city hall - november 16, 2009

www.cityhallnews.comVol. 4, No. 9 November 16, 2009

Dick Dadey, right, plans a new path for Citizens Union(Page 4),

powers collide over Kingsbridge Armory plans (Page 6) and Rep. Ed Towns, left, digs in to his Power Lunch (5).

SpinDoctor

Coming off health care, Anthony Weiner crafts his message, mission and possible mayoral future

www.cityhallnews.com2 NOVEMBER 16, 2009 CITY HALL

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Forethought

There is a power vacuum in Albany. Who better to fi ll it than Michael Bloomberg?

Not to suggest that Bloomberg run for governor next year—that trial balloon has thankfully drifted far, far away since its fi rst implausible appearance in the aftermath of his failed presidential bid last year. Instead, Mike Bloomberg can reach out to the city’s Albany overseers and make sure that the city’s agenda not get lost in the great state government morass. In the process, he may be able to, from the outside, provide what New York so desperately needs.

Time and again Bloomberg has watched his dreams for the city dashed upon the rocky shoals of Albany. The list is so painful to recount he barely mentions them anymore. (R.I.P. congestion pricing; Ditto, West Side Stadium; We miss you, commuter tax.)

As the mayor begins a third term with big ambitions, he can take advantage of a need for an agenda and the

leadership vacuum in the State Capitol and exert himself over a place that is in need of some exerting.

Anyone who has read a newspaper in the last year knows there is a leadership void in Albany. And though people of good faith can disagree with the mayor’s policies and tactics, he has been a steady managerial hand. At a time when Albany is crying out for a responsible adult, Bloomberg may be the one. As Democrats joust with Gov. Paterson over the budget, Bloomberg has the opportunity to inject himself in the conversation, so long as they produce positive results for the city.

By focusing on Albany, Bloomberg could help forge consensus on a host of issues that now infl ame passions across the aisle up there. Doing so would provide a world of good for our broken state, and anything that repairs the state will repair the city.

In the meantime, Bloomberg should also stay clear of the politics. No more checks to the Senate GOP. No

more endorsements. With four more years to put the fi nishing touches on his ambitious legacy, Bloomberg needs to elevate himself far above the muck.

The mayor’s team began to show that he had fi gured out the Albany riddle when they abandoned his “my way or the congested highway” approach on mayoral control of schools. Then, thanks to the measured lobbying of Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott and others that were not Joel Klein, Bloomberg got the win. Going forward, Bloomberg can begin by reaching out to John Sampson and the Senate Democrats. They have provided far more legislative opposition to the mayor’s agenda than the

docile City Council, and unlike their city colleagues, the Senate Democrats stood nearly universally against the mayor during the campaign.

There remains bitterness about all his support for the Senate Republicans over the years, including that $500,000 he threw them last year as the Democrats battled tooth and nail to grab the majority. Now that the Democrats are in control, Bloomberg can and should mend fences with them, while turning back to the Senate G.O.P on issues important to him and trying to get something for his money.

The mayor has begun to step up on gay marriage, an issue he believes is of vital importance to the city’s future. But he could provide a more targeted, directed lobbying effort aimed at persuadable Republicans to ensure this bill’s passage, if that is really what he wants.

He could do the same on a Domestic Worker’s Bill of Rights, on authorities reform, on issues related to immigration, energy and the environment that are critical to the city’s future—and do so with the kind of intelligent, soft touch that will help, not hinder progress.

And he will, of course, need to be a strong and effective advocate as the budget cuts roll in, threatening city programs and priorities.

The power vacuum in Albany could not have come at a worse time. Bloomberg won another term on a promise to steer New York through the next four years and the economic mess that prompted him to push for the term- limits extension. The place to start is the place he never wanted to go again. C

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BY CHRIS BRAGG

In late October, the city’s elite gathered at The Pierre to drink cocktails, dine on salmon and

celebrate another year in the books for the Citizens Union, the city’s century-old good-government organization fi rst formed to fi ght Tammany Hall.

The past six years have been good ones for the group: its profi le has increased substantially as executive director Dick Dadey has become a go-to source for reporters writing stories about good-government issues.

But at the group’s annual fundraiser, Dadey said the time for merely talking had ended. With state government mired in dysfunction, Dadey said the Citizens Union, traditionally a New York City-focused group, would now lead a grassroots effort to throw out anti-reform incumbents from the Legislature.

“It will be a campaign that is focused no longer on criticizing government, but changing it in Albany,” he said.

