Curtis Sliwa on the campaign trail (photo: @CurtisSliwa)
October 12, 2021 - Max Politics Podcast: Curtis Sliwa on His Run for Mayor
Mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa, the Republicna nominee who will also be on an independent ballot line, joined the show to discuss his candidacy, his platform, his past, and more.
Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts at Max Politics.
Read more: Max Politics Podcast: Curtis Sliwa on His Run for Mayor
Council Member Matteo at a groundbreaking in CD50 (photo: John McCarten/City Council)
Republicans currently hold only three seats in the New York City Council and District 50 on Staten Island is one of them. The mid-island district is currently represented by Council Member Stephen Matteo, the Council’s Minority Leader who is term limited and unsuccessfully ran in the Republican primary for borough president. Three candidates are vying to replace him in the general election including a former City Council member, a top aide to Matteo, and a real estate broker.
Sal Albanese, a former mayoral candidate and once Council member representing parts of Southern Brooklyn, claimed the Democratic nomination in the race without facing a primary opponent. A Staten Island resident of five years, Albanese running on an additional independent line, the Staten Island 1st party, which was created by Mark Murphy, the Democratic nominee for borough president.
David Carr, Matteo’s chief of staff, narrowly won the crowded Republican primary after a hand recount, one of only two this year after ranked-choice voting was implemented for the first time citywide (it only applies to primary and special elections). Carr’s main opponent, former U.S. Marine Marko Kepi, was ahead on election night but eventually lost by just 42 votes once all the votes were manually tallied. Kepi is facing federal and state investigations over possible forgery of absentee ballots in his favor.
The third candidate on the ballot is real estate broker George Wonica, who is running on the Conservative Party line.
District 50 is made up of largely residential neighborhoods, with one-, two- and multi-family homes. According to 2020 Census data, the district has 140,795 residents, 61.1% of whom are white; Asians accounted for 18.4% of the population; Hispanic and Latino 14.3%, and 3.5% Black.
As of February 21 of this year, according to Board of Elections data, the district was home to 115,817 registered voters including 43,007 Democrats, 39,133 Republicans, 1,851 Conservatives, and 27,473 unaffiliated independent voters.
Though the district may be almost evenly split between registered Democrats and Republicans, it has been held by the GOP since 1992, when the City Council was expanded to its current 51 seats, up from 30. But, with Wonica on the ballot, there is a possibility he could draw votes away from Carr, giving Albanese, a moderate Democrat, a better path to victory.
In the last open race for District 50 in 2013, Matteo ran on the Republican, Conservative, and Independence Party lines, and defeated the Democratic and Working Families Party candidate, John Mancuso, by a margin of 61%-35%.
Carr is trying to follow in the footsteps of Matteo, who was once top aide to former mid-island Council Member Jimmy Oddo, who went on to become borough president (Matteo sought to emulate Oddo once again before coming up short against former Rep. Vito Fossella).
Albanese is attempting to flip one of the few remaining Republican seats in New York City at any level of government (while progressives are trying to turn a GOP-held Council district in Queens and south shore Staten Island Council Member Joseph Borelli appears very likely to keep his seat red through his reelection bid).
As priorities go, the candidates in District 50 are largely aligned on several major issues. In interviews, each spoke of public safety as their most pressing concern, citing the citywide increase in homicides and shootings that accompanied the pandemic, and all criticized the movement to Defund the NYPD. They advocated for reforming the city’s property tax system and spoke of improving mass transit.
Sal Albanese
Albanese, an attorney and former school teacher, served as a member of the City Council between 1983 and 1998, representing District 43 in Brooklyn. He has previously run for mayor three times, most recently in 2017 when he sought the Democratic nomination against Mayor Bill de Blasio. That same year, he relocated to Staten Island.
As a Council member, Albanese was ardently for political reform and has, in his various campaigns, talked about ridding government of corruption and pay-to-play politics. But his current campaign was prompted by broader concerns. “I'm running because I think the city faces many challenges going forward,” he said, citing the city’s fiscal future and the “erosion of public safety.”
“I’m not running to flip a Republican seat. I’m not really much of a partisan,” he said. “I’m running because I'm interested in public policy. I happen to be a Democrat, obviously.”
