Personality
City & State Time Capsule: Alums share their favorite stories
To celebrate our 20th anniversary, former staffers give a behind-the-scenes look at their reporting.
Jean Suplicy / iStock Editorial / Getty Images Plus / Getty Images
We stand on the shoulders of giants at City & State. Over the past 20 years, the editors and reporters who have led and filled this newsroom built a reputation of excellence for our nonpartisan coverage. And that reputation has been hard-earned in the rough and tumble world of New York politics. During that time, City & State became a weekly magazine, launched several must-read newsletters and won top awards in our field. But we always come back to our history, and the people who established City & State’s marquee features. To celebrate City & State’s 20th anniversary, 20 former editors and reporters recalled their favorite contributions to City & State.
Edward-Isaac Dovere
In some ways, my 2010 profile of Rep. Jerry Nadler is a time capsule: Eric Schneiderman had just been elected state attorney general; Scott Stringer was the hugely popular Manhattan borough president already crisscrossing the city to prepare for the mayoral run we all knew was coming; and protégés and admirers were piling up to emulate Upper West Side-style marrying of old-school intellectual progressivism and the bustling new activism.
“He may not be Boss Tweed, or really any kind of stereotypical boss, but right now, Jerry Nadler rules local politics,” I wrote then.
Everyone who was or wanted to be a player in New York politics called and took his calls. He could change a campaign with one joint endorsement event – I remember, for example, standing under the overhang at City Hall on a rainy Saturday as he led the Upper West Side to come out in force for Bill de Blasio’s New York City public advocate campaign in May 2009, months before it started to gel in any other real way. He was, as Stringer’s one-time Assembly district director had once told me, the Bono of Fairway.
I first encountered Nadler as a child, back when he was fighting the efforts of a guy named Donald Trump who wanted to build some buildings that would block the view of the Hudson River we had out of our otherwise not so nice apartment on West End Avenue. Interning in his office was my first exposure to Washington, D.C., and 26 years later, I was at Fairway with him in 2022, watching him the night before the primary against Carolyn Maloney as he campaigned in front of the original location, on his way to yet another of his huge victories.
The power base has shifted in the past 16 years – to Brooklyn, to Astoria. What Zohran Mamdani built for his own campaign and expanded in his congressional and Assembly endorsements in June puts him much more in charge of a Democratic Socialists of America trajectory of city politics, and the days when de Blasio was asking Nadler to administer his oath of office as public advocate have been supplanted by first de Blasio and then Mamdani bringing in Bernie Sanders to swear them in as mayor.
But Nadler’s power still matters, whether when he gave Mamdani a crucial credibility boost by backing him right after the primary last year, or as he defined what will likely be a decadeslong continued legacy for his seat: the moment I knew Micah Lasher was going to be hard to beat in the primary was the call I got from one of his consultants last year, about 10 minutes after I’d told Nadler’s district chief of staff Rob Gottheim that I was working on a story about possible primaries.
It turned out to be the only major primary Mamdani skipped. And no surprise to anyone that I was back on West 83rd Street watching Nadler campaign for Lasher in the final days – or that they watched the election results come in together on primary night.
“It’s not just about Fairway anymore, though Fairway will always loom large in all our lives,” Stringer told me for the article. “It’s gone beyond that.”
Edward-Isaac Dovere is a senior reporter at CNN.
Read the full Jerry Nadler profile.
Andrew J. Hawkins
It’s been nearly 15 years since I last wrote for City & State, but I still look back on my time there with nostalgic exhaustion. I was so young and had so much energy back then! When Adam Lisberg introduced First Read, an email newsletter that would require me and others to wake up at 4 a.m. every day to start building it, I remember thinking, “This is my life now” – being terminally tired, but also hot-wired into the city that I loved more than ever.
But the real joy in working for City & State was getting to see so many different sides of New York. Writing about local politics meant traveling to every corner of the five boroughs, visiting obscure neighborhoods and covering elected officials on their own turf. I spent more time in outer borough senior centers sipping Sanka and listening to blue-haired ladies butter up local electeds like Serf Maltese than I ever thought possible – or advisable.
For the publication’s 10th anniversary issue, I recalled my time spent covering proto-MAGA figure Carl Paladino’s run for governor in 2010, and how his money, his unfiltered racism and outsider status certainly paved the way for Trump and his whole movement that came after. Often, I would stumble on a story that would turn out more prescient than I could imagine.
