Bill De Blasio

Norman Siegel, one of the recognizable names in next year's public advocate’s race, said that if his third bid for the office is unsuccessful, he won't try again.  read more »

To the list of serious candidates for public advocate next year, add, maybe, City Councilwoman Jessica Lappin.

"I am very seriously considering a run for Public Advocate next year," Lappin told me via text message moments ago.

More than one reader told me recently of having been contacted by Lappin recently to gauge support for a prospective run.   read more »

At a City Council hearing on how Michael Bloomberg’s budget will impact the Health and Human Services agency, its commissioner traded barbs with City Councilman Eric Gioia over the issue of “finger imaging” recipients in order to qualify for benefits.  read more »

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In advance of tomorrow's City Council hearing on Michael Bloomberg's effort to reducing poverty, City Councilman Bill de Blasio sent over this opinion piece in which he praises the mayor for "bravely" using  substantive benchmarks to measure its effects, but laments the insufficient follow-through.  read more »

City Councilman Bill de Blasio, who just declared he will run for public advocate, is beginning his campaign by advocating for the position itself.  read more »

Now that the public advocate’s office is being vacated, here’s a look at the prospective candidates.  read more »

Anti-term limits extension Council members Bill de Blasio and Letitia James decided not to appeal after a judge ruled yesterday against an injunction to stop the City Council from voting on the term-limits legislation.

Reached by phone this morning, attorney (and former Giuliani staffer) Randy Mastro said that his clients are "focusing now on the vote."  read more »

From Glenna:

According to the New York City Law Department, petitioners and City Council members Letitia James and Bill do Blasio have decided not to appeal yesterday's ruling.

 

No court challenges remain against today's vote.

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If term limits are extended, the convention wisdom is that incumbents City Council members are basically shoo-ins for their current seats, in no small part because they’ve raised tons of money campaigning for higher offices already.

But they’ve also spent lots of money. Too much, perhaps.

Some City Council members have raised and spent money with eye towards a borough-wide or citywide races, but they then turn around and run for their old seats, the contribution and spending limits are much lower.

For a City Council race, the spending limit is $322,000 ($161,000 for the primary and $161,000 for the general election).

According to the Campaign Finance Board, Christine Quinn’s campaign spent $285,535.  read more »

Christine Quinn is expected to announce later today that she supports making changes to the city’s term-limits law legislatively, rather than through a referendum that would put the issue to voters.

That's a change from the position she took on term limits last December, but, as it turns out, it’s actually in line with Quinn’s previous position.

In a public forum for City Council speaker candidates on November 21, 2005, Quinn said of the law permitting city officials to serve only two terms:

I also oppose term limits.

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I think it doesn’t allow elected officials enough time to become experts on the issues we need to be experts on in the legislature.  read more »

The debate over term limits on last night’s Inside City Hall got so contentious that the guests--Esther Fuchs, Gene Russianoff and Bill de Blasio--had to make a public display of shaking hands at the end.

Fuchs, a former Bloomberg adviser and now a professor at Columbia University, emerged as a ferocious, unapologetic proponent of the mayor’s plan. She abandoned Bloomberg’s main talking point--that abolishing term limits to let him run again simply offers voters more choice--and rooted her argument in the City Council’s authority to write the laws of the city. Nor did she seem to think the issue needs to go before voters in a referendum, which opponents of Bloomberg's plan are pushing for.  read more »

Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler released a list today of Michael Bloomberg’s member items -- the City Council members’ projects that the mayor funded directly from 2003 to 2008.

The request came amid closer scrutiny of discretionary member-item allocation, which is being investigated by a U.S. prosecutor after fake names were found to have been inserted into the budget and slated to get money.

A few quick, somewhat random observations:

The amount of money spent by the mayor went from $1,720,500 in Fiscal Year 2003 to $5,614,000 in Fiscal Year 2006 (which began on July 1, 2005 - the summer he was running for re-election - through June 30, 2006).  read more »

I showed up just after the start of the press conference David Weprin held yesterday to express opposition to extending term limits legislatively.

It was to ignore the fact that there were only two other City Council members with him: Bill de Blasio and Eric Gioia. (Ken Moltner of the Ron Lauder-funded group Citizens for Term Limits and Susan Lerner of Common Cause also attended.)