As Albanese noted, the City Council will have dozens of new members elected in November, many of whom will be holding office for the first time. “I think it's gonna be a very critical administration for the next four years in terms of where the city goes, moves forward in terms of quality of life, infrastructure, public safety,” Albanese said. “So I didn't want to sit on the sidelines.”
Albanese has a straightforward campaign pitch. He has 15 years of experience in the Council, during which he was praised for his independence, performance, and attendance, and was known for going against leadership despite the repercussions. And he wants to improve how the Council does business. “I think the Council really needs major improvements, especially in the area of oversight,” he said.
“We didn't do any oversight over a predictable pandemic, over the homeless situation, the mental health situation, the Rikers Island situation,” he said. Though the Council has held some hearings on those issues, they have at times been untimely or relatively toothless. “The Council’s continued to neglect their main oversight responsibilities.”
Albanese believes the district’s residents are not ideologically driven voters and that, just like in his first successful Council race in 1982, Republicans will turn out for him. He has also embraced a campaign message centered on public safety, which could endear him to the more moderate and conservative white voters who dominate the district. “Public safety is priority number one,” he said, promising to ensure that “the police are not defunded, and are supported” by the city.
“There are people coming into this Council that are totally, in my view, naive and despise the police, which does not reflect the majority of the city,” he said, calling for hiring more police officers. “So I'm going to be doing battle with those folks.”
Among the perennial issues on Staten Island are the lack of mass transit options and the need for infrastructure, particularly flood mitigation and resiliency measures. Albanese said he would advocate for more buses in the district, lower fares on express buses, and fast ferries for the North Shore. “I would not rule out pushing for a future project which would include subway service,” he said, floating the idea of a tunnel under The Narrows to connect Staten Island and Brooklyn.
After Hurricane Ida flooded inland parts of the borough that otherwise do not flood, Albanese said he would launch “a full court press” to speed up resiliency infrastructure projects. “You’ve got to embarrass people sometimes, administrators,” he said. “And I’ve done that in the past. I have no problems working with people but if they don't do their job, I’m gonna hold press conferences and I’m gonna expose what was lacking in terms of proactive efforts by administrators.”
Albanese, who endorsed Andrew Yang in this year’s Democratic primary for mayor, wants to restart the city’s stalled effort to reform the city’s property tax system and he also wants to institute new good government reforms. As a member of the city’s 2019 Charter Revision Commission appointed by Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, Albanese successfully proposed news ethics measures that were approved in a ballot referendum. He pushed for other reforms that failed to make it on the ballot but are now part of his agenda for the Council, including independent redistricting of electoral boundaries, nonpartisan open primaries, and “democracy vouchers” for campaign finance reform that could completely eliminate private donations to campaigns.
Besides some name recognition (in the 2017 mayoral primary against de Blasio, Albanese got 35.8% of the vote on Staten Island), Albanese enjoys another major advantage in the race. He has been endorsed by a slate of labor unions, many of them representing law enforcement. They include the Sergeants Benevolent Association, the Detectives' Endowment Association, the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, TWU Local 100, RWDSU, and others.
He lags Carr, however, in fundraising. As of September 27, the latest disclosure deadline, Albanese had raised more than $204,000 in total, including about $156,000 in public funds, and had spent just under $114,000. He had just over $90,000 in cash on hand.
David Carr
“I'm running for City Council because as a lifelong Staten Islander, I want to keep Staten Island a great place to live and raise a family that it always has been,” Carr said in a phone interview.
Carr is promising common sense representation and continuity, having already served the district for years as Council Member Matteo’s chief of staff. He has direct experience in handling legislation, capital budget issues, and the daily work of improving life for the district’s constituents, he said. “I believe all of that combined is a great record to come into this race with,” said Carr.
His chance of victory may be complicated by Wonica, the Conservative Party candidate, though he did not seem worried. “I consider myself both conservative and Republican,” Carr said, “and I believe that voters will recognize that I have a strong record of upholding conservative values when they go to the polls in the coming weeks.”
His top priority, as with the other candidates, is public safety. “As a Republican, being pro-NYPD, being pro-law and order is in my DNA,” Carr said. “It's a core issue for us. I don't believe that all of our public safety problems are going to be solved by supporting a Democrat who's part of the very party that’s the source of all the city's public safety woes.” He has promised to push to undo recent police reforms passed by the City Council – he wants to repeal the city’s criminalization of chokeholds by police and reinstate fuller qualified immunity, which prevents officers from being sued in civil court. Carr also advocates for property tax reform, citing the ever increasing costs of living in the city.