I still get a little nostalgic when I think about all the big stories I got to cover over the years: the scandals, the spectacular flameouts. In the Trump era of brazen corruption, the crimes of people like Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner, Eric Schneiderman, Malcolm Smith and Hiram Monserrate almost seem picayune in comparison. To me, it felt like the most exciting time to be covering New York politics, but of course it was just table settings. I missed out on the fall of Andrew Cuomo, the swaggering corruption of the Adams era and the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani. I’m OK with the FOMO. Thankfully, I’ll always have City & State to keep me in the loop.
Andrew J. Hawkins is the transportation editor at The Verge.
Laura Nahmias
A pair of stories I wrote about former Assembly Member William Boyland Jr. were probably my favorite, and were certainly many readers’ favorite stories I wrote while I was at City & State. The story originated in a quaint time when Facebook was still novel, before politicians developed public accounts that were separate from their personal ones, and this was the first big “investigation” I wrote as a journalist covering New York City.
I discovered, simply by poking around on the internet by myself when I’d stay late in the office, that Boyland, a backbench Assembly member who represented a very poor district in Brooklyn and who was facing an unrelated federal corruption indictment at the time, was spending an extraordinary amount of time playing a world-building game on Facebook where he was the mayor of his own virtual village. Not especially unusual in that day and age, but timestamps on his Facebook account showed he was playing the game at times when he was supposed to be in Albany, present and voting on legislation affecting his constituents.
The investigation led to my first big Freedom of Information Law request, and ultimately helped form the underlying basis of a new count in his criminal indictment in the Eastern District, for taking per diem payments on days he wasn’t in Albany.
My editor and colleagues at the time, Adam Lisberg, Andy Hawkins and Chris Bragg, were an incredible team who taught me so much about covering New York politics. We had a lot of freedom to cover what interested us, and enough latitude and space between publishing deadlines to be creative in our coverage.
Laura Nahmias is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News.
Read the full stories on William Boyland Jr. here and here.
Morgan Pehme
It’s a real treat as a journalist contributing to a magazine with City & State’s caliber of readers. No need to dumb anything down, that’s for sure. No time wasted laying out the basics of how power works. Politics 101? Please. Your readers are the experts, the insiders, the very people in power – and they turn to you expecting to learn something they don’t already know.
I suppose that City & State might have had success as a toothless trade publication, but that was not the reputation it had earned under my predecessors as editor-in-chief, Edward-Isaac Dovere and Adam Lisberg. Isaac and Adam had covered New York’s politicos with neither fear nor favor and had won awards and their readers’ respect – begrudging at times – by shining a spotlight on hypocrisy and corruption wherever their reporters uncovered it. My aim as editor-in-chief was simply to continue their good work.
There was no lack of opportunity to do fine journalism during my tenure. It seemed like hardly a month would pass without some elected official being hauled off in handcuffs. Occasionally, there were multiple busts in one week. And those were just the bad actors who got arrested. City & State published numerous articles at the time about politicians whose dealings were unquestionably shady, yet, apparently, didn’t quite reach the level of indictable. Still, the scale of the crime spree was so jaw-dropping, so embarrassing that Gov. Andrew Cuomo appointed a Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption, casting himself as Eliot Ness and Albany as Al Capone.
But as City & State would reveal nine months later, Cuomo twisted around the notion of “The Untouchables” to mean that he and his allies should be beyond the reach of the commission’s investigative powers. When the commission dared to look where it wasn’t supposed to – namely at the governor, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos – Cuomo’s operatives quietly undermined its independence and quickly moved to disband it.
City & State readers know the rest, but what they might not realize or recall is the pivotal role that City & State played in exposing the consequent scandal, which would prove to be one of the worst in the history of New York politics. Building upon the work of the Daily News’ Ken Lovett, City & State reporters Jon Lentz and Matthew Hamilton, together with their editor, wrote a pair of longform investigative pieces that had a sizable impact in advancing the story and paved the way for The New York Times’ lauded coverage.
In that proud moment, City & State proved why for 20 years now it has been an enduring force in New York politics. It hasn’t just covered the state’s power players, it has become one of them.
Morgan Pehme is a writer, director and producer of documentary films, including Netflix’s “Get Me Roger Stone” and HBO’s “The Swamp.”
Read the full Moreland Commission investigation.
Aaron Short
When I joined City & State almost 15 years ago, editors Morgan Pehme and Jon Lentz wanted to make the print edition more like a magazine, with short, recurring segments and a cheeky back page rewarding those who made it all the way through.