As the group now seeks to infl uence statewide policy, they face a situation where building grassroots support has

become more critical, given that most of its infl uence traditionally has been at City Hall and not the halls of the Capitol.

But some question whether Citizens Union—or any good-government group, for that matter—can go beyond merely making anti-Albany fundraising pitches and actually pull together a Working Families Party-type grassroots movement in 2010, given the seeming extinction of large-scale movements centered around good-government issues.

And Citizens Union, in particular, would seem an odd vehicle for such a movement: the organization to some degree has maintained its relevance precisely because it caters to the elite.

The group’s board, for instance, is made up of a number of prominent professionals from the business and civic world that have close ties to the Bloomberg administration. Norman Siegel, the civil rights attorney who ran this year for public advocate, said that this has given the organization unusual access to City Hall, but also limited the degree to which the group could appeal to the public at large.

A year ago, Citizens Union was one of

the most ardent opponents of the term-limits extension. For Siegel, also a vocal opponent of the extension, the group’s endorsement of Bloomberg for a third term has highlighted this insider status.

“The question really becomes: Who are you and what are your goals?” Siegel said. “As a non-profi t, you’ve got to make sure you’re practicing what you preach, and that you’re basing your decisions based on the merits, and not based on the people you know.”

Siegel said the group’s friendly relations with Bloomberg appear to have given them an envied seat at the table. In 2007, for instance, Dadey helped hash out the city’s revised campaign fi nance laws. In 2008, after Bloomberg pledged to form a city charter review commission, Dadey was widely rumored as the choice to head it. (Ultimately, no commission was ever formed.)

The group’s endorsements (or, as they call them, “preferences”) also differentiate Citizens Union from other good-government organizations. Often seen as a precursor to the New York

Times endorsement, the group possesses a valuable carrot to dangle to candidates

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Good-Government Group Grapples To Get Beyond Insider GameCitizens Union looks to gain muscle, reform Albany and redefi ne itself

running in certain parts of Manhattan or Brownstone Brooklyn—and a vehicle to extract promises.

During Bloomberg’s endorsement interview this year, for instance, he surprised the group by telling them he was open to reforming the Civilian Complaint Review Board process, one of the group’s top priorities.

But working the inside also has its limits. Despite efforts to diversify over the past decade, the group still consists mostly of white Manhattan intelligentsia.

Mark Winston Griffi th, who ran for the Council this year in a predominantly black district, said that potentially winning the group’s endorsement was not worth the hours it would have taken to fi ll out the group’s lengthy candidate survey.

“For voters in my district, it couldn’t be more irrelevant,” said Griffi th.

Meanwhile, some critics privately point to an increasingly old and small group of committed Citizens Union volunteers who can get active in local races and what they see as personal agendas being fl exed in some decisions, which they say undercut the group’s effectiveness. And there were those who viewed its late-season primary endorsement of Bill de Blasio for public advocate “relying on the de Blasio campaign’s assurance that it is complying with the city’s campaign fi nance law and the CFB’s advisory opinions made thus far on [his use of Data and Field Services, the WFP’s for-profi t corporation]” as insuffi ciently vigilant.

As the infl uence of some of the city’s good-government groups has diminished, the Working Families Party over the last decade has fi lled the void. Even as Dadey railed against the term-limits extension, for instance, it was the WFP that actually mobilized their members to try and sway Council members.

But the WFP has a very different constituency than good-government groups. And when Citizens Union worked with them in 2007 to hash out city campaign fi nance reforms, unions were working the back channels to get themselves exempted from campaign donation limits—a policy strongly opposed by Citizens Union.

Unlike the WFP, meanwhile, the Citizens Union faces a balancing act: as they actively work for change, they also must remain a neutral observer.

Dadey said plans for the 2010 election were still in the early stages. He did venture that the effort would feature greater use of the Internet, tie good-government issues to peoples’ everyday lives, and not target individual candidates, but rather highlight the general dysfunction in Albany.

Making good-government issues translate to voters, without a broad-based constituency or ample resources, appears to be the challenge for Citizens Union and other government groups as they face the key 2010 election.

“How we do that,” Dadey said, “is still something that we’re fi guring out.” C

[email protected]

Citizens Union’s decision to back Michael Bloomberg for re-election after opposing the term-limits extension raised questions.


