Joseph Mercurio

On the surface, the story is a familiar one.

A young insurgent, Dan Squadron, decides to challenge an entrenched incumbent, Marty Connor, in a State Senate race, in a year when public antipathy towards the ossified ways of Albany is greater than it has been in recent memory. The line between underdog liberal reformer and entrenched proponent of the status quo should be clear.

But a couple of unusual things have happened. Squadron, 28, has acquired the trappings, at least, of the establishment guy. He has raced out to a lead in high-increment fund-raising -- he has spent heavily but still has nearly $300,000 on hand, whereas Connor has barely spent $2500 and has only $83,000 -- and has gained support from some powerful labor entities like UNITE HERE, the Communication Workers of America and the union-backed Working Families Party.  read more »

Michael Bloomberg is traveling to Cincinnati this weekend to talk about ways to reduce poverty, the mayor's press office just announced.

For those keeping track, it’s his third trip to a battleground state two months, and whether or not some people still seriously consider him as a viable presidential running mate, it will certainly keep him in the spotlight. He'll be talking to a convention of the NAACP, where, according to the official announcement from City Hall, he will "unveil a new alternative to the Federal poverty measure that was developed over the last year by the City's Center for Economic Opportunity."

In June, Bloomberg was in Florida defending both candidates against "whisper campaigns." Later this month he's going to Minnesota to fund-raise for the Independence Party.

Republicans are having some trouble finding a candidate to run for the Congressional seat Vito Fossella is planning to vacate at the end of the year.

Could they find a solution by turning to … Fossella?

A couple of political consultants I talked to think the idea is at least theoretically plausible. He has, they point out, managed to get through the worst of the press coverage without disappearing entirely from the public eye. (He has been maintaining a surprisingly unremarkable presence at parades.) And he'd sort of be operating, if he chose to renew interest in running on the Republican line, in a vacuum. As Dan Gerstein put it, Fossella “may be able to get the G.O.P. nomination since they can't seem to give the seat away on that side.” (This, in a district in which George W. Bush won 55 percent of the vote in 2004.)  read more »

Inspired by the ado over Barack Obama's use of Deval Patrick's phrasing, and similar use by Hillary Clinton of at least one Obama phrase, I emailed a few quotable people in New York for them to give them the opportunity to put a catchphrase of their own on the record.

Here they are:

Simcha Felder:
“Do not place unsolicited advertising materials on this property."

Brian Ziff-Levine:
“It’s the undecideds, stupid.”

Joe Mercurio:
“Silence is an incredibly stupid communications strategy. No wait I actually stole that from Frank Luntz.”

Doug Muzzio:
"'If a frog had wings he wouldn't be bumping his ass on the ground' (cribbed from my father-in-law, Darrell Saunders)."

Phil Anderson:
"No reform, no raise."

Charles Barron:
“The renter's rebate. Rock Hackshaw gave me that idea when I was running for mayor in 2005. The next thing I know, Gifford Miller is talking about it, and now, Christine Quinn is."

More after the jump.  read more »

Eliot Spitzer is making his second trip to Washington D.C. today, to explain his decision to back off his plan to allow illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses.

Spitzer will make the announcement flanked by New York’s Democratic congressional delegation, which almost uniformly opposes a related aspect of that driver’s license policy: the federal Real ID Act.

The long-term political question is going to be whether this will be the beginning of a second act for Spitzer, in which he finally regains control of a governing agenda that's been getting away from him since he took office. Short-term, though, the question will be whether this will really allow him to step away cleanly from the licensing issue at all. Certainly, his Republican opponents will do their best to see that the controversy lingers.

More after the jump.  read more »

Last night I emailed a few people to ask who the real winners and losers were from yesterday’s elections.

Here’s some of what they said.

Joseph Mercurio:"The losers are the people who complicated an election where Democrats would have continued to pick up seats throughout the state by aggressively pushing a new plan for driver licenses that could have been announced Wednesday for the first time.  The winners will be the Democrats who took strong positions and won anyway."

Jerry Skurnik: "Overall there certainly wasn't the big Republican surge somebody thought would happen because of troopergate and the driver's license issue but the Dems did not continue to make gains as they did the last few years."

Evan Stavisky: "We [his firm, Parkside Group] defeated the 12-year incumbent District Attorney of Rockland County (who, earlier this year finished up his term as President of the NYS District Attorneys Association)."

Your thoughts?

Hmm, we were always a bit confused about the reports of a non-agression pact between Freddy Ferrer and Virginia Fields.

We were further a bit puzzled when, after news broke that Freddy hadn't been so mad at those Diallo officers after all, Virginia released a sharply-worded rebuttal.

But Joe Mercurio clears it up for us in the Times today:

"Mr. Ferrer and Ms. Fields recently reached an agreement not to attack each other during the primary campaign, but a spokesman for Ms. Fields, Joseph Mercurio, explained that they are allowed to contrast their positions."  read more »

He further explained that if the two candidates meet in person, they will limit themselves to fighting with knives.