As a First Read writer, I helped assemble news briefs, infographics and top tweets from the figures we covered in the front of the paper and sometimes wrote the endnote.
Once in a while, they let me do something off-kilter. The 2013 Democratic mayoral primary had been one of New York City’s most dramatic races, featuring Christine Quinn as the Bloomberg-annointed front-runner, Bill Thompson, who nearly defeated the mayor in 2009, Anthony Weiner’s scandalous collapse and Bill de Blasio’s surprising victory.
The election left everyone exhausted and in need of a drink. Why not encapsulate the spirit of candidates by designing specialty cocktails after them?
Since this was the peak of mustached-millennial mixology, I went to Clover Club in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, where head bartender Tom Macy graciously agreed to be in on the bit.
Tom gave this an enormous amount of thought (I really didn’t). The Christine Quinn drink he made contained tequila with a little bit of citrus and Campari. The Bill Thompson consisted of a bourbon and rum Old Fashioned. The Anthony Weiner had a mix of flavored vodka, Tennessee whiskey, pineapple and passion fruit juices, maple syrup and raspberries in a Tiki mug. It was very viscous and Tom decided it needed more passion fruit. I don’t remember much about the Bill de Blasio, only that it was in a tall glass and had Calvados, an apple brandy, in it.
Of course, we filmed a video. Clover Club, which opened in 2008, is still around too. Head over there and ask for an Anthony Weiner. You’ll want to fight everyone afterward.
Aaron Short is a freelance writer who covers the media, politics, health, real estate, transportation, art and budgets.
Watch the full mayoral mixology video.
Michael Johnson
I had the privilege of managing the editorial content through a very tumultuous time in politics: 2015 and 2016. The feud between Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio created endless content. Corruption was rampant, as several politicians faced indictments and convictions. And of course, the presidential election featured two New Yorkers: Donald Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
I could see in our coverage, and our feedback from readers, that there was unrest in politics. Making sense of this unrest was my job, and it was a difficult one. There was a lot of tension, and everything we published was met with scrutiny.
When you are in charge of a political magazine like City & State, you get yelled at a lot. Yelled at by lobbyists, consultants and elected officials. And, I probably was yelled at more in 2016 than any other time in my life. I was yelled at by Cuomo Democrats upset with our coverage of de Blasio. I was yelled at by de Blasio Democrats upset with our coverage of Cuomo. I was attacked by Republicans who didn’t like our coverage of Trump, and I was yelled at by Democrats who wanted us to dig deeper into Trump’s past, once it was clear he was going to be the GOP presidential nominee.
It’s in those moments you realize the stakes of your job. What is printed shapes public opinion. Sometimes it shifts the momentum in elections. Other times, it triggers meaningful change.
A series of stories we did on closing Rikers Island helped jump-start that push and eventually triggered legislation to change New York City’s jail system.
Excerpts from an interview we published with state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos was cited in his indictment.
I once got an email from a top energy executive when we wrote about the frustrations the governor of Pennsylvania had with Cuomo over natural gas pipelines.
As I reflect on my time with City & State, I realize that journalism matters. It is necessary. If reporters aren’t asking questions, seeking truth or helping readers understand how government works, then an information and education gap grows. A less informed public is bad for democracy, it’s bad for business, and even though average New Yorkers may not feel it directly, it is bad for them as well.
As news media continues to evolve and change, I hope City & State and other publications can persevere. We need journalists who dig deep on all levels of government, not just the highest levels. It’s vital for New York City and New York state.
Michael Johnson is vice president of communications and research at the New York Apartment Association.
Frank Runyeon
Literal muckraking.
There I was, in yellow rubber boots, standing in muddy water at the bottom of a dark wooden barrel. It smelled like a musty old boathouse as I watched a burly man scrub the muck and bacterial slime from the insides of one of New York City’s iconic wooden water tanks – reservoirs that supply drinking water to unwitting millions every day.
It was a privilege – and an adventure – to climb the rooftops of Manhattan and wade through thousands of records for this story, discovering a secret world hidden in plain sight.
If that all sounds charming … our findings were not. The reporting uncovered widespread neglect by landlords and evidence of contamination that a top U.S. Environmental Protection Agency expert warned could be the source of disease outbreaks – from dead animals and other filth.