BY DAVID FREEDLANDER

For nearly a decade, the Kingsbridge Armory, a striking red brick hulk built in 1917

to house the National Guard, has sat vacant amidst the poverty-stricken neighborhoods of the northwest Bronx.

Then last month, the Planning Commission approved the $310 million project by the Related Company to build a mall inside the landmark structure. But the plan, which is slated to provide 2,200 jobs to the community, has run into serious opposition from Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. and members of the Bronx delegation of the City Council.

Now, some members of the Council and opponents of the project say they would rather kill the project than have it go forward without agreements that guarantee wage protections.

Typically, the Council defers to the local member on land-use issues. In the case of the Armory, however, negotiators are dealing with the added diffi culty that the Armory is in the district of Maria Baez, who was voted out of offi ce in a bitterly fought primary.

Baez was seen by many as favoring Related’s plans for the structure, but City Hall insiders say she has mostly absented herself from the Council after losing the election. Instead, Diaz has taken the lead, and most Council

members contacted for this story referred calls to him and new Bronx delegation chair Annabel Palma.

Baez did not return repeated calls for comment.

Diaz and members of the Bronx delegation would like

any agreement to include provisions for a living wage for all employees who work in the Armory, especially since the project is receiving city

tax breaks.“I don’t want to have

developers come into our borough and do well while the

borough leads the country in the poverty rate,” he said. “A living wage is a reasonable and responsible request.”

But Related and administration offi cials say a living wage provision that

would be guaranteed in the lease would scare retailers away, especially since they could open similar outlets nearby without such requirements. They add that a living wage provision that singled out this project would put the retailers and developers at an unfair disadvantage, and would create an unsustainable precedent.

Both sides say an agreement will not be forthcoming until the living wage provision is agreed upon, and neither has shown signs of budging.

“There are all kinds of community benefi ts to discuss, but we can’t, because the borough president has drawn a line in the sand,” said Jesse Masyr, an attorney representing Related. “A living wage is a death penalty for this project.”

The local community board approved the project and requested that a supermarket be included, a request that

ST

ATE OF THE

U N I O N S

In Kingsbridge, A Test For Diaz, Labor And New Order On The CouncilWith Baez defeated, new powers war over major Bronx development project

met opposition by a Morton Williams across the street and by the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union, which supporters of the project say fears a rival union gaining a foothold in the new store.

“There are supermarkets that operate that provide decent wages, and because they provide decent wages they would face a competitive disadvantage and may not be able to survive if a market opened in the Armory,” said RWDSU head Stuart Appelbaum. “When the Bronx was burning, Morton Williams didn’t pick up and leave. They stayed committed to the Bronx.”

Appelbaum has emerged as a fi erce critic of the project, as he has for many Bloomberg administration initiatives. He says that Kingsbridge is a test of the administration.

“The notion we have is that if the city is providing huge subsidies, then we have the right to expect it will provide benefi ts to the community,” he said. “If they don’t do it right and provide jobs, then don’t do it at all.”

Council insiders say that part of the diffi culty in the negotiations is that the Bronx delegation is in fl ux with a new borough president, a new county leader, in Assembly member Carl Heastie, and a new delegation head.

Diaz, they say, has fi lled in the breach and is exerting a kind of infl uence over the Council that his predecessor, Adolfo Carrión, did not. The delegation is more disciplined, they say, but there is less room to negotiate.

Members of the delegation agree, and see this as a strength.

“We have a new form of leadership here in the Bronx,” said Fernando Cabrera, who defeated Baez in the primary and who has been taking part in the negotiations. “Ruben Diaz, Jr. is a very engaged, very strategic type of leader.”

Further complicating matters is that the September elections were a boon to organized labor in the city, and the unions—with the exception of the building trades—have stood fi rmly against the project.

Negotiators for the administration and the developers say they worry that even if they were to reach an accord on the living wage issue with the developers, the Council could ultimately overrule them to curry favor with various labor factions.

Observers are keeping an eye on Christine Quinn as the negotiations enter the 11th hour. In previous land-use negotiations, the Council speaker came in at the end to bring warring factions together, often on behalf of the mayor, administration offi cials say. But with rumblings against her leadership, Quinn may be unlikely to interfere.

“The speaker wants to stay the speaker,” said one person close to the negotiations. “She is going to give her members a lot of leeway right now.” C

[email protected]

www.cityhallnews.comCITY HALL NOVEMBER 16, 2009 7

High Hopes For GOP Council Conference With New Heights In Membership

fractures. Ulrich has already signed onto a Paid Family Medical Leave bill, for instance, that is one of the WFP’s biggest priorities, while his GOP colleagues are unlikely to come along.