Carr has been a vocal critic of the various vaccine mandates that have been imposed by the de Blasio administration on businesses, school teachers and municipal workers. Though he is by no means a vaccine critic, he said taking the vaccine should be a personal choice and that the mandates are hurting people that sorely need to return to work. “I always say that I believe in science, but I also believe in talking to your doctor,” said Carr, who said he is vaccinated against COVID-19. “I believe that people should talk to the healthcare provider that they trust, and that's not necessarily a public health official that works for the city.”
Carr has received some criticism from his Democratic opponent for his apparent evasiveness on vaccinations. On October 9, Albanese called out Carr on Twitter for remaining silent about his vaccination status when all three candidates sat down for an interview with the Staten Island Advance editorial board. As of October 13, about 67% of Staten Island residents had received one vaccine dose and 61% were fully vaccinated, below the city averages.
Besides restoring the borough’s limited mass transit services like buses and ferries to pre-pandemic levels, Carr wants to improve traffic management and ease burdens faced by vehicle owners. He has been critical of the de Blasio administration’s policies for “nickel-and-diming” drivers – citing, for instance, new speed and red-light cameras – and for decisions that he says have slowed traffic, such as reducing the speed limit on Hylan Boulevard.
He wants to reduce regulations on small businesses and impose a moratorium on business fines and fees as the borough, and the city, continues to recover from the pandemic.
On Staten Island, the pandemic exposed the glaring absence of any public hospitals, reviving calls for the city to invest in one. Carr, however, believes that would be a mistake. “The best way that the city can make up for that discrepancy is by investing in our existing hospital system,” he said, arguing that a new hospital could financially hurt the borough’s two private hospitals. “We may end up with a net zero gain,” he said.
Resilient infrastructure is one of the most critical needs for the borough, which was inundated by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and continues to be at risk from major weather events. Among the major projects undertaken in the wake of the hurricane is the east shore seawall, which was meant to be completed this year but has been delayed because of radiation contamination near Great Kills Park. Though the Council has little power over the project, since it is led by the federal government, Carr has promised to continue to advocate for its speedy construction.
Besides receiving the blessing of his boss, Matteo, Carr has been endorsed by several Republican lawmakers including U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, Borough President Oddo, State Senator Andrew Lanza, Council Member Borelli, and Assemblymembers Mike Reilly and Michael Tannousis. He also has the backing of the Captains Endowment Association and the New York State Court Officers. He had raised nearly $329,000 for his campaign, including $254,000 in public funds, and spent nearly $258,000 as of the most recent filing. He had about $71,000 in cash on hand.
George Wonica
Wonica, the Conservative Party candidate, is a real estate broker with a 30-year career who wants to continue the “gold standard” of constituent services under successive Republican Council members in the district. He is running on a platform advocating for homeowners, small businesses and public school parents. And he wants to “re-introduce secession to be finally able to control our own destiny as our own city,” according to his website.
Wonica’s campaign did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.
In a candidate questionnaire for the Staten Island Advance, Wonica said his top priority is property tax reform and he will push the mayor’s task force to revive its efforts. “This needs to be the front and center issue, especially coming out of the pandemic where there will be a BIG budget shortfall and we all know who’s going to get the bill for it,” he wrote.
Wonica believes his deal-making skills in the real estate industry will help him find common ground with differing stakeholders in the interest of his constituents. “Negotiating is what I have done EVERY SINGLE DAY. It is what is needed to get things done in the District,” he wrote.
Echoing Carr, Wonica also wants to reverse the City Council’s police reform package and wants to “give our police the tools they need to keep us safe.” If elected, Wonica has pledged to hold monthly meetings with constituents and business owners. He wants more bus routes and fast ferries for the East and South Shores. And he wants to fight for the borough’s fair share in funding for its hospitals.
As of the last filing, Wonica had raised nearly $159,000, including about $123,000 in public funds, and spent about $64,000. He had just under $95,000 remaining.
