Patrick Brennan

During a Q&A in Albany today, reporters tried to ask Michael Bloomberg about Chris Smith's story that details his former aide's travel across the country in service of a possible presidential bid.

But all they got was the usual boilerplate denial, which according to a reader who was there, went something like: No matter how many times you ask the question, I'm not a candidate for President.

This reader writes:  read more »

One of the city’s most influential lobbying and consulting firms just picked up a key Michael Bloomberg commissioner, Patrick Brennan.

The Parkside Group announced it hired Brennan as a president, adding him to its small but well-connected roster. Brennan was a commissioner for the Community Assistance Unit. Brennan also ran political and field operations for Bloomberg’s re-election campaign in 2005.

Brennan, incidentally, is one of relatively few Bloomberg staffers to have left, despite that fact that the mayor is a lame duck who is -- ostensibly -- not running for higher office at the end of his term.

Mayor Bloomberg just announced Patrick J. Brennan as the long-awaited replacement to Jonathan Greenspun as head of the Community Asssistance Unit, an office that has taken on renewed importance and prominence since all the demonstrations and hard feelings started in the city's Orthodox community a couple of months ago. After rumors that Terry Tolbert or Fred Kreizman might get the nod, the choice of Brennan seems, in retrospect, like an obvious one.

After all, Brennan has worked as golden boy Kevin Sheakey's Shief of Staff and played a significant role in Bloomberg's reelction campaign as head ofcommunity outreach.

The mayor also picked Christopher Coffey as Deputy Commissioner for Operations, and Fred Kreizman, who in the early stages seemed to be up for the top job, as Assistant Commissioner of Citywide Outreach.

As Ben noted in his column this week, there had been a movement within City Hall to give the position to an African-American. (Thus the early rumors about Tolbert.)

The lesson is probably this: Never underestimate Kevin Sheekey.

—Jason Horowitz

As the media fades to irrelevance in the last days of the campaign, the people who matter are the ones doing Get Out the Vote, GOTV to the insiders.

And a major Bloomberg campaign player who has, until now, escaped notice is Maura Keaney. On loan from the union UNITE HERE, she's running Mike's GOTV operation, playing a similar (if better-funded) role to 1199's Patrick Gaspard on the Ferrer campaign.

Her low-profile spot running an election day operation expected to include about 10,000 people (not the 50,000 number the campaign touts, but still a lot) says some interesting things about labor politics.

For one thing, her union, UNITE-HERE, has quietly become a more important political force in the city than it gets credit for.

"We don't have a process, as some unions do, about generating a lot of press about the numebrs we have," the union's chief of staff, Chris Chafe, says. "We just put our shoulders into it and get it done."

It's also a reminder that, for all the (accurate) reports of the decline of labor, unions are still the masters of GOTV. Keaney's working for Mike under ex-1199er Patrick Brennan.  read more »

And, as Chafe notes, Keaney's and Gaspard's roles are a sign of the strength of the Change to Win unions, which include SEIU and UNITE HERE, and which recently split from the AFL-CIO.

We're just back from the first campaign finance briefing at Mike's spiffy new headquarters off Times Square, where we noticed a diverse bunch of volunteers and some clear Kevin Sheekey touches. Among our favorites were the five clocks along one wall, each showing the time in a different key location: Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, Manhattan, and Queens.

Also decorating the place were several familiar Democratic faces who, it turns out, are being quite well compensated for switching teams this year.  read more »

Here are the salaries of Mike's top political operatives, on an annual basis:

Kevin Sheekey: $250,008 Terrance Tolbert (ex-Keith Wright aide): $180,000 Stu Loeser (ex-Schumer): $144,000 Patrick Brennan (ex-1199): $144,000

The Ferrer campaign made three minor hires today -- or, as the Post would have it, landed a Key Black Strategist or two. But we hear the staffer Ferrer's team really covets is Patrick Gaspard, Dennis Rivera's well-reputed political hand, currently the political director for Rivera's powerhouse union, SEIU Local 1199.

Hiring Gaspard, a discreet guy who runs what many see as the best political operation in town, would indicate that Freddy will have the same all-out backing from 1199 he enjoyed in 2001, and that Rivera (and Gaspard) like his chances in November. So far, it's been hard to tell where Dennis stands, though he did let one of his staffers -- Patrick Brennan -- take a job with Mike.

But we note that Gaspard's name isn't on the press release the campaign was kind enough to send over. So, in our overstated political reporter's way, we wonder whether there isn't a Gaspard Primary going on -- the contestants most likely being Freddy and nobody -- with the outcome determined by the judgement of Gaspard and his boss on Freddy's political prospects. No Gaspard would hardly be a vote of confidence.

(Yes, we expect 10% of that raise you're getting, Patrick.)  read more »

For the record, the others going on board are Scott Schell, Leonard Joseph, and Nicole Landset. All, we trust, Key Black Strategists.

Three recent hires for Bloomberg's reelection campaign have made news: Schumer aide Stu Loeser, Dennis Rivera aide Patrick Brennan, and Harlem Assembleyman Keith Wright aide Terence Tolbert.

These were interpreted as a hint at a Rivera endorsement and as a slap at Gifford Miller, who tried to hire Terence.

But we're told that the right way to interpret the hirings is as gestures from two powerful congressional Democrats that they'll offer only token opposition to the mayor.

Stu, obviously, is Schumer's communications director. Patrick is the younger brother of Chuck's talented state director, Martin Brennan. Add to that that the fact that Chuck's wife, Iris Weinshall, is one of Bloomberg's commissioners, and the fact that Mike and Chuck get along, and we find it hard to imagine the Senator throwing himself into the battle this fall.  read more »

Charlie Rangel is a more interesting case. We're pretty sure that Terence, who is in Rangel's Harlem sphere, wouldn't have taken the job over Rangel's opposition. The mayor has also energetically courted Rangel along with another Harlem titan, David Dinkins. You could, if you wanted, take these two crypto-endorsements as a backhanded vote of confidence in Freddy Ferrer. If Chuck really thought his protege and former aide, Anthony Weiner, was the likely nominee, he might stand a bit further back. Ditto for Rangel and his old friend C. Virginia Fields. Bloomberg's aides clearly expect to face Ferrer, and these Democrats apparently do too.