Meanwhile, the form of the Republican conference is already taking shape.

Even as the fi nal votes for Halloran’s unexpected Council win were being tallied, the freshman Councilman-elect was eying Oddo’s job as the minority leader. With victories by Halloran and Koo, the Queens members now outnumber Staten Island members by a margin of 3 to 2.

But a day after the election, Ulrich called Oddo and put an end to the speculation, pledging to vote to retain him as minority leader.

“He’s a steady hand, and he already has a strong connection and relationship with the powers that

be,” Ulrich said.Oddo said that given the diversity of the

Republican conference and their tenuous grips on their seats, his philosophy as leader would be to allow members to vote their consciences on legislation.

Council Member Vincent Ignizio, meanwhile, is expected to cede his minority whip position to Ulrich, in a nod to the new power of Queens Republicans in the conference. Traditionally, the conference’s leadership positions have been split between boroughs, which was, of course, impossible when the ranks were reduced to the two Staten Island members.

With the State Senate hanging in the balance in 2010, speculation has already ramped up about whether members of the Council GOP conference—who have shown the rare ability to win as Republicans in New York City—could be plucked by Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos to run for the Senate.

Ulrich is seen as a likely candidate to take on State Sen. Joe Addabbo, whose Council seat he now holds. Halloran, meanwhile, is seen as a potential replacement for Republican Sen. Frank Padavan, should he decide to retire.

But for now, the Republicans are tamping down such speculation, and still basking in the afterglow of their big wins.

“If you’re a fan of democracy, you have to be happy with what happened on Election Day,” Oddo said. “With three, we did the best we could. With fi ve, things are going to be different.” C

[email protected]

BY CHRIS BRAGG

In January, the City Council’s Republican conference was down to two Italian guys from Staten Island.

Then came the surprise special election win by 24-year-old Eric Ulrich, who not only won a full term earlier this month, but was returned to City Hall with two more Queens Republicans: Peter Koo, a fi rst-generation Chinese-American, and Dan Halloran, the Council’s fi rst-ever Theodist. Together, they have expanded the conference along the generational, racial and religious spectrums, bringing major changes to the defi nition of Council Republicans on the same day that former Minority Leader Tom Ognibene was crushed in his attempted return to his old seat in a neighboring Queens district.

Now, said Council Minority Leader Jimmy Oddo, the plan is twofold: stick to the traditional, fi scally conservative message, and keep building infl uence.

“Our fi rst job is to build coalitions,” he said. “There are plenty of moderate and conservative Democrats. If they see a vocal group of Council members among their colleagues, they can come along.”

On a 51-member Council, Republicans

acknowledge their fi ve-man coalition will have limited infl uence. But on pocketbook issues, such as reducing water rates or property taxes, Halloran expects the bloc to help empower a different kind of geographic focus than he has seen to date.

“We have to make sure that the outer boroughs do not get shafted by an inner- borough mentality,” Halloran said.

This alliance would likely include lawmakers from neighborhoods with predominantly one- and two-family homes, including Peter Vallone, Jr., James Vacca, Simcha Felder and Lew Fidler. Ulrich said he believes these moderate Democrats had benefi ted as much as anyone on election night.

“They’re going to be courted more heavily than before and have a lot more infl uence,” Ulrich said.

Vallone expressed excitement about the Republican pickups, saying he would now have a greater opportunity to shape legislation.

“It will help slow the all-out rush to the left that was happening,” Vallone said. “Now, the mayor also might be able to think about the Council preventing the override of a veto.”

The Council Republicans also believe

that victories by seven Working Families Party-backed candidates on primary night have actually made Republicans more infl uential.

Oddo said he believes a more fractured Council will lead a WFP faction and non-WFP Democrats alike to come calling on Republicans for votes, which could then be leveraged to benefi t their districts.

“Both sides will be calling on us to support or stop legislation,” Oddo said.

The Council is also expected to be more assertive in opposing Mayor Michael Bloomberg over the next four years, given his narrower than expected margin of victory over Bill Thompson, setting up more close votes during which the GOP members could play a role.

On some issues, Oddo—whose own strong record on labor issues made him the only Republican in the city to earn the cross-endorsement of the WFP this year—believes Republicans may fi nd common ground with the WFP.

The WFP appears to agree with this assessment.