As they spoke, you could hear City Council Speaker Christine Quinn speaking at a rally for same-sex marriage in City Hall Park.

In the clip above, Weprin cautions against reading too much into attendance at the event. Also, de Blasio and Weprin did not rule out running for re-election if term limits are extended.

Also at last night's debate in Brooklyn, Kendall Stewart was handing out campaign literature, a 16-page broadsheet designed to look like a newspaper, complete with a masthead.

The front-page has a letter from Stewart, in which he uses the word “change” a lot, and a huge picture of Barack Obama next to a photo of Stewart.

Inside, there are photos of Stewart with other elected officials, like Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Senator Chuck Schumer, Brooklyn Democratic County Leader Vito Lopez, and City Comptroller Bill Thompson, all under the headline “Stewart Supporters.”

There is also an article reprinted from Gotham Gazette; original “articles”; a section called “Immigration Korner”; and glowing praise for Stewart from elected officials like Christine Quinn, Bill de Blasio and Hiram Monserrate.

More pictures here.

A legislative breakfast for a Brooklyn-based educational group, Shema Kolainu, on August 5 will be something of a who’s who of New York politicians.

Amusingly, attendees will hear both “remarks” from State Senator Kevin Parker, and “greetings” from one of the Democrats looking to unseat him, Simcha Felder.

The chairman of the event is possible mayoral candidate John Catsimatidis, whose company, Gristedes, is the sponsor.

(Honorary chair status is given to Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, which may help sell a few more tickets.)

The event is paying tribute to, among others, Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, the State Senate minority leader, Malcolm Smith, comptroller candidate and City Councilman David Weprin, and City Councilman Bill de Blasio, who is also a candidate for Brooklyn borough president.

Yesterday afternoon at City Hall, Congresswomen Yvette Clarke and Nydia Velazquez announced jointly that they are endorsing Bill de Blasio for Brooklyn borough president.

These early endorsements follow announcements of support for de Blasio from UNITE-HERE and The NY Hotel Trades Council. Combined with the campaign's announcement yesterday of having raised "nearly $1 million dollars" ("$177,454 this filing period and $621,891 this cycle"), de Blasio is looking a bit like a foregone thing. (It's unclear at this point exactly who else is running.

The endorsements were announced on the City Hall steps, with about 25 or so supporters standing behind the congresswomen and de Blasio, squinting into the sun and holding "For Brooklyn '09'" signs.  read more »

Yesterday, Councilman Bill de Blasio and his team set up a tent and a ring of multi-colored folding chairs next to the Gowanus Canal in Carroll Gardens for a forum intended to start a conversation between the community and city planners.

It began against the backdrop of several suited elected officials paddling canoes in the waterway.  read more »

Last night, City Councilman and candidate for Brooklyn borough president, Bill de Blasio, called for a moratorium on demolition at the Atlantic Yards footprint until developer Bruce Ratner outlines “what will be built when and confirms affordability,” Brownstoner and Gowanus Lounge reported this morning.

Mr. de Blasio told a meeting of Brooklyn bloggers that he was “livid” about Mr. Ratner’s recent admission in The New York Times that the Miss Brooklyn office tower and residential buildings Mr. Ratner planned to build at Atlantic Yards were stalled due to trouble finding financing, and said he cannot support an “arena-only plan.”  read more »

A congestion pricing measure before the Council just passed, 30 to 20.

Domenic Recchia, who is planning to run for Congress, took a pass on voting the first time around, but eventually voted yes. Eric Gioia, who had told the New York Times on March 8 that he was voting no, also voted for it. Comptroller candidate Melinda Katz voted no, but her likely rival David Yassky voted yes. The two candidates for Brooklyn brough president, Bill De Blasio and Charles Barron, both voted against.  read more »

 

At a press conference just now in City Hall, a reporter asked Christine Quinn if the M.T.A.‘s postponement of promised service improvements impacts the chances of getting City Council members to vote for congestion pricing.

Quinn, a major supporter of the mayor's plan for traffic reduction, said, “I think it is outrageous that a fair increase which I opposed was put in place with a commitment for program enhancements, that a speech was given where program enhancements were touted, and then seemingly, weeks later, that all vanished.”  read more »

The 16 members of the Brooklyn City Council delegation - the Council's largest - are now accepting nominations for the position of delegation leader. The term is up for the current leader, Eric Dilan, although he is not prevented from running for the mostly ceremonial position again.