The series I wrote for City & State in 2018 spurred a suite of new laws aimed at protecting the rustic supply system of water towers across the city. I had first reported on lax oversight and contamination in the tanks for The New York Times in 2014, but it was City & State’s in-depth series that finally helped spur lawmakers to action.
Maybe it was because we revealed how the New York City Housing Authority brazenly erased contamination from its records. Or because we highlighted the irony of a Department of Sanitation building topped by a decaying water tank. Perhaps it was that anecdote about a homeless man moving from tank to tank? Whatever the reason, this magazine has a unique ability to get a response from policymakers – with its distinctive visual style and colorful prose, and its willingness to pursue stories that can make a difference.
“What difference was that?” you might ask, looking skeptically at the weathered barrels perched outside your apartment window.
Fair enough. The iconic water tanks remain. And no, I can’t assure you that your landlord’s negligence hasn’t created a “squirrel martini.” Heck, health officials may still believe that a decaying pigeon in your drinking water is “OK as a public health matter.”
It’s not always easy to see the long-term impact of your reporting. But it mattered to Maria Santos, and to other seniors who were brave enough – or perhaps fed up enough – to speak to us about the brown water shooting from their taps in a NYCHA high-rise.
“You move mountains!” she told me after the City Council speaker’s office called her.
Comments like that remind me that this is still the best damn job in the world.
Frank Runyeon is a senior reporter at Law360.
Read the full cover story on water tanks, contamination at NYCHA buildings and about the passage of water tank reforms.
Ashley Hupfl
The most interesting experience I had as a reporter was watching one of the most important people in Albany, Sheldon Silver, see his life and career collapse. He’d outlasted governors and seen other Albany leaders come and go.
It was a couple weeks into my first legislative session after graduating from college when Silver was arrested after an investigation by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. I was on my own and … not expecting this, to say the least.
But, I loved it.
I mostly remember having to sit outside a damn door for a very, very long time while the Assembly Democratic conference debated his fate. In the press corps, you know one fact: The second you need to use the bathroom, you’re going to miss the news. Additionally, my car was towed during this debacle. As I told my parents, what the hell was I supposed to do?
Finally, a few of us caught him escaping through the Assembly chamber, and I remember him only ever saying one thing: “It is what it is.”
It seemed like a dismissive way to talk to us at the time, but since then, I’ve also heard those words from a lot more people describing how life goes when they have no other options. They can’t afford healthcare or just can’t catch a break. Those words still stick with me in my 30s. So, it’s interesting to compare it to someone who was a voluntarily corrupt man who lost his position.
My coverage wasn’t anything to glory in, but to pretend Silver’s power fall didn’t change everything I experienced working in Albany after January 2015 would be a lie.
Given everything that has become of politics and media in 2026, my experience as a political reporter back then seems like a surreal experience. It was a given you’d resign or step down from your powerful position when you’ve been accused of sexual harassment or abusing your power. And we all dropped everything and spent days waiting and reporting on it.
When I tell people about my time working for City & State and being able to dig into real issues, it seems like a time that’s long gone. I will always love that I got the freedom and experience here.
Ashley Hupfl is a former state Capitol reporter for the Daily Gazette.
Read the full story on Sheldon Silver’s loss of power.
Zach Williams
The story initially was something to do with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. He was going to show me around the train tracks, and I’d write about how the governor was finding a new groove in his third term. Then the first confirmed case of COVID-19 popped up in New York. By the time I got to Albany, state politics were changing fast, to say the least.
Cuomo convened his Cabinet in the Red Room, where he talked about the state’s preparations, PowerPoint and all. He stampeded lawmakers into giving him emergency powers. He beckoned me to his adjacent office where he explained the impending disaster as he saw it – the dire situation that necessitated emergency action by the Legislature. What he didn’t say then was that that included lawmakers giving him sweeping powers over the state budget and daily life, as we learned soon enough. Government works like a fine-tuned watch, I remember him telling me – the type of Cuomoism that’d shortly become daily fare for millions of Americans. “Andrew Cuomo: Master of Disaster” was the headline of my story.
The headline rings true now, though not in the way I necessarily meant it at the time. That story was my first installment in a political saga that raged over the next year. A story where civilization itself appeared on the brink – and we all know how it all worked out for New York and Cuomo in the end.
Zach Williams is a senior reporter for Bloomberg Government.
Read the full Andrew Cuomo story here.