“There are a lot of issues on which we see eye-to-eye with New York City Republicans,” said a party source.

But here too, there will be some

Plans to ally with moderate Democrats, provide swing bloc in fractured chamber

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BY ASSEMBLY MEMBER JEFFREY DINOWITZ

In October 2007, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 14,164, its all-time high; in March 2009, the

Dow closed at 6,926, representing a 64-percent loss in value. More than $8 trillion literally evaporated.

The economic downturn has had a catastrophic impact on seniors in New York. Baby boomers are facing uncertainty about their life savings and their prospects for retirement. And with good reason. The future net worth of baby boomers fell by more that 45 percent from 2004 to 2009.

According to AARP, bankruptcy fi lings for those aged 75 to 84 are up 433 percent from 1991 to 2007. Older adults are cutting back on food and medication—or both—to keep their heat on and a roof over their heads.

In addition, the demand for services for seniors is at an all-time high. This is due to

an increase in the senior population as a whole, and an increase in seniors turning to the social services network—seniors who might otherwise not have—as a result of a decline in individual wealth.

This is the climate that policymakers are being forced to weather when making decisions about senior services. This upcoming budget year is shaping up to be as diffi cult—if not more so— than last year. But focusing on the year-to-year bottom line may distract us from what is our most important long-term goal: creating a senior services network that provides community-based options that keep people in their homes while strengthening the medical services available to those who are in need of them.

This can be done in a number of ways. First, the legislature provided an additional $5 million for meal programs, community services and home care in last year’s budget. We must work to ensure that those funds are protected. Second, we need to foster an environment where seniors can live in their homes for as long as they can and receive services when they need to. This can be done through proper physical planning of aging-

friendly communities and a focus on community-based care. Third, because of the economy, our seniors are working longer than they had anticipated and, in some cases, are even going back to work. We need to create education programs for employers about the needs and talents of older workers and, if possible, provide incentives for the hiring and retraining of seniors.

The economy has impacted New York seniors in a variety of ways. Moving forward, we in the legislature must provide seniors and the network of service providers with the tools to adequately serve the needs of seniors in the short and long term. It is our challenge and our responsibility and I look forward to taking it on. C

Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Democrat

representing parts of the Bronx, is the

chair of the Assembly Committee on

Aging.

BY COUNCIL MEMBER

MARIA DEL CARMEN ARROYO

The City Council is and continues to be a leading advocate for the city’s seniors.

Their life experiences and contributions are invaluable and have made our City the great metropolis that it is. During my tenure as chair of the Committee on Aging, our goal has been to keep seniors engaged in their communities, preserve aging services and create innovative but practical solutions to various issues impacting seniors. Approximately1.3 million New Yorkers are over the age of 60 and it has been projected that they will outnumber school-age children by 2030. Additionally, the needs of seniors are changing. For example, many want or need to stay in the workforce; they are raising their grandchildren; or growing old with HIV/AIDS.

In June 2007, the Council funded the HIV Prevention and Health Literacy for Seniors Initiative. This initiative was created by a workgroup of aging and HIV/AIDS service providers that the Committee on Aging convened in response to a hearing held regarding HIV/AIDS and older adults. The initiative, the fi rst of its kind nationwide, was

developed to educate and train the older adult population, aging service providers and health care providers on the various issues surrounding HIV and the older adult population. To date, 20,000 seniors have been impacted, and the initiative is being considered by the Centers for Disease Control to become a national model for peer education.

Another innovative effort is Age-Friendly New York City, which is a partnership between the Council, the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) and the Mayor’s Offi ce to create a blueprint for how New York City can become more age-friendly. In the fall of 2007 the Council and NYAM embarked on a citywide public engagement campaign with older adults and experts in the fi eld that resulted in the release of a fi ndings report in September 2008. Additionally, we worked with the Mayor’s Offi ce and issued a joint report in August 2009, identifying 59 initiatives to develop a more age-friendly city.

With respect to preserving vital services for seniors, we have closely monitored the Department for the Aging’s (DFTA) modernization plan for their core programs, which include case management, home-delivered meals and senior centers. Of greatest concern was that DFTA’s plan called for the

restructuring of services through the issuing of Requests for Proposals (RFP) that did not adequately take into account transition time, the interdependence between each service and the need for neighborhood/community-based models. Further, the senior center RFP may have potentially resulted in the closing of 80 senior centers citywide. The Council worked with advocates and older adults to successfully have the senior center RFP pulled. We continue to work in partnership with DFTA to create an RFP informed by providers and seniors themselves. Moreover, during the past budget cycle, the Council was successful in restoring $32.9 million to DFTA’s budget.

