Could Carmine Galante have become boss

I hate talking theoretically sometimes; but I was wondering; is there a viable or reasonable scenario that could have taken place for Galante to have become Official boss of the Bonanno Crime Family “when Phil Rastelli was locked up”

Could he have been boss if he had the a better relationship with the commission?! I do know he was close with Carmine Persico so that is a vote that could have fallen in his favor.

Should he have hired more Sicilians?? Or been closer to them??

Should he have ruled more with respect then “fear”??

Would love some answers!! What do people think? We are talking theoretically..

If Galante wasn't so greed on the heroin money for sure would convince the Commission (its all about money),he was already the de facto boss and with a little diplomacy should easly be appointed as official boss.

What people fail to realize is that the Commission respects power.the Boss position is technically an "elected" position. Whether it's by consensus or by force, the Boss has to have the support. The Bonannos were kicked of the Commission because it was fracture and the other bosses didn't have to respect The Bonanno Boss because he didn't have full support within his Family.

The other Commission members play politics to best suit them. Galante wouldn't have been the Boss without eliminating Rusty, Sonny Black and Massino...... it suited the other Families to support Rastelli. He ran a weak operation( in comparison) and they could take advantage

Thats an intelligent viewpoint Don Pep. And I concur. Rusty was no Lilo, and they knew that.

I still think that if Galante would split the money and dont angered his damily made men using only the siggies maybe he could be the boss. Its true that ordered to kill 6 gambinos?

Right! You can never go wrong by following the money. If Galante had shared the heroin money, he'd have gotten more support. He also could have kept his big mouth shut--bragging that "I'll make Gambino s**t in the street" isn't exactly a good way to endear yourself to the Commission's Number One member.

@ Furio

I think the 6 Gambino murders is a fabrication. I don’t know where that came from in mob lore.

If Galante was killing made guys in other families;

Wouldn’t this have prevented him from making guys in the 1976-1977 period? Other families wouldn’t have tolerated this.

Also I’m surprised Galante didn’t have more support; Wouldn’t you think guys would have loved to have supported Galante and got some of that Heroin money.

Galante had more pedigree then everyone in that family and he still got whacked…

He was prolly only 2nd in pedigree to Joe Bonanno.

Anyone else agree?

I agree with you Zavattoni. 99% of the murders Galante was accused of ordering after his release from jail was total bullshit. The NYPD (and other police agencies) are famous for that sort of rhetoric. It makes it seem as though they know what's going on when in reality they haven't a clue.

I think Galante was just a very heavy handed guy. Many fellas (even bosses were afraid of his mentality and capabilities), and even many of his Bonanno Family opposed his style or were with other crews competing with him. When push came to shove, and it was coming to that, they plotted against him. There's NO WAY IN HELL, Neil Dellacroce and the Gambino's are gonna take out a boss from another Family that way unless there's a consensus among the Commission (or in this particular case) an agreement with elements of his own family who go along with it. Otherwise that's called a "gangland war" to rival the Castellammarese War of 1929-31.

Galante was too reminiscent of Joe Bonanno. But on steroids. I think this was a contributing factor. He had too many of the same characteristics but being more deadly. And whether people believe it or, Joe could've easily played a "Michael Corleone" role from Tuscon with Galante being a "Frank Pentangeli" type. That was a no-no.

I do believe that was Bonannos original plan in the late 50s but Galante got pinched

wasn't part that he not only wanted the top spot in the Bonano's but his next step was to position himself as capo de tutti capi or at least challenge Gambino?

Galante was supposed to be a miserable fuck that everyone feared and nobody liked (except maybe Persico as legend has it he voted to not hurt him)

Is it possible to surmise that Galante and Bonnano wanted to run the Bonnanos more like
How it was done in Sicily, or at least go in that direction ?

Persico definitely did vote not to have Galante murdered but that was only 1 vote…. The other bosses couldn’t stand the old fart… I wonder what Paul Castellano; Tony Ducks and Fat Tony said about him behind closed doors.

It’s also been said that Carmine Galante’s daughter was being set up to marry Carmine Persico”s son (Ally Boy)

Think Persico and Galante served time together in jail or prison
and we’re close.

It had to involve the Gambino family since their club is where one of the shooters went to report right after the killing. I don't think it was over sharing drugs, but over his power grab he was making in his own family.

While not boss officially, I believe we can say he was running the Family and killing whomever he chose and with no repercussions. I've viewed many bios of Galante but really never first-hand accounts of what he was like day-to-day. If I had to choose one LCN figure to write an open bio, it would be Galante.

Galante and Bonanno are daunting task to write about. Specifically if you're talking about "first-hand accounts" and accuracy. First, we mainly have "second-hand accounts" from guys who learned from older made guys to despise them. Particularly, guys from Brooklyn speak the lowest of them (Colombos, Gambinos, and there own Bonanno guys). It's almost as if someone put out a Commission order to not even like the guys personally lol. So there is always a bias against them but Galante was more heavy handed and he didn't quite have the level of Prestige as Bonanno. Joe gave him that "halo" (of course his own street smarts and toughness got him to that point).
Secondly, it's hard to be as accurate as possible when it comes to them, particularly when it comes to the heroin business and there exact place in that history. There is alot more than meet the eye in terms of business/murder in both of their stories.

What is public knowledge is often misunderstood, underresearched information and there is alot of information that's unavailable or lost to history. Galante was like a Vito Genovese. He had to be eliminated.

Does anybody know about the relationship between Bonanno, Galante, and John Morales. I heard morales was basically higher ranking, but unofficially.

Apparently, when the commission said Joe and Bill Bonanno was not to be recognised they also included Morales. Must of been a staunch Joe Bonanno guy.
Think this was said on a wiretap.

Think Galante was inside for all the banana stuff. I also think that the other bosses who wanted him dead were scared of him. He would of wanted their commission seat back and that meant getting cut into schemes like the concrete club. And we know how greedy the mob bosses can be.

All very close. Johnny Burns served as "acting boss" for Joe Bonanno for awhile during the early stages of the conflict.

Galante wasn't the only one though all those Bonanno's were huge in heroin business.

Exactly!

Yet, Michael Franzese says the mob wasn't big into drug dealing lol

So I'm assuming that Galante made millions of dollars in the drug trade, what happened to all his $$$? He was allegedly trying to get his own daughter involved in his dealings too, correct? I think I remember one of those A&E biography shows claiming that she was not only his driver, but he had suggested she be formally inducted into the Mob, which is ridiculous. Wasn't she romantically involved with Persico's kid too? Like a potential arranged marriage type thing?

@Goldy;

I’ve seen and heard that Carmine Galante’s daughter and Little Allie Boy Persico were arranged to be married at some point…

I wish we had more inside knowledge of Carmine Persico and Carmine Galante’s friendship and business dealings….

Persico did vote “NO” for Galante to not be whacked..

So there is history between them two.

Bonannos, Luccheses, Gambinos in the 70s were big drug dealers don't know about the Colombos.