David Freedlander
We aren’t supposed to have favorites in this business, but ask most long-form writers and they will admit to a sneaking fondness for one subject over another. For me, that would have to be Charlie Rangel, the late “Lion of Lenox Avenue.” He was embroiled in a series of scandals, just as he had become the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, and I went to go interview him. I had been told that he would hardly know who I was, just another guy with a notebook writing down what he said. I am not sure if that advice turned out to be right, but I climbed into the back seat of the Lincoln Town Car that Rangel used to be chauffeured around the neighborhood, perched just behind him on the driver’s side, and I felt like I didn’t leave again for several days. Up and down the streets of Harlem we traveled, as Rangel, in that familiar honk, told stories of his rise and his political family. Traveling around Harlem with Rangel felt like what it must have been like to walk the streets with Muhammed Ali in the 1970s – he couldn’t go 10 feet without people stopping him, hugging him, posing for pictures, telling him their issues. At the end of every day, I kept expecting that would be it for us, but he would always crane his neck back and say “Ok, Daaayve, what are we doing tomorrow,” and I would meet him in his office and it would be the same thing all over again. I interviewed several times over the years afterward, and I am sure he didn’t remember me from those days of prowling the streets in the back seat of his car, but it was an education in politics and what the business really meant. When he died last year, I was sadder than I expected to be. I genuinely miss him.
David Freedlander is a features writer at New York magazine.
Chris Bragg
In 2011, Bill de Blasio was still an obscure name to most New Yorkers. He was fighting for attention as New York City’s public advocate. A year earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had passed the landmark Citizens United decision – unleashing a flood of uncapped corporate money in federal elections – and de Blasio had seen a chance to make his mark.
Through a nonprofit closely associated with his government office, de Blasio began a well-funded campaign to combat corporate spending in elections. What caught my attention was that de Blasio’s effort was primarily bankrolled by liberal billionaire George Soros, himself one of the nation’s biggest political spenders. And while de Blasio was targeting corporate money that primarily benefited Republicans, he was ignoring uncapped political spending by individuals (such as Soros), as well as union donations disproportionately helping Democrats.
I spent months on the story, examining how a crusade of the political left was functioning in close proximity to a taxpayer-funded office. It was my first long-form investigative piece, and it helped develop muscles for the type of journalism I do now.
Early on, de Blasio sat down for a long interview. His aides later grew concerned when I asked about a staffer’s past role in a dark money political effort and the intersection between de Blasio’s career and wife’s political consulting. To his credit, de Blasio ended up answering every question.
The story was an early window into de Blasio’s complex relationship with money in politics, an issue that would later dog his mayoralty. I was fortunate to have the assistance of City & State’s editor at the time, Adam Lisberg, whose experience guided me through the pushback and who polished some of the story’s best passages.
Chris Bragg is the Albany bureau chief at New York Focus.
Read the full profile on Bill de Blasio.
Ralph R. Ortega
The editor-in-chief typically writes City & State’s weekly editor’s note. This column on the magazine’s third page calls out good and bad politics, spotlights new stories and makes announcements, including when the editorial team brought home multiple awards from the New York Press Association.
The note also provides an opportunity to highlight important issues and moments. Once filed, however, it was rewarding knowing the note was out, giving City & State and its editorial team a voice on matters of importance, a forum for opinions and a way to convey our experiences, both as New Yorkers and journalists.
Among the roughly 175 editor’s notes I wrote between 2020 and 2025 was a piece on how I chose to remember Sept. 11, 2001. Among those memories was when I got a “much-needed hug” from a colleague at the Daily News, where I worked then, after we helped cover that horrible day. Another note allowed me to later have the cathartic experience writing about the annual day of service aboard the Intrepid Museum, giving recognition to the thousands of people who volunteered at a food drive in memory of those who died in the terrorist attacks.
The editor’s note became a megaphone for celebrating progress on ongoing projects, including the redevelopment of Penn Station. I wrote how Penn Station redevelopment advocates were calling for a “bold” reinvention of the decrepit transit hub. The train nerd in me wrote about Amtrak’s next-generation Acela trains making their debut at Penn Station last year. It was a welcome improvement over the original, which I covered when it debuted 25 years earlier, again for the Daily News.
The note also helped push several causes, including advocating for greater Latino representation in New York City and state government. One note called out Eric Adams’ administration, asking, “Where are the Latinas among Adams’ deputy mayors” after he entered office in 2022. Adams finally appointed Ana Almanzar, who is Dominican, to serve as his deputy mayor for strategic initiatives, more than a year after he took office, as mentioned in another note, calling for still more Latino representation. That may have sparked the mayor into action when he appointed Adolfo Carrión Jr., a Nuyorican, to be his deputy mayor of housing.