In addition, the Council has passed legislation that increased the income levels needed to qualify for the Senior Citizen Homeowner’s Exemption, legislation requiring that staff working at city-supported senior centers be trained in elder abuse detection and reporting, and legislation that transfers the administration of the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption from DFTA to the Department of Finance, allowing the city to better target older adults who may be eligible for the rental benefi t.

The accomplishments listed above are only a few of many and we still have more

work to do. I continue to be concerned about our ability to meet the service level needs given expected growth in the aging population. There is also a need to amend the Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement methodology on the federal level to include community-based services that would help increase access to health care for all New Yorkers, including seniors. As chair of the Committee on Aging, I look forward to tackling these issues. C

Maria Carmen del Arroyo, a Democrat

representing parts of the Bronx, is the

chair of the City Council Committee on

Aging.

ISSUE FORUM AGINGMaking New York A More Age-Friendly City

Economic Downturn And Its Impact On Seniors

www.cityhallnews.com

More Access More News More www.cityhallnews.comVol. 3, No. 8 January 2009

Eva Moskowitz,right, mulls a 2013 comeback (),new Council Member Liz Crowley braves the harsh weather for her first day on the job (Page 18)

and Richard Ravitch, left, explains why everyone should get on board his plan to save the MTA (Page 23).

UNIFORMED FIRE OFFICERS ASSOCIATIONLocal 854, I.A.F.F., AFL-CIO

225 Broadway, Suite 401 New York, NY 10007 (212) 293-9300 www.ufoa.org

EXECUTIVE BOARD

Captain Alexander HaganPresident

BC George S. Belnavis Lt. Edward P. Boles Capt. Patrick Reynolds BC James LemondaVice President Treasurer Recording Secretary Financial Secretary

DC Richard J. Alles Capt. John Dunne Lt. James J. McGowan Lt. Patrick M. DunnSergeant-at-Arms Captains’ Representative Lieutenants’ Representative Lieutenants’ Representative

NEW UNIVERSAL CALL TAKING (UCT) SYSTEM IS FAILING!

Since May 2009, the new UCT System used to dispatch Fire Units hasbeen marred by countless failures –

Incorrect AddressesInsufficient / Incomplete InformationDelayed Notification of Fire UnitsNormally assigned units not being properly dispatched

Solution

You dial “911” for a Police Officer. Why not “711” for a Firefighter?

Mayor Bloomberg and his administration successfully instituted “311” tobetter serve the citizens of NYC. Why not do it again by using the “711”system dedicated for direct notification to the FDNY?


He has been profi led so many times, sat through so many television interviews and attempts at creative questions. Hyper-aware of how he comes across and how he wants to come across, he can almost automatically trace where every line on him will lead.

So he has suggestions: Ydanis Rodriguez, the new City Council member from Washington Heights, calling him one of the elders of the Democratic Party when he called with his congratulations a few days after the election. Or, maybe, he could walk over to debate the “tea bag” protesters camped out on the lawn of the Capitol with their “Don’t Tread On Me” fl ags.

And did he mention that he was the MVP of the Congressional football league? He just happens to have the ball on his desk.

“‘Weiner, who conducted the interview fondling his game ball…’” he said in his best mock-narrator voice.

There are other options: he and House Minority Leader John Boehner eyeing each other and then both quickly looking away as Weiner sat discussing the health care bill in the Rayburn Room, just off the House fl oor, in the fi nal afternoon of the House debate. Or a repetition of one of his new favorite bits about looking into renting his own satellite truck to make doing all his recent television appearances easier on everyone.

Or, perhaps, that he showed up at the Hilton for Bill Thompson’s election night party an hour and a half early, before just about anyone, to fend off all the obvious questions, almost on auto-pilot, as he smacked on a piece of gum—Was he sorry about dropping out? What did he think of

the campaign Thompson had run? Was he going to run in 2013? What did he have to say about all the Democrats who had gathered at Michael Bloomberg’s party down the street? (Answer: “People over there are the ones who like the free hot dogs. Not the Weiners.”)

What Weiner does not want is for the read on him at the end of 2009 to be about what happened next: after lingering around on stage following a short, powerful, but largely overlooked speech—he took the microphone at almost the exact moment that NY1 called the race for Bloomberg—Weiner slowly wandered back down into the crowd.