The position had previously been held simultaneously by Bill de Blasio and Al Vann, back when Brooklyn Democrats were somewhat less cohesive than they are now.

Suggestions?

Before Marty Markowitz gave his State of the Borough last night in Brooklyn, his deputy borough president, Yvonne Graham, gave her own address, which sounds a lot like a kick-off stump speech for her much-discussed, but undeclared, bid to succeed Markowitz.
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Freelancer Caitlin Johnson, who went primary-watch-party-hopping last night, sends in this fun dispatch:

Tom Leger opened up his spacious Tribeca loft last night for gay Clinton supporters to watch the returns. By 9 p.m., only a handful of his friends showed up, but that didn't stop Leger, an English teacher at Hunter, from jumping off his couch each time the preliminary results showed Clinton ahead.

Leger said, "It's a pretty sorry election for queer people – it's a pretty sorry election for the country." He said Clinton rarely discusses gay rights, but he still feels she's the best person for the job. "I wanted Hillary because I love Bill Clinton, and when I went out canvassing for Clinton – when I saw her, it became about Hillary Clinton."

His guests, however, were not so sure. One was torn between Obama and Clinton; another confessed that deep down, he supported fellow vegan Dennis Kucinich.

Almost everyone at a Barack Obama party I went to, by contrast, was drunk off the Kool-Aid. The party, which took place at the Irish Rogue pub in Times Square, was organized by ObamaNYC. It drew a crowd of good-looking young professionals. Organizer Nina Arawal, sporting an "I got a crush on Obama" pin, said more than 200 people attended.

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In a phone interview last night, Council member and Clinton supporter Bill de Blasio gave me his quick take on Hillary Clinton's third-place Iowa finish.

“The real story is Edwards didn’t get his breakthrough,” said de Blasio, who managed Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign in 2000 and campaigned for Edwards in 2004. “It’s questionable whether he can continue. Hillary has the advantage over the long haul.”

As for Hillary, he said that tonight’s results were “fine for what we need to do going forward,” and that it was a “perfectly sufficient result.”

Bill de Blasio is prepared for anything on caucus day.

“I am in our meeting room at the Clinton headquarters, on Fifth Avenue South, in Clinton County, with my hand on our group of six shovels,” said the manager of Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, who is currently campaigning with her in Iowa.

"The race is going to be close," he added, “and it’s been snowy. And you can’t afford to have your car get stuck.”

I asked de Blasio (even though he is, of course, a bit biased right now) what he thought of the idea of Michael Bloomberg jumping into the presidential race.

“I think the argument for an independent candidate is weakened when there are strong alternatives in the major parties,” he told me. “I think this is a year when it is harder to argue than an independent has space to cover that is unspoken for.”

Council member and Hillary Clinton volunteer Bill de Blasio will be joined in Iowa by Jonathan Bing, an Upper East Side Assemblyman who will is heading to Davenport on Jan. 1 to do his part.

"They asked me to do some driving of supporters," said Bing, speaking from from North Carolina, where he’s visiting in-laws.

More after the jump.  read more »

City Councilman Bill de Blasio of Brooklyn spent late 2003 and early 2004 traveling to Iowa as a volunteer to help his candidate at the time, John Edwards, engineer a surprisingly strong showing in the caucuses there.

Now he's back in the Hawkeye state, helping fellow New Yorker Hillary Clinton compete in what has become a tough contest. "I think folks from Iowa, like people in New Hampshire, they're used to people coming in from the outside, probably more so than any other place in the country," de Blasio told me earlier this week from the city of Clinton (seriously), just north of Davenport.

"The outsiders are facilitators," he said.  read more »

Former Stonewall Democratic Club President and City Council candidate Bob Zuckerman thinks the current City Council has spent a little too much time passing unneeded legislation.

“I may introduce one resolution if I’m in the City Council, and that is to ban resolutions,” Zuckerman says in this clip, taken outside a holiday party last week. The Council, Zuckerman says, “really needs to focus on important issues that affect people’s lives, not things like street renaming, and banning words, which is impossible to do, and banning aluminum bats, and controlling how much work kids do.”

(Also, a warning: This video is a graphic illustration of the perils of shooting with a semi-functional viewfinder.)