All of that was a lot to be said, and it was done, thanks to the note. It was a privilege writing it.
Ralph R. Ortega is the vice president of public affairs at O’Donnell & Associates.
Amanda Luz Henning Santiago
Excelsior, a newsletter which ran from October 2020 to August 2021, covered topics that included how the state Legislature operates, what New York City’s mayor does and how the city’s waste management system functions – oddly my favorite issue of all-time.
The inspiration came from my own experience as a reporter eager to dive into the world of New York politics but unsure of where to start. When I joined City & State in 2019, I was an ambitious wannabe journalist, fresh off of several internships and one very short-lived stint at a magazine that was exclusively about printers (yes, the machines).
I knew next to nothing about the incredibly complex world of New York City and state politics and policy – and barely recognized then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Not great.
I was intimidated by the more senior reporters at the time, who seemed to know everything about everything. Determined to step up, I devoured as much information as I could to get up to speed – and it took countless hours, and if we’re really being honest here, years, to understand all the moving pieces that make New York work. This experience led me to the idea for an explainer newsletter. I wondered if there were other people who might also be curious and unsure of where or how to begin their New York education.
We were unsure of whether the newsletter would land with City & State’s audience, since it’s the magazine for New York wonks and politicians already very much “in the know.” However, the reception to the newsletter was incredibly positive. During its tenure, I frequently received emails from readers informing me that it had helped them better understand these nuanced and sometimes hard to understand topics, such as how the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board works. Working on Excelsior was extremely rewarding and, for me, nothing else has ever compared to the feeling of empowering my fellow New Yorkers and politics nerds with this invaluable information.
Amanda Luz Henning Santiago is a former communications associate at The Parkside Group.
Justin Sondel
I was afforded the opportunity to write many profiles of interesting and powerful people connected to New York City and state government over my time as a staffer and freelancer at City & State, and India Walton was one of the most memorable.
Shortly after her stunning Democratic primary victory over four-term Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, I spent time with Walton, spoke to insiders and worked to figure out how she had threaded the needle to defeat Brown and his well-established machine.
She was very gracious with her time and I found her to be candid, enthusiastic and a policy wonk, a very compelling subject, particularly for City & State’s audience.
Walton had shocked the establishment in a way that still felt new and press from across the globe came to try to figure out how a neophyte with no money and a democratic socialist label had defeated the longtime mayor of a midsized American city.
Using my relationships and knowledge of Buffalo’s politics, I was able to get the stories behind the story and showed the powers that be scrambling to reverse what they viewed as a mistake.
Ultimately, Brown, with plenty of help from outside money, was able to overcome his primary folly and defeated Walton handily in a general election write-in campaign, a historic feat in its own right.
But, Walton’s primary victory became another guidepost in the changing landscape of New York politics. Standing outside her election night party, as she, along with campaign staffers, ran around giddy from what they had just accomplished, it was one of the few times in my career covering politics where I felt truly stunned. It was reporting for that story that I met then-Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, who came to Buffalo to stump with Walton and canvass for her campaign. In retrospect, it seemed like a marker of a legitimate shift that continues to play out across the state, as more progressive candidates, including in recent victories in Western New York, continue to make headway.
The team at City & State gave me the time, space and guidance I needed to bring the story behind Walton’s primary victory into focus with the context and depth it deserved.
Justin Sondel is a reporter at The Buffalo News.
Read the full India Walton profile here.
Kay Dervishi
My coverage of the 2020 census at City & State sticks out in my memory for several reasons. First, it was the topic of my first cover story as a young journalist at City & State. It was an exciting opportunity to blend my experience reporting on New York City nonprofits and passion for writing about policy. I was able to sit down with then-director of NYC Census 2020, Julie Menin, who outlined all these ambitious plans to get New Yorkers to fill out their forms. The messaging was to get counted so we can boost New York’s representation in Congress (and, by proxy, stick it to Donald Trump), and get more federal funds. The stakes were high. An undercount meant New York state could lose up to two congressional seats.
Second, a large portion of the plans outlined in that cover story were almost immediately squashed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which started two months after the story was published. City government and nonprofits rushed to move everything to digital engagement and phone-banking amid the shutdown. And then, to make matters more complicated, the Trump administration continually politicized the census, attempting to stop the count from including undocumented immigrants and ending the census earlier than planned. Still, New York avoided the worst-case scenario and lost just one congressional seat.
