Kim Devlin

A day after Kim Devlin's official departure, Tom Suozzi's campaign still says that all is rosy.

David Chauvin, a Suozzi spokesman, said that "there is a renewed sense of energy" and that they feel very "fortunate to have Paul Rivera, who is hitting the ground running. There is a new level of excitement because Paul is really bringing to the table new ideas."

No word yet if Rivera will be as genteel with reporters as Devlin claimed to have been. As the Times noted in apurposefully skeptical kicker to its story today, she claimed that she never raised her voice at a reporter.

Ah, well -- we'll leave that one.

--Jason Horowitz

Following up on Newsday's story, Liz Benjamin just got Kim Devlin on the phone to talk about her departure from the Suozzi campaign. -- Josh Benson

Tom Suozzi just left a rally at Lafayette Square in Buffalo -- about two blocks from the Democrats convention center -- where he continues to work the only line of attack left open to him.

"Albany is sticking it to us and we are getting the short end of the stick," said Suozzi, campaign manager Kim Devlin relayed to us. "And," Suozzi said, pointing at the Hyatt, "Eliot is showing that he is sticking with them, but I'm sticking with you."

Devlin said the crowd went "crazy."

But Suozzi doesn't have the insider/outside stunt to himself: U.S. Senate candidate Mark Greenstein is also working crowds outside the convention center, planning an appearnace at 4pm at the Bijou Grille "just 2.5 blocks from the Hyatt."

—Jason Horowitz Update: Ben has a photo of that "crazy" crowd Kim Devlin was talking about. She must have meant they were going crazy on the inside.

A Nassau Democrat tells The Politicker that the Suozzi camp is readying a petitioning operation that will rely, in part, on county workers -- particularly Board of Elections patronage employees and Democratic staff of the County legislature -- "volunteering" their vacation time in June and July to gather nominating petition signatures in upstate New York.

And if that doesn’t have you feeling the winds of reform on your back, hard to see what will.

Suozzi aide Kim Devlin responds that Suozzi supporters on the County payroll, along with others, have helped with petitioning before, and probably will again.

"We never tell anybody -- especially a county employee -- that they have to petition," she said.

Meanwhile in Nassau, County Legislator Craig Johnson endorsed Eliot today, citing "a diversity of opinion in Nassau County as to the appropriateness of County Executive Suozzi’s political activities."

So Tom Suozzi is starting to look like that rare species, an actual conservative Democrat. Not sure how this gets him many votes in a Democratic Primary, but it could make the substance interesting.

His early policy stuff -- abstinence, no new taxes -- has slanted that way, as have his hires. First there was former Lieberman staffer Dan Gerstein.

And now Suozzi has hired Harry Siegel, a former editorial-page editor at the New York Sun and the former editor of the conservative alt-weekly New York Press, as his policy director. Harry is the one who quit, with his deputies, after his publisher refused to run the famous Danish Mohammed cartoons.

Suozzi aide Kim Devlin calls him "a real find."

As for Siegel's politics, he's an idiosyncratic urban conservative, though I'm not sure he'd describe himself that way. Here's from the manifesto he ran on taking over the Press:

Everyone agrees not only that the city has changed immensely since 1988, when New York Press was founded, but also that something has been lost. Only fools and charlatans, though, wish it were 1988 again, when the city was crime-ridden and madman-strewn, on the cusp of bankruptcy and the verge of race riots. A different group of fools and charlatans are ecstatic about Gotham's brave new existence as a place for college grads to drink, screw, and so forth for a few years before growing up and settling down elsewhere and for tourists to shop and gawk; a mixture of circus, campus and strip mall.

These need not be the only alternatives, but it's where we now are. Gotham is fast becoming Mayor Bloomberg's vision of a luxury city, where the wealthy subsidize the poor and everyone in between scrambles to make it. Or leaves. And that's not to mention the vision—we use the word generously—of the Democratic candidates.