The campaign committee for City Councilman Domenic Recchia just got fined $375 for receiving “over-the-limit contributions” during the 2005 election cycle, according to a public statement by the city’s Campaign Finance Board.

It's not all that much money, but Recchia is now hoping to unseat Congressman Vito Fossella, and his challenger for the Democratic nomination, lawyer Steve Harrison, will likely bring it up as the campaign gets going.

More after the jump.  read more »

In preparing for my reporters' roundtable, which will air on Friday, I spoke to former Black Panther and City Councilman Charles Barron, who is one of the major candidates for Brooklyn Borough President.

He gave me a good rant, not about police brutality (that came later), but about affordable housing and development.
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“Right now, developers are fat cats who are getting over tremendously, particularly with not having to do affordable housing, and using eminent domain and using other state and city powers to gain access [to] subsidies. They call it subsidies, but it’s really corporate welfare,” Barron told me.

He went on to say he “would scrap the 421a housing program.”

Any other insights or things to keep in mind about this race, let me know.

 

Buried inside this recent Courier Life article about Michael Nelson, the Councilman from Brooklyn who spent an unusually high amount of city money on local advertisements, is this interesting factoid:

“Nelson is now a candidate to succeed Marty Markowitz as Brooklyn borough president.”

If that's true (Nelson's office didn't return a call for additional information), that would make three candidates for the seat so far. The other two are Bill de Blasio and Charles Barron.

Anybody else making a stealth announcement?

UPDATE: Nick Perry is in the race. 

Here’s Bill Alatriste's shot of a press conference on the steps of City Hall earlier today where City Council members Bill de Blasio, Vincent Gentile and Mike McMahon rallied in support of a bill that would require “e waste,” like old computers and cell phones, to be collected by the dealers who sell them.

The bill was introduced last year and is still being negotiated, but a spokesman for de Blasio wasn’t quite ready to say City Hall or the Speaker’s office has been stalling on the issue.

“We’re happy with negotiations moving forward. But it never hurts having more people know about the bill and why electronic waste is a growing problem,” de Blasio spokeswoman Jean Weinberg told me.

When asked for a comment, Bloomberg spokesman Jason Post emailed say he was “surprised by the press conference.”

“The Mayor's office supports an electronic waste recycling program, and we have worked with the Council closely on their proposed e-waste legislation. Since recent negotiations have been productive and have brought us close to workable bill, we were surprised by today's press conference. This Administration will continue to work with Council Member de Blasio, Sanitation & Waste Management Committee Chair McMahon and advocates on a realistic e-waste bill."

As Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz considers a run for mayor in 2009, an interesting undercard race is shaping up for the office he is vacating. It’s well known that city councilmen Bill de Blasio and Charles Barron have an eye on the beep’s office. A third contender could be Deputy Borough President Yvonne Graham.

Graham, who is originally from Jamaica, is participating in a Caribbean Heritage celebration in Brooklyn today, one of several similar appearances that seem designed to raise her profile around the borough.

Of course, Graham has a long way to go before she matches the ribbon-cutting prowess of Markowitz. In an interview, she said no one should read too much into her heightened visibility. “Actually I’ve worked with diverse cultures ever since I landed in this country in 1979,” she said. When asked directly whether she was planning to run for the borough presidency, she replied: "Well, I haven’t ruled out anything.”

“I have not yet made a decision,” she added, “and that’s all the information I have at this time.”  read more »

Here's an invitation to a June 17 fund-raiser for Council member Bill de Blasio's 2009 run for... something.

The maximum contribution organizers are seeking is $3950, if that's a clue. (The contribution limit for borough-wide candidates is $3850, and for citywide candidates, it’s $4950.)

I emailed the organizer of the event, Phil Jones, and am waiting to hear whether there's any more detail to be had on the Councilman's ongoing efforts.

The invitation is after the jump.  read more »

Here’s an invitation to a fund-raiser later this week for Council member Bill de Blasio at the Manhattan home of investment banker Jeffrey Sachs.

De Blasio, along with the majority of the Council, will be term-limited out of office in 2009. He was a key figure in Hillary Clinton's first Senate campaign, has White House experience and has strong ties to labor. Though he’s been talked about as candidate for Brooklyn borough president, he still hasn’t made it clear, officially, what he’ll be running for.

Extra credit for the name given to de Blasio’s top fund-raisers: "Super Good Friends."

For the record, here’s the exact breakdown of who voted for, against, abstained or was absent for a proposal yesterday to reinsert the name of black activist Sonny Carson into an omnibus street renaming bill.

Affirmative: 15
Negative: 25
Abstentions: 7
Absent 4:

Notably, John Liu, the only Asian-American in the Council, voted to honor Carson, as did Tony Avella. Bill De Blasio, who worked on the David Dinkins mayoral campaign around the time Carson was registering voters to help elect Dinkins, voted no.

A complete list is after the jump.  read more »

The City Council has voted down a proposal to co-name four blocks of a street in Brooklyn after black nationalist Sonny Carson. The vote was 15 for and 25 against, with seven abstentions. Notable votes: Bill De Blasio, who worked on David Dinkins' mayoral campaign with Carson, voted no. Oliver Koppell, who voted no, said "we are not voting on the civil rights movement." Mathieu Eugene, in one of his first votes, abstained. Mike Nelson of Brooklyn voted no, and retold a story of how Carson came into the classroom where she was teaching and said he didn't want a white Jew teaching his children.

One of the odder bits of fallout to come out of the, um, change of membership at Community Board 6 is that a critic of Atlantic Yards is replacing one of the opponents who got axed this week.

Brad Lander, the director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, was nominated for a spot on the 50-member advisory board by City Council Member Bill de Blasio and appointed by Borough President Marty Markowitz, according to the board's new list (PDF).  read more »

Nine members of Brooklyn’s Community Board 6 have not been reappointed to another two-year term after the board took several votes opposing the Atlantic Yards project.  read more »

A number of community board members in Brooklyn’s Brownstone Belt who voted against Atlantic Yards will not be reappointed next week, according to officials involved with the process.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, an early and ardent supporter of the housing-and-arena complex at Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, is expected to replace several Community Board 6 members when he makes appointments next week. Community Board 6 includes Park Slope, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Red Hook and last year issued a strongly worded rejection of the project proposed by private developer Forest City Ratner.

“We would like to remain optimistic that we can contribute to changes in the current plan which would accomplish the laudable goals of the project concepts. But in its current form we cannot support this project,” wrote then-board Chairman Jerry Armer in a Sept. 29, 2006, letter (PDF) to the Empire State Development Corporation, the government sponsor of the project. “We cannot possibly support the current project with the knowledge that we would be causing irreparable harm to our own communities.”  read more »

When I spoke with Bill de Blasio the other day about the mayor's plan to end "play to play" and tweak campaign finance laws, I quoted him saying this:

"I'd like to remind people, and Dick Dadey will confirm this, the toughest campaign finance law in the country was passed by the New York City Council. It was not started by a mayor. It was not started by an independent commission. It was created by the City Council."

I didn't ask Dadey for his own take at the time. But the mere mention of his name in conjunction with de Blasio's criticism of the mayor's proposal brought him in for some sharp criticism in our comments section.

Here, via email, is Dadey's response:

"In regards to Citizens Union position on pay-to-play contributions, I would like to set the record straight since many of the comments in the posts are factually incorrect.

"Citizens Union supports the adoption of strong legislation that would 'restrict' political contributions from those who do business with the city and has advocated for such reforms consistently over the past several years. It is our hope that the Council will soon propose and pass such legislation that the Mayor would then sign into law. We believe this is a preferable and more effective way to achieve the goal of addressing the issue of 'pay to play" contributors than if the Campaign Finance Board were to pass on its own a rule implementing such. The City Council has played an important and necessary role in creating and strengthening the city's campaign finance program. We feel that the Council has missed past opportunities to strengthen it even further, but one of the reasons that New York has a model national program is because of the City Council's long commitment to it. The other reason is because of the way in which the law has been strongly enforced and the program properly administered by the Campaign Finance Board.

"CU supports "pay to play" legislation that would be enforceable and not onerous, but would limit the influence peddling that goes on in the form of contributors who feel that in order for favorable consideration to be given to their interests - like government contracts - they need to make a contribution in order to their interests to be in play, aka "pay to play." We also believe that any legislation should not "ban" a contributor's constitutional right to participate in the political process by denying them a chance to make a contribution to a candidate of his or her choice; instead we favor setting a low limit at which a contributor could give without being subjected to a "pay to play" restriction should they have