Third, it has been fascinating to see how threads from that reporting have carried on six years later. Julie Menin now serves as speaker of the New York City Council (which was not such a surprise if you read Aaron Short’s accompanying article to my cover story about her political ambitions). And now we’re on to the second Trump administration, which has taken its previous impulse to attack democratic norms and accelerated them even further.
In my current role as a fundraiser and grant writer for the nonprofit newsroom Documented, I still hear about the census all the time. Local foundations and civic groups have already been planning for the 2030 census for years. I’m always excited when I meet with these folks and geek out about the census – which I credit to my experience reporting for City & State.
Kay Dervishi is the development manager at Documented.
Dan Rivoli
When I was an intern at City Hall, a predecessor to City & State, my editor gave me a piece of advice that I carry with me in my reporting today: There are details, and then there are telling details.
I put that into practice for a profile I wrote of a charismatic, bombastic and idiosyncratic state lawmaker in Brooklyn named Eric Adams.
The profile was part of a series on lawmakers in their neighborhoods called “Back in the District,” but Adams took me all around Brooklyn and Queens, hitting up graduations.
I didn’t realize it then, but how he acted and how he was received showed why he won his mayoral race for City Hall in 2021 – it started with a quote from a gray-haired woman in Queens telling him, “I know that face,” because of his ubiquitous TV appearances.
At one graduation, Adams gave a speech about the importance of parents searching their teenagers’ rooms for evidence of drugs and guns.
Adams would eventually turn that speech into a video – one that got mocked and derided when it resurfaced on social media during his time as mayor. But back then, the parents in the crowd loved it.
The piece is full of these wild quotes from Adams. His knack for these kinds of peculiar remarks became a hallmark as mayor.
The piece sticks with me today partly because it was as fun to write as it was to report, partly because it got me interested in covering politics. The world seemed more fascinating for me to cover than my original journalistic trajectory – arts and culture reporting, which I studied in journalism school.
To me, the piece was a perfect encapsulation of the City & State’s motto – “Politics. Policy. Personalities.” Here’s to many years of giving the New York political world all of that, and more.
Dan Rivoli is a reporter at NY1.
Read the full Eric Adams profile here.
Grace Segers
I am still very fond of the cover story profile I wrote of Suffolk County Democratic Party Chair Rich Schaffer in 2018. I’ve kept that edition of the magazine over the years and across several moves, carefully tucked into a manila folder. It was my first reporting trip, and even though it was only a Long Island Rail Road ride away from New York City to interview Schaffer, I was still very nervous. I remember waking up at some ungodly hour to meet him at a deli for breakfast. I’m not sure how coherent my questions were at the crack of dawn.
I was captured by the intricacies of Long Island politics, and ended up writing a bit of an opus: My first draft was around 10,000 words. Thankfully, Jon Lentz – then the editor-in-chief – very patiently read it through and edited the story into something more manageable. (Looking back, I’m incredibly grateful for his willingness to accept such a monstrosity and his unfailing encouragement throughout, because submitting 10,000 words is bonkers.)
Since that article was published, I have gone on many reporting trips and written many profiles. My former editors will be thrilled to know that I am now capable of staying within a reasonable word count. But this is still one of my favorite stories I’ve written, in no small part because it was part of my education in becoming a true magazine reporter.
Grace Segers is a staff writer at The New Republic.
Read the full Rich Schaffer profile here.
Nick Powell
I always knew I wanted to profile Rubén Díaz Sr. He first piqued my interest with his “What You Should Know” email blasts. This was well before Substack became a staple of our media diet, when political “blogging” was very much en vogue. Díaz would send out these missives with a behind-the-scenes look at how the sausage was made in Albany on various bills and budget negotiations. Nobody in the political press seemed to pay him much mind, except when he made the odd inflammatory remark about LGBTQ+ people or abortion, which always drew headlines and scorn from his Democratic colleagues.