Weiner had been told that everyone was going to clear the stage ahead of the concession speech, so he had just gotten a head start. But then everyone stayed, the Democratic establishment of the city holding close around Thompson as he brought his farewell home.

What a ridiculously easy image that would make, he joked. Then another joke. Then he stopped for a moment, looked up at the stage, seemed for a split second content where he was. And then he lit off for the front of room, taking the stage and clapping hard.

Days later, leaning back at his desk in his Washington offi ce, the moment was still rattling around in his mind.

“I have to do anything to stop the lede being,” he said, returning to the narrator’s voice, “‘Standing in the back of the room, somewhat forlorn, in a metaphor for 2009’s election…’”

Because believe him or not, believe the others who know him or not, Weiner really does seem at peace with his decision, content with the choice he made. Sure, the

fi nal results were closer than most people expected, but still, Thompson did not win. Only in the context of Bloomberg’s record-busting spending does the margin really seem that tiny. He was torn to not be on the campaign trail occasionally, but he would have been torn as well to not have been in Washington these past six months. And anyway, anyone who knows Weiner knows that he is not the most introspective of people—ask him to hit a Republican on an issue, and he fi res hard and fast. Ask him to refl ect on life, and he tends to come up dry.

But no matter what he does, the reaction always seems to be: Yeah, right.

It started right away on the night of the election, in that fl ash of a moment when Thompson was almost leading the race. A few New York members watching the election results from Washington circulated a joke about putting their colleague on suicide watch.

“Call the Capitol police,” one of them said, “and have them deploy to every bridge to protect Anthony.”

When Weiner offi cially dropped out of the mayor’s race at the end of

May, standing in front of the Park Slope brownstone where he grew up and where his father’s law offi ce shingle still hangs, he repeated what he had written in his New York Times op-ed that morning: running against Bloomberg, he feared, was going to be more about an avalanche of advertising than a debate of ideas, and there was a huge amount of work to be done in Washington.

Then he said something that a lot of politicians before him have said: he was, instead of running, going to spend more

SpinDoctor

By Edward-Isaac Dovere

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Anthony Weiner has a bet going with his staff about how this article will begin.


time focused on his personal life and on the job he already had.

But Weiner actually did. He got engaged, and, after endorsing Thompson at the start of the Salute to Israel parade that weekend, bullhorn and Israeli fl ag in hand, threw himself into what was to have been the dominating debate of the summer, and has become the dominating debate of the year. Weiner may not have written a single line of the health care bill, he may not have had much power over what ultimately got passed, but he has for many people become the public face of health care reform. This is a man who represents a moderate middle class district that stretches from Brighton Beach to Forest Hills, not even a member of the House Progressive Caucus—and is quite sure an invitation will not be forthcoming. (“I’m not ideologically pure enough,” he said.) Yet in debates with everyone from Betsy McCaughey to Maria Bartiromo, he has been Mr. Liberal Progressive of the airwaves, the defender of single payer, Canadian-style public health insurance.

He fi rst got an interest in Medicare-for-all as far back as 2005, after the end of his last campaign. But there was never a chance to do anything about it until just about everything in Washington changed for Weiner: Democrats won the House and Senate, he was given a spot on the powerful Energy & Commerce Committee (which has partial power over health care), Obama moved into the White House and he accrued what is now a decade of seniority—all coming together at the moment when, for the fi rst time in his life in Congress, he was not actively trying to get out of Congress.

But that meant he was a man in search of another campaign.

He started reading more about health care, learning the ins and outs, and internalizing how each part would benefi t people in New York. Then he had something which he said “approximated a legislative epiphany”: “not only does single payer have a value politically in that I think it expresses a fairly simple, easy to understand conceptual that makes it easy to sell a big thing,” he said, “but also substantively, it became more and more profoundly obvious to me that it was the right place to be.”

“Then,” as he tells the story, “I looked up from my books and memos and thought, how come no one’s doing this?”

In a debate that was largely taking place on cable television, Weiner knew he could help. The health care overhaul was being put forward without a base, without a constituency. He set out to give it one.

“It was an instance of in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king—no one was really doing very well what I’ve been trying to do,” he said. “Some of it was, I looked up and realized the mother

ship wasn’t giving us very good direction, and I’ve got enough seniority, enough understanding of how things work around here to say, ‘You know what, I think I can do this better than they’re doing.’”

