Winners & Losers
This week’s biggest Winners & Losers
Who’s up and who’s down this week?
It was another Week™in New York politics – and we haven’t even made it to hellish (literally, look at the temperature predictions) primary election night week. On the upside, people don’t need to worry about what’s going on in Albany for the next six months, because the answer is “nothing” now that legislators have wrapped up. Not that there wasn’t plenty going on in the final days. Downstate, the crazy hasn’t stopped. Between confounding opinion page pieces from The New York Times and the New York City mayor banning a reporter from his pressers, not to mention the arrest of the New York City comptroller by masked federal agents, the political world don’t stop.
Brad Lander -
City & State reader, you’ve known who Brad Lander is since he was first elected to the City Council in 2010 – at the latest. But this week, your family group chat finally found out who he was, didn’t they. Lander made international headlines Tuesday when he was detained by ICE after trying to escort a man out of his immigration hearing. Elected officials flocked to call for his release, and Gov. Kathy Hochul herself showed up to spring him. Mayor Eric Adams is calling it a political stunt, but liberal prophet Ezra Klein doesn’t seem to agree. Either way, Lander’s now a true household name, just a week before the Democratic mayoral primary.
Katie Brennan -
Working for Gov. Kathy Hochul is the golden ticket to a state Legislature. Former Hochul housing advisor Katie Brennan won the Democratic primary for a New Jersey Assembly seat, just a year after former Hochul advisor Micah Lasher won an Upper West Side Assembly seat. Brennan and her running mate, Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla, defeated slates handpicked by the Hudson County Democratic Party and third-place gubernatorial primary finisher Steve Fulop. And Bhalla’s chief of staff, Christine Stoll, was once Hochul’s special events director.
Steve Noble -
Kingston Mayor Steve Noble’s hope for housing relief has been fulfilled now that the Court of Appeals has sided with Kingston in its rent stabilization case. He triumphed over the Hudson Valley Property Owners Association, which sued the city after it declared a housing emergency and instituted a Rent Guidelines Board that voted to decrease rents. Between construction initiatives and progressive regulations, Kingston has had a positive record on housing policy under Noble’s watch.
Dao Yin -
The Eastern District of New York may have some answers about former Assembly candidate Dao Yin’s confounding campaign finances, which saw him spending over $1,000 per vote for a very small number of them. Federal prosecutors have charged Yin with wire fraud in relation to allegedly fake donations intended to scam New York for public matching funds. The charge comes after an investigation by The New York Times into his campaign finances, which were riddled with inconsistencies, at the very least.
Tom Donlon -
Tom Donlon’s tenure in the Adams administration came to a close about as unceremoniously as it began. Per a June 16 New York Daily News report, Donlon – who became interim New York City Police commissioner after Eddie Caban resigned – last month learned he was losing his City Hall job in a call from HR. Sadly, they probably don’t make shirts that say, “I Was NYPD Commissioner and All I Got Was An FBI Raid and This Lousy T-Shirt.”
Marianne Pizzitola -
Counting down to retirement is an age-old tradition for many municipal employees. They look forward to generous retirement benefits, including health care coverage. For years, NYC retirees – led by Pizzitola, president of NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees– fought to stop a cost-saving switch to Medicare Advantage health care. But though lower courts initially agreed that the switch violated prior benefits agreements, the state’s highest court ruled against the retirees, paving the way for the switch to move forward.