Absentee balloting is underway; early voting is October 23-31, and Election Day is November 2.
The three candidates in Council District 50 will debate on NY1 at 7 p.m. on Thursday, October 14.
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Mayor Bill de Blasio (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
As the clock winds down on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s second term, he is exploring his political future, reflecting on his tenure, and laying the final pieces of his legacy. But as de Blasio celebrates some of his signature accomplishments and continues making grand pronouncements and attempts to shape his image, promises made were not always promises kept, major crises are festering, and a long list of unfinished business looms.
The devastation of Hurricane Ida, increases in gun violence and traffic fatalities, and the crisis on Rikers Island -- all of which have seen vulnerable New Yorkers dying at alarming rates -- are just some of the issues that halted what had been a rare run of good public relations for de Blasio, who has embraced his job in recent months like never before over nearly eight years. For most of those problems and others the mayor has blamed the pandemic and other forces that he says are largely out of his control while he’s also announced steps to try to mitigate them.
Though de Blasio has a number of opportunities ahead to shape or cement aspects of his legacy, and he has overseen a choppy but mostly positive start to another challenging pandemic school year, the city’s endemic problems continue to haunt him. Homelessness has bedeviled de Blasio’s administration throughout and the city’s affordable housing crisis remains immense. The city’s property tax system, which he promised to overhaul, remains untouched and as inequitable as ever. City schools are still some of the most segregated in the country and city streets are clogged with congestion.
As he eyes his two-term legacy, and possibly because he is gearing up for a run for governor in the June 2022 primary, de Blasio has spent the last several months all over the city making announcements, cutting ribbons, taking in meals and sights, and doing on-the-ground mayoral work he has often eschewed.
In his final roughly 80 days on the job, there is plenty of business that de Blasio could take across the finish line, some that he has even promised to do. For example:
After a years-long delay and after blowing past his own recent deadline, de Blasio just unveiled reforms to alter gifted and talented programming, in part to help desegregate city schools and improve education throughout them. He now says the city will embark on months of community engagement to shape the final plan, which will really be left up to his successor.
The mayor and NYPD are implementing 133 police reform measures as part of an overall package approved by the City Council in March – as his office pledged, all the initiatives have been launched and are in progress; 29 have been completed. In conjunction, the mayor and police commissioner are working to bring gun violence back down toward pre-pandemic levels after it skyrocketed in 2020 and into this year.
In December, the city is mandated to release its first “Streets Master Plan” under legislation championed by City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and signed by de Blasio into law in November 2019.
The administration is pursuing major rezonings in Gowanus and SoHo/NoHo, both of which would be significant accomplishments for the mayor as part of his affordable housing plan. The Gowanus rezoning, which has been decades in the making, was recently approved by the City Planning Commission and is headed to the City Council for its approval. The SoHo/NoHo rezoning is before the Commission but has yet to be put to a final vote. The two neighborhoods would signify the first wealthier, whiter areas of the city rezoned for more housing under de Blasio after his administration has rezoned a series of lower-income communities of color to pursue more housing and community improvements.
In Queens, the Department of Transportation in September began building two busways in Downtown Jamaica, which are the final two of five busways that the mayor announced last year in June as part of his “Better Buses Restart” plan to speed up bus service.
The mayor also promised in his State of the City speech in January that he would ban any new gas hookups in buildings by 2030, but City Council legislation with a much shorter timeframe has not budged since May (the mayor’s top climate policy advisor recently indicated to Gotham Gazette that a 2025 compromise may be in the offing).
Those are just some of the initiatives de Blasio may try to see to fruition in his waning days, while there are a number of other challenges he could try to address in the near-term and even as he continues to announce new long-term plans.
There are, of course, the ongoing public health, economic, educational, and housing recoveries from the pandemic. The city continues to “climb the ladder,” as the mayor is fond of saying, with covid vaccine mandates.
“Some stuff I don't think you can put at his feet. Like frankly the fight over vaccine mandates, I think Bill de Blasio is on the right side of history,” said Neal Kwatra, founder of Metropolitan Public Strategies, in a phone interview. Indeed, the city’s vaccine mandate for Department of Education employees was recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court and well over 95% of school workers have gotten at least one dose.
