State Sen. Malcolm Smith woke up to FBI agents pounding on his door in Queens on Tuesday morning—and his colleagues in the Independent Democratic Conference woke up to a pounding headache. Federal prosecutors charged Smith with bribing New York City political officials in a quixotic bid to run for mayor on the Republican ballot, the latest in a steady stream of corruption cases flowing out of Albany. The elaborate alleged conspiracy and extortion plot also ensnared Queens Councilman Dan Halloran, two… [More]

Former New York City Councilwoman Melinda Katz picked up endorsements from two prominent preachers in the Rockaway section of the borough in her bid for Queens borough president. Revs. Evan Gray Sr. and Dr. Dwayne Sleet of Pastor Macedonia Baptist and First Baptist Church, respectively, announced their support for Katz yesterday, part of a strategy by Katz to reach across demographic groups. African-Americans make up roughly 30 percent of the borough and are a key constituency in winning a borough-wide… [More]

Bruce Gyory handicaps the Queens borough president race. … [More]

Legislators want their cash back, but the governor stands in their way.… [More]

Which are better: internal campaign polls or public polls?… [More]

Josh Fox, the documentary filmmaker who made Gasland, visited the Capitol on Monday to support state Sen. Tony Avella’s bill on workplace safety for the natural gas drilling and to film a sequel. “The state is accountable and has done nothing to fix workplace safety on these sites,” Fox said. Avella said he was confident the bill would pick up support from Republicans and independent Democrats. “In the event that the governor somehow allows high-volume horizontal hydrofracking in addition to vertical hydrofracking,… [More]

Nine months out of the 2013 election—the first without an incumbent mayor since 2001—the field of candidates for citywide office has largely taken shape, and the media and pollsters have leapt ahead to handicap the races’ outcome. Consultants have already done their utmost to sow the narratives they hope will grow into victory in the primary and general elections, and insiders have already discarded a host of hopefuls as impossibilities, while elevating others to the status of frontrunners. But for… [More]

The Upper West Side is one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city, a reliable bastion of liberal politics, home to Jerry Seinfeld, Eric Schneiderman and Scott Stringer alike. It’s also home to the city’s best delis and diners. Take Artie’s, for example. The 15-year-old delicatessen is a West Side institution that attracts middle-aged condo and co-op residents eager for the tastes of home. “In most families, both spouses are normally working a profession where they work late, and it’s… [More]

W’s Bar & Restaurant is easy to miss if you’re an outsider driving through this suburban enclave of Staten Island—the southernmost section of the borough, a stone’s throw from New Jersey across the Arthur Kill. Situated in a nondescript strip mall adjacent and in proximity to several other equally bland strip malls, from the outside it looks like nothing special—a dive, a hole-in-the-wall—but the atmosphere in the bar tells a different story. The bar appears not to have been redecorated… [More]

On this leafy street in northeast Queens, asking questions about who should be New York City’s next mayor invariably turn to the current mayor—and that’s about it. Several residents say that all they know is that they’re happy that Mayor Michael Bloomberg won’t be running City Hall next year. Even though more than two-thirds of Bayside voters cast their ballots for Bloomberg in both 2005 and 2009, the incumbent seems to have worn out his welcome in the neighborhood after… [More]