Editor’s note: Spotting Samuelsen’s strategy

A few weeks ago, City & State ran a great op-ed by a former Central Park horse carriage driver, Anita McGill. She grew up in the industry – her family owned the Hell’s Kitchen stables where the horses started each morning and went to sleep each night (standing up, of course). But she was breaking with her world. The streets were dangerous now, and it was time for the City Council to pass the ban on horse carriage rides.

A week later, an item appeared in Politico. Somebody had dug up that McGill’s husband had gotten in a car crash in a company vehicle on Christmas Eve, 2015. Another employee got in a car crash in a company truck in 2020. And McGill herself was reportedly once caught driving with an open beer in the car.

Now I don’t know for sure how that story got placed. But there’s only one man I could think of who could have the means, the motive – and frankly, the desire – to drop this irrelevant piece of opposition research on a private citizen who was advocating for a piece of legislation. And that man is Transport Workers Union International President John Samuelsen.

Samuelsen is a true New York character, a union boss straight out of central casting. But as Rebecca C. Lewis writes in this week’s cover story, he’s not just some goon – he’s incredibly charming with his allies, incredibly tough on anybody he thinks is screwing his workers and a serious political strategist.

Folks like McGill might think they’d be safe from bomb-throwing. But if politics is war, Samuelsen is the field commander, and they’d be better off avoiding enemy territory as long as he’s around.