While Kwatra did say de Blasio should shoulder responsibility for the crisis at Rikers, he otherwise had praise for the mayor’s early accomplishments like successfully advocating for and implementing, with state funding, universal pre-kindergarten and expanding on it in his second term.
“I think there's a tendency right now at the end to just kind of beat up on him, which I don't think is entirely fair. I think he's earned a lot of the criticism he's gotten but he's also done some good things,” Kwatra added. “Pre-K is an unequivocal, legacy-defining issue that not only created a whole new class for kids and essentially a de facto subsidized child care benefit of sorts. Early childhood education, these are all hugely, hugely important things that will have an impact for decades into the future,” he said, referring to de Blasio’s extension of free public schooling to three-year-olds.
In a Spectrum News NY1/Ipsos poll from June, the mayor’s approval rating was flat-lining. Only 37% of city residents approved of his job performance while 47% disapproved. Yet, for the first time since early in his tenure, the mayor seemed to be enjoying his job. As he promoted the city’s recovery from the pandemic, he took pleasure in cultural pursuits he had long seemed to disregard. A more affable and energetic mayor seemed to emerge from his dour, self-serious shell.
In an interview with Politico Magazine in June, de Blasio walked the grounds of Prospect Park and expressed some regret for how he has carried out his mayoralty. His lament, however, did not stem from any policy failure but rather that he had let the job “tighten him” and seemingly alienate his constituents.
But for most other failures of his administration, the more recent ones as well as those years in the making, de Blasio has had little to say by way of contrition. As shootings and murders went up, he cited the disruptions of the pandemic but also incorrectly attributed it to a change in state bail laws and ‘closure’ of the court system. When traffic fatalities increased, he blamed the pandemic for turning people away from public transit. When the number of detainees dying at Rikers – which he hadn’t visited once in his second term until September 27 – this year kept growing he blamed nearly everyone but himself.
“His general pattern throughout his mayoralty has been to blame other people. His great nemesis is no longer there to blame,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran political consultant, referring to former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who resigned in disgrace in August.
In recent interviews, the mayor has provided an expectedly rosy reflection of his two terms. He has touted his signature accomplishment, universal pre-kindergarten, and its ongoing expansion to 3K. In an October 1 appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, he reiterated his oft-cited mea culpa in acknowledging his lack of progress on homelessness.
“The thing I've struggled with – I've been honest about it, Joe, and we finally are making some more profound progress, but it’s homelessness,” he said. “But I'm happy to say that after some absolute early misunderstandings and missteps on my part that I've owned up to, we found some new strategies that are working much better to get people off the streets...We're getting people off the streets with intense engagement that we didn't realize how to do previously. And I think we figured out how to do it going forward, but that was a tough learning curve for me.”
“It's about his future,” Sheinkopf added, as he summed up the mayor’s last few months of frenetic activity. “The guy knows nothing else but running for office and being a political guy so he's preparing for the next move, whatever that might be.”
De Blasio has been mulling a run for governor, and may even announce his candidacy before his mayoral term ends. But he has lost the support of a significant portion of his base, particularly white voters, both moderates and progressives, who voted for him in 2013. He has also been in pitched battle over vaccine mandates with labor unions, some of which have been close allies in the past. He does continue to retain support from Black voters, who helped propel him to victory and were instrumental in the win of his likely successor and Democratic nominee for mayor, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. But he may be eyeing a race that includes either New York Attorney General Letitia James or Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, both Black Brooklyn leaders.
There appears to be no clamor for de Blasio to run for governor, though that did not stop him from launching a short-lived presidential campaign in 2019 that took his attention away from his job for several months.
It's yet to be seen what kind of legacy tour de Blasio may go on in his final months or weeks, or what kind of organized effort he may undertake to shape how his tenure is viewed.
His approach to his waning days hasn’t been marked by the same efficiency as his predecessor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who literally counted down the days left in his second term and had digital clocks placed in agency offices to motivate municipal employees. By his highly-controversial third term, after winning a term-limit extension through the City Council over the will of voters, he instituted new count-up clocks to discourage workers from wasting time in meetings.
Bloomberg spent the last two weeks of his final term on a farewell tour, touting his accomplishments across the five boroughs, and even launched a website boasting of the progress he made.