Not sure how that translates into policy. Also in that piece, an account of some stumbling drunkenness, which everyone's in favor of.

But now that we're getting some real ideological distinctions in the Democratic Primary, this seems like a reasonable question: What do Spitzer and Suozzi think about the Iraq War?

I missed the Sunday shows yesterday, but nobody can accuse Suozzi aide Kim Devlin of being less than a true believer. She wrote in an email to campaign aides and others:

"Tom taped some of the Sunday shows today and he was, as usual, fantastic. Please tune in if you can. And tell everyone you know!!!"

!!!

Also, a reader spotted Tom at a Fordham University lunch over the weekend, "getting warm embraces by many including Father O'Hare [former head of the city's Campaign Finance Board] (who may be troubled by Eliot's campaign financing)."

The Politicker has learned that Tom Suozzi's been talking to political consultant Dan Gerstein, a longtime advisor to Joe Lieberman with a reputation like his old boss's for crossing some of the traditional Democratic interest groups, notably the teachers' unions, and who is not a favorite of the people he likes to call the Democrats' "angry activist base."

"He's given us some advice, but we don't have a campaign at this time," Suozzi aide Kim Devlin said when asked if Gerstein was on the campaign.

The connection makes some sense. Suozzi, along with Shelly Silver (an odd couple), was one of the early, prominent supporters of Senator's 2004 presidential bid.

"Senator Lieberman is a big fan of Tom Suozzi's and through my exposure to Tom under Sen Lieberman I became a big fan as well," Gerstein says. "I'm interested in helping him advance his reform agenda in New York in any way I can."  read more »

Gerstein has a new blog, on which he's been recently clashing with the "angry activist base." The folks on DailyKos, it seems, weren't thrilled with a recent op-ed of his in the Wall Street Journal.

I ran into Tom Suozzi yesterday at the 1199 rally, and asked him about Saturday's Times story, in which Pat Healy wouldn't let him withdraw a whack at Spitzer from the record.

Me: So are you mad at Pat Healy?

Suozzi: Nah. He's just trying to do a job and make a name for himself -- on my back.

Suozzi aide Kim Devlin: He's joking! And he's off the record!  read more »

Suozzi: I'm not on the record, am I?

For the record, he did seem to be joking.

The Suozzi sightings are starting to proliferate. He had breakfast at the Regency yesterday morning with the head of the New York City Partnership, Kathy Wylde. They were discussing "regional issues," according to Suozzi aide Kim Devlin, though one imagines that Wylde's constituents in the business community wouldn't mind seeing Eliot taken down.

And who should Suozzi he run into at the Regency but Ken Langone? A pure coincidence, Devlin said, adding that the men just spoke briefly.  read more »

Then, yesterday evening, Suozzi swung by the Harlem Family Christmas Party, a staff-heavy affair that's a long way from Nassau County. But he's not unreasonable to think there might be an opening against Eliot there.

UPDATE: Partnership spokesman Brian Mahanna emails: "The Partnership meets regularly with elected officials from across the state, including Attorney General Spitzer, and meeting with the Naussau County executive and co-chair of New York Metropolitan Transportation Council to share views on regional cooperation on transit, Medicaid and other issues of mutual concern was in no way a political statement."

Azi of the New York Press (and formerly, of Politicker intern fame) offers this Nassau nugget:

On NY1 last night, Democratic State Chairman Denny Farrell said he hasn't spoken to Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi in two years. So much for cell phones, right?

"I don't think it's a secret that Tom Suozzi is not the chairman's favorite person since Tom began pointing out the problems in our state government through his fixalbany.com campaign," said Suozzi campaign manager Kim Devlin, who learned of the comments when I called.

"However, Mr. Farrell must have forgotten when Tom called him earlier this year to congratulate him on his new daughter."  read more »

Ouch!

Before hanging up, Kim was heard telling an aide they have to start taping NY1 from now on. Good call.