Patti Harris

When billionaire term limits activist Ron Lauder was speaking to Ed Skyler earlier this week, he was, for all intents and purposes, speaking to the mayor.

That's because Michael Bloomberg was traveling oversees with two top deputy mayors, Patti Harris and Kevin Sheekey. So, the person who was left in charge was Skyler, the deputy mayor for operations. (A Bloomberg spokesman dutifully noted, "The Mayor continues to act as Mayor. He is in constant communication with staff via telephone and email.")

The theme of this year's Inner Circle Dinner, the City Hall version of the Gridiron, was "$pent," and Mike cooperated, with an extended skit with the cast of Spamalot that was harsher than any of the roasting the press had done earlier Saturday evening. The papers covered the main show, but there were a few details that didn't wind up in print.

They included Bill Cunningham laughing uproriously at a verion of Landslide that featured Patti Harris and Diana Taylor dueling over who really won the election for Mike and the Mayor taking a shot at Cheney (Mr. Vice President, you need a license for that," he says after a shot rings out.).

I didn' t see Freddy there, but he might have liked it. "I wish I had those ideas," Mike says at one point of some policy planks of Ferrer's. "You will," says Sheekey. The Mayor also describes his vast volunteer operation as "50,000 volunteers -- give or take 20,000."

The Sun and NY1 News were the media outlets taking particular shots from the Mayor: "I don't recognize you." "That's because I'm on New York One," goes one exchange. (Though I'm not sure not being mentioned at all is such a good thing either.)

A bit more on the changes in senior staff at City Hall, where a source tells The Politicker that the departing chief-of-staff, Peter Madonia, won't be replaced. Instead, Ed Skyler and Patti Harris will split the chief's responsibilities, with key agency heads, like Ray Kelly, reporting directly to the Mayor.

The bottom line here is that Mike is dispensing with a layer of technocrats who ran the mechanics government while the Mayor and his people learned their way around, veterans of city government like Madonia and first Deputy Mayor Marc Shaw. The core of the new cabinet -- Deputy Mayors Harris, Sheekey, and Skyler -- is composed of people who worked for Bloomberg LP, and who will be likely to follow the Mayor back to the private sector (if not into the presidential campaign of Sheekey's dreams).  read more »

So this will probably be a much more personal term than the last one, in the sense that Rudy Giuliani's mayoralty was intensely personal. (Mike, who has no organized opposition, is in that way more powerful than Rudy.) Now he's losing a buffer of permanent bureaucrats, a change that comes with an upside (more control) and a downside (more excess).

In any case, it'll be all Mike.

In the chaotic hours before Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s inauguration on Sunday, Deputy Mayor Patti H  read more »

In the chaotic hours before Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s inauguration on Sunday, Deputy Mayor Pat  read more »

Mike hosted a packed, $1,000-a-head fundraiser for the Log Cabin Republicans last night.

We hear Patrick Murphy, the Log Cabiner running for Council on the East Side, left a good impression on a crowd that included Bloomberg advisors Patti Harris, Kevin Sheekey, and Jonathan Capehart. Also there were Georgette Mosbacher and Herman Badillo.  read more »

Mike told the crowd that he knows the rap on him is that he used to be a Democrat, but that Giuliani was once a Democrat, and Reagan was once a Democrat.

"Badillo, weren't you one too?" he asked, and then called for a show of hands of lifelong Republicans, and found very few.

A top aide to Mayor Michael Bloomberg has accused arts executives who depend on city funding of poli  read more »

On an autumn afternoon several years ago, Michael Bloomberg and his friend Betsy Gotbaum were drivin  read more »