“At this point you're really wrapping things up,” said Chris Coffey, a consultant at Tusk Strategies who worked in the Bloomberg administration for nearly all 12 years. “There's less than three months left...You're not going to start any new things. You might be able to roll out plans that you were supposed to make.”
While his time in office is running thin, de Blasio has appeared less focused on wrapping up ongoing work and more on new announcements, like his plan for universal accelerated learning instead of the current gifted and talented program.
He’s been making grand pronouncements, with more on the way, of policies that will then have to be implemented by the next mayor, who could either take ownership or even reject them, potentially wasting significant time and money spent getting de Blasio’s ideas off the ground.
Some of what de Blasio has announced is only possible because the city is flush with federal relief funds, a one-time infusion that he has been urged to use more wisely.
For example, the mayor has, in recent weeks, launched the new NYC Public Health Corps and announced the selection of Columbia University to run a new Pandemic Response Institute. He released a $2.7 billion blueprint for the city to respond to extreme weather events. He announced a $191 million 15-year plan to build offshore wind infrastructure and the hiring of new civilian “precinct greeters” at all NYPD precincts to improve relationships with communities. He launched the city’s “baby bonds” program, expanding on the existing NYC Kids RISE Save for College Program.
On Thursday, the Racial Justice Commission that de Blasio created to suggest changes to the city charter released its preliminary report, which will be followed by a final report in December containing ballot proposals that will appear on the 2022 general election ballot. The commission is perhaps the boldest move de Blasio has made to set in motion a virtually irreversible set of policies, pending voter approval, that he will not be tasked with implementing at all but could have major implications for the next mayor and future of the city.
It’s hard to gauge the mayor’s priorities for his remaining time, Kwatra said. “I think if I’m him, I'm probably going to do somewhat of a reputation bolstering, kind of farewell tour where he talks about things he did get done from pre-K to affordable housing to other things he wants to tout.”
Advocates say there are still significant decisions the mayor can make in the next few months, even if he will be hard pressed to reverse any mistakes he has made.
Criminal justice reform advocates, who had high hopes for a mayor who ran on the very issue of police reform, have been particularly disappointed by the mayor’s record. “It would be a tall order to undo the harm he has caused in the past eight years in the next three months, but he still has the power to ensure that the NYPD fires the officers who killed and engaged in cover-ups related to Delrawn Small, Kawaski Trawick, Antonio Williams, Eric Garner, Mohamed Bah and Allan Feliz,” said Loyda Colon, executive director of the Justice Committee and spokesperson for Communities United for Police Reform, a coalition group . “He should also order the NYPD to change the Disciplinary Matrix so that the demands of 16 families whose loved ones were killed and nearly 70 groups are incorporated to ensure that officers who engage in misconduct are fired.”
Cory Epstein, director of communications for Transportation Alternatives, praised the years of success that Vision Zero displayed in making street safety changes. “However, the mayor has not scaled the success, brought it to more neighborhoods across the city; has not built upon what works and has not meaningfully reclaimed space from cars to really protect vulnerable street users like pedestrians and cyclists,” he said.
Epstein pointed to an especially egregious failure when a driver killed a three-month-old and critically injured the child’s mother in September. “The mayor, in the following days, has blamed everybody but himself,” Epstein said. “He said it's a covid problem. He said it’s an Albany problem. But the buck stops with him when it's our streets, and he has power to make an intersection safer.”
Epstein said the mayor could, as one of his final acts, expedite the streets master plan to respond to the traffic fatality crisis. “The current mayor has the power now to make sure the plan is ambitious, bold, funded and is not rearranging the deck chairs of how we make streets safe, healthy, and ready for the climate crisis.”
On Tuesday, Transportation Alternatives released a new study showing that a large number of the “open streets” in de Blasio’s pandemic era program to give more of the streetscape to New Yorkers and away from cars are not in fact being kept to their intended purposes by the city. It’s the type of management failure that many advocates, lawmakers, and others want de Blasio to address in his final months. Instead, it appears he’s more focused on headlines and his possible run for governor.
“Stupid, he's not. Has he run the city well? The answer is obviously no,” Sheinkopf said of de Blasio. “Is he trustworthy? Depends on your point of view, but none of the problems that had to be resolved have been resolved…But his time in office has been about creating the choreography of his leaving for the last six months or so.”
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette