Jen Bluestein

Up for an Oscar this year is Marshall Curry's documentary about the Newark Mayor's race, Street Fight, featuring a memorable line from former Ferrer spokeswoman Jen Bluestein.

"As formidable an opponent Sharpe James is, the penguins are just as tough," says Jen.

The Politicker is attempting to compensate, in advance, for the probability of an intensely boring debate with wall-to-wall pre-debate coverage.

Anyway, various sources say that even if Mike doesn't turn up, his supporters will be packing the house, which could make for some raucousness, given the Apollo's traditions of, er, audience participation.  read more »

"Sending supporters to a debate you refuse to attend????" Ferrer aide Jen Bluestein messaged in response to the news of Mike's plans. "That's like eating all the samples at the soup store but never buying any soup."

Just in time for Freddy and Tom, meanwhile, The Politicker has located a transcript of Chris Rock's White Person's Guide to Surviving the Apollo.

Freddy, pushing back hard on yesterday's attacks, has a release out pointing to rising crime on the island of Staten. The numbers do show a clear rise in crime, but the most striking figure is the 80% increase in the murder rate since 2003.

Striking until you realize that the sky-high murder number is...9, which a reader from a rougher part of town noted under the heading "hilarious."  read more »

Still, it's a clean shot, and a rare breath of actual content.

And expect more: Ferrer communications director Jen Bluestein, our Jess Bruder reports, turned up at the release of Freddy's latest ad this afternoon with a slingshot in her back pocket.

Yesterday's item on adman David Doak's all-but-official departure from the Ferrer campaign prompted a funny pair of responses: firm denials from the campaign that Doak is out, and also a number of tips as to who will replace him.

The likely choice is apparently a respected Madison Avenue guy who dabbles occasionally in politics, Ellis Verdi.

The new faces from the corporate advertising world will be working with Ferrer aide Jonathan Prince, a Clinton administration hand. Prince, according to several Democrats, been Ferrer's point man on the television campaign, and will continue in that role.

Doak's firm had been reduced to serving as the production company, not the usual place of a high-payed media strategist, and has apparently lost interest in playing that role.

Several Democrats suggested that Verdi, who had a role (more to come) in Hillary's Senate run and is close to Prince, will have a hand in producing Ferrer's next round of television spots. Verdi also has a running relationship with the Ferrer consultants over at the Global Strategy Group.  read more »

Ferrer spokeswoman Jen Bluestein emails: "DCO's contract runs through the primary and we're currently talking to them and other firms about how we structure our team to ramp up to beat Mike Bloomberg in November."

So look for an word soon of a new team to "join" Doak on the campaign, and read "replace" for "join."

After splitting with longtime consultant David Axelrod midway through this year's campaign, Freddy is facing yet another round of turmoil over who, exactly, is shaping his message. David Doak, the veteran adman currently making English-language ads for the Democratic frontrunner, will no longer play a central role on the campaign, Democrats tell The Politicker.

It's unclear whether Doak will stick around after the primary; if so, it will apparently be in a face-saving, nominal capacity. But he's not expected to be cutting Freddy's next round of television advertising.

Democrats tell The Politicker that Doak has been sidelined internally as control, and spending, get consolidated with Ferrer's longtime advisors, including Roberto Ramirez and Luis Miranda. Like Axelrod, Doak was never made part of the campaign's inner circle, and the relationship between the consultants and the campaign has been a running source of friction.

All that was forthcoming from Ferrer spokeswoman Jen Bluestein was a carefully-worded statement that doesn't answer the question of who will be making Freddy's English TV-spots in the fall:  read more »

"DCO are a critical part of our team and they will remain a critical part of our team helping us beat Mike Bloomberg in November," she writes. "Mirram Global [Miranda's and Ramirez's firm] makes our Spanish ads, and they will continue to do so."

Maybe it's the heat, but there seems to be some thin skin out there on the trail today.

At an afternoon City Hall presser, Weiner, with uncharacteristic mildness, resisted bait from half a dozen reporters and criticized Freddy in the mildest possible terms: He said that Ferrer is "a good man" and that Freddy wants to raise taxes, neither of which the Ferrer camp would dispute. The harshest line he took was to associate Freddy, as he has before, with "the ideas of the 1970s and 1980s." (Anthony had his own issues with the ideas of capital and expense budgets, of which more later.)

Anyway, Ferrer aide Jen Bluestein is out with this response:

"We recognize that anyone in the Democratic Party who attacks Freddy Ferrer gets newspaper headlines, but those attacks do nothing to address the crisis in our schools or the lack of affordable housing. Freddy Ferrer is proud to be the only candidate to propose a way to get the 23 billion dollars our schools are owed by Albany, and put forth plans to graduate more kids and build homes families can afford. We expect every candidate to do the same--including Mike Bloomberg."  read more »

Is this a shot across Anthony's bow, warning him that if he attacks Freddy at the debate, he'll get...more press? Some complicated strategy to sideline Miller? The Politicker is puzzled.

Word has it that the C. Virginia Fields campaign is about to finalize the hiring of a new press secretary... one Kirsten Powers. For those of us who are actually nerdy enough to seek out sub-plots in this mayoral primary, Powers' new position will set up the scintillating prospect of close combat with former partner and current Ferrer spokeswoman Jen Bluestein. The two worked together for a time as Powers/Bluestein, a partnership sufficiently glamorous for Ben to have described it as "a movie script waiting to happen." And who said this was going to be a boring race?  read more »

In case Freddy advisor Jen Bluestein hasn't told you yet -- she hasn't? -- we bring you the news that her brother's excellent Cambridge restaurant, the Craigie Street Bistrot, won him a "best new chef" award from Food & Wine Magazine.

The restaurant was, not coincidentally, a haunt of Democratic operatives during last summer's convention.  read more »

And in other culinary news, it pains our Anglophile hearts to fully agree with Gothamist that the food at Brooklyn's Chip Shop is not so good, and that the service is much worse.

Political consultants from central casting: intense Bostonian, blond Alaskan; ex-bosses-Bono, Tina B  read more »