The stars didn’t align for a profile until 2017, Donald Trump’s first year in office. Early in the 2016 presidential campaign, Díaz, who endorsed Ted Cruz over Trump in the Republican primary, gave The Washington Post a perfect quote: “I do like Donald Trump. He’s like me, making enemies everywhere he goes.” It was trademark Díaz. Arrogant, yet self-aware. Delusional, but in on the joke. In a sense, he was the perfect New York politician for the Trump era. It just so happened that he was gearing up for a run for New York City Council, one of the most progressive legislative bodies in the nation. His son, Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president at the time, was also rumored to be thinking about running for mayor. It felt like a real inflection point in their often uneasy public relationship: Diaz Jr. patiently biding his time for a shot at City Hall only for his father to saddle him with all his political baggage by refusing to ride off into the sunset. It was also an opportunity, I thought, perhaps naively, to pierce through Díaz’s psyche, to try to make sense of his retrograde views on abortion and gay rights. If nothing else, I figured I’d get some excellent quotes.
Reading the profile now after all these years – yikes – I’m not sure if my endeavor was successful. I extracted some alarming biographical details, like a racist encounter he had while serving in the Army and a perhaps apocryphal story about how he kicked heroin and became a born-again Pentecostalist. I got a rare window into how the Bronx Democratic machine operates and their difficult relationship with him. I interrogated him on LGBTQ+ rights, attempting to get him to reconcile these views with the deep affection he has for his gay family members – including two brothers and a granddaughter. I’m not sure I ever got a great, revelatory answer – at least not one that would mollify the critics who found him repugnant.
It was an invaluable experience, though, and definitely prepared me to report in parts of red Texas, where Díaz would be right at home. At a time when political polarization has calcified with little room for nuance or intellectual debate, I salute Díaz for his willingness to share and spar with me, even if I couldn’t quite crack his cowboy façade.
Nick Powell is an editorial writer at the Houston Chronicle.
Read the full Rubén Díaz Sr. profile here.
Holly Pretsky
Delving into the world of opposition research for a 2024 cover story turned me into a conspiracy theorist. Since writing this story, I can’t help but speculate about the origins of every news item. Who’s really behind it? Who benefits from this narrative? Who is the target? It also gave me newfound sympathy for the paranoid politicians who have texted me after I write a negative story about them, speculating wildly about which of their enemies is whispering in my ear.
I kept asking oppo practitioners and consultants how it feels to try so hard to sink someone’s career. Does that eat away at you at all? The answer was a resounding “no.” People who work in New York politics love oppo. They never forget a successful hit. The question is now whether New York voters are swayed by it at all anymore. In an era of media fragmentation, and as millennials with massive digital footprints start to win elections, it seems like oppo is less and less powerful every election cycle.
Holly Pretsky is an editor at Hell Gate.
Read the full story on opposition research here.
Adam Lisberg
Let me tell you a little secret about Winners & Losers, at least from 15 years ago when I edited City & State: It’s the stupidest thing in New York journalism. But everyone eats it up.
Every Friday morning, the first bullet in First Read links to a handful of names you’ve seen in the news, with descriptions ranging from sweet to snarky. Three to five are winners; three to five are losers. Vote for the best and the worst in each bunch.
When I walked in the door of the old City & State offices at 79 Madison Ave. for the first time, I issued a new-editor-in-town edict: We’re killing this stupid thing.
The staff froze. Chris Bragg, Jon Lentz and Laura Nahmias stared wide-eyed. My new deputy, Andy Hawkins, replied calmly: “That’s the most popular thing in the email.” They were right. It was the first of many times Andy saved my butt.
Turns out hundreds of people spent their weeks looking forward to seeing who the political and government experts at City & State had carefully chosen as the leading, or lagging, exemplars of New York. As I would learn, press secretaries across the state lobbied to get their bosses onto one list … and squealed with pain when they were on the other. None of us could make it through Friday morning phone calls without hearing what everyone thought of our selection.
Do you know how we made that selection? We all piled into my office on Thursdays – there were only three chairs, so the last two in had to stand – and started riffing on that week’s headlines. Which earnest do-gooder made us feel guilty for calling them a loser after one bad week in a lifetime of service? How many times could we include a governor or mayor? What was the statute of limitations for past wins or losses? Were we punching down?
Hell, I don’t know. You may still be holding a grudge for one of our petty Thursday jokes. But we put it out every Friday, and the audience kept clicking. There must be thousands of you voting now, but not me. Since the day I walked out the door at the end of March 2012, I have never once clicked on Winners & Losers.
I am immensely proud of what City & State has achieved since I left: Big investigations, fun covers, strong journalism careers, breaking news acknowledgements from every newsroom in town. But now that I know how Winners & Losers is made, I can’t take it seriously.
But what do I know? If you want Winners & Losers, you’ll get them.
Adam Lisberg is senior vice president of external communications for Veolia North America.