked the CCP out of a fortune.” It was an absurd claim even then, and now the Pardon Attorney and the President get to decide. I’m not just asking for a pardon; I’m also asking for a Presidential Medal of Honor. CHY-NA!
But for two or three weeks, that War Room became Bobby’s place to stabilize his life. We had the juicing setup in there. He had his space. He did not have to spend four hours a day driving between Con-Ed in Brooklyn, the Staten Island courthouse, and New Jersey. He could use that time for what he needed most: self-care, preparation, rest, and the discipline that was helping him fight for his life.
One day, during that family court dispute, we were outside the courtroom when opposing counsel, some Staten Island divorce hack whose name I thankfully forget, started making demands. I looked at him and said, in substance: “I have a guy here who is a 9/11 responder. He has cancer. You want to keep this up? I’ll have you on the front page of the newspaper. I’ll make you famous.”
A few minutes later, we walked into the courtroom, and this sniveling little lawyer repeated it to the judge like he had uncovered some great scandal. He complained that I had said this was going to be on the front page of the Staten Island Advance.
When it was my turn to speak, I stood up and said I disagreed with one thing: Luthmann never goes that small. (Sorry, Brian).
I told the court this would be on the front page of the New York Post, showing how the family courts on Staten Island treat a 9/11 responder stricken with cancer. I said it was a disgrace. I told them his client would be famous, he would be famous, and, Judge, you are going to be famous too. Everybody in that room was going to be famous if they kept brutalizing this man while he was fighting for his life.
The case resolved very quickly after that.
That was not legal theater to me. That was defending my friend. Bobby fought cancer every day. He fought it with discipline, stubbornness, faith, and that same refusal to surrender that made him such a force in politics. But he was robbed. He should have had decades more. He should have had more campaigns, more letters, more laughs, more block-party confrontations with “William Peck,” more time with Sam, more time with his family and friends he adored, more time to be Bobby.
I miss him. I miss the fighter. I miss the friend. And I cannot shake the feeling that what happened to Bobby was not just an illness. It was a delayed casualty of 9/11. He answered the call when the country needed him, and the cost came due over the rest of his life.
That is part of his story, too, and it should never be left out.
A Warrior for Christ and Liberty
To me, Bobby was a warrior for Christ and Liberty. He believed in faith, family, country, and the kind of freedom that comes with a moral backbone. He had no use for the UniParty Hacks that turn conviction into networking and principle into résumé polish. He wanted politics to stand for something. He wanted the right to be worthy of the word conservative. He wanted men to stop trimming themselves into acceptability and start saying what they actually believed.
He also knew how to be a friend. That part matters most now. I will remember the petition tables, the campaign chatter, the strategizing, the jokes, and the certainty that Bobby had already seen three moves ahead.
In preparing for this article, I reached out to many of his “so-called friends.” None of them returned my call. Each and every one of them put personal advancement over honoring a front-line warrior. I have the receipts. They are looking to keep their positions, secure their next office (and get their law degree), or find a soft landing. down south. For them, politics is a cocktail-party exercise of personal advancement.
It’s what is problematic with the present Uni-Party and why it must be dismantled.
Staten Island has had plenty of operatives, plenty of loudmouths, plenty of politicians. It had only one Bobby Zahn. And those of us who knew him now have the burden and the privilege of saying so.
May he rest in peace. May God receive him gently. And may Bobby, wherever he is, find William Peck, share a laugh, and keep reminding the rest of Heaven that truth still matters.
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