Better and faster than almost anyone, Weiner can fi nd both the most politically potent aspects and how to get attention for them. On this, the answer was in Medicare: he would say they were the same and push the Republicans to explain why they supported socialized medicine for seniors but not for everyone else.

At the end of July, he pounced, offering an amendment in committee that would

have ended Medicare. It was a ploy, and everyone, himself included, voted against it. But two months after leaving the mayor’s race, Weiner gave his party a talking point which he says got them 10 more points in the opinion polls and got the bill more than one step closer to the president’s desk.

Three weeks later, on a Saturday afternoon in mid-August when as a mayoral candidate he would have been working a street fairs or a civic association, Weiner sensed that the public option was dying.

So he announced that there were 100 Democrats who were going to vote against any health care bill without a public option.

A lot of people were surprised. And, Weiner admitted, with good reason.

“I didn’t have that. I didn’t know if there were 25 of us. I had no idea. But I did recognize that the way this city works, when these things are fl agged, someone has to put a number on things—‘this costs us X number,’” he said. “So I said 100.”

He knew his colleagues in the House would scramble rather than verify, and that the press corps would do the same. And sure enough, no one ever did ask him to produce a list.

“To say I saved the public option is overselling it,” he said. “[But] what it did was drive a whole bunch of reporting around that little factoid.”

Essentially via press release, he had what was probably his most important moment of the debate.

Waiting for the fl oor speech which the leadership had tapped him

to deliver as the debate began to close, Weiner reviewed some of the dire

Believe him or not, believe the others

who know him or not, Weiner really

does seem at peace with his decision,

content with the choice he made.


warnings that had been issued in Congress over Medicare in 1965, just a few months before Weiner’s fi rst birthday. Hitting his message, his plan was to read a quote about the horrors that someone like then-Missouri Rep. Durward “Doc” Hall had projected and point out that the member of Congress in that seat today was saying the same thing about the current health bill.

Every few minutes, his staff connected another call to a winner (Republican and Democrat, within his district or not) of one of this year’s Council races. Weiner offered his help, his guidance and an open line. Without any notes in front of them, he personalized each—a thank-you to Lew Fidler for holding the free fl u shot service that Weiner’s father had gone to, a marveling at the progress Ydanis Rodriguez (who earned the ultimate Weiner honorifi c, “my brother from another mother”) had made since they fought the term limits extension together.

Years ago, somewhere in between his fi rst day stuffi ng calendars into envelopes as a Capitol Hill intern for then-Rep. Chuck Schumer and becoming the would-have-been mayoral frontrunner, Weiner read a story about Jimmy Carter writing letters to all the people who had lost state legislature races in Iowa in the years leading up to the Iowa caucuses. At least he thinks it was Jimmy Carter—but maybe not. The point is that Weiner was inspired. To this day, he sends a note to everyone who loses a primary in New York City. These are the district leaders, the activists, the people who power the political process. At their lowest moment, Weiner wants them to know there is a congressman who still cares enough to notice their efforts.

But the problem, if he is looking to translate all this into a 2013 Weiner campaign, may be with the winners. Incoming Comptroller John Liu and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio will be on the streets daily, scoring points off of Bloomberg and getting their names into the local news for the efforts. And if there is one thing that can be said from the results of this year’s Council races, say those already starting to look ahead, it is that the city is growing increasingly diverse, increasingly distant from the white, middle class, Jewish-heavy electorate that just missed putting Weiner into the 2005 run-off.

Not that he is prepared to cede the spotlight.

“I think that my constituents and future voters in any mayoral campaign are going to want to see that I was trying to be constructive,” he said, heading into the Capitol to cast his vote. “And I also see that if you look at the model for people that have come before, anyone who says ‘I’m going to agree with him no matter what he says,’ like the speaker has said, or ‘I’m going to be against him no matter what he does,’ which to some degree was what Mark Green’s posture under Rudy

Giuliani—I don’t think either one of them is the right direction to go.”

Ed Koch served nine years in Congress before being elected mayor, John Lindsay only seven. Fiorello LaGuardia served 13, with a gap to serve in World War I. If he does run in 2013, Weiner—who remains the only member of Congress to keep a New York City fl ag outside of his offi ce in addition to the American and state fl ags—would arrive at Gracie Mansion with 15 years in Congress. And these next four could give him a chance to get what he never had before: legislative experience. He will get it the Weiner way: in the newspapers, on television and all over Facebook.

And meanwhile, he still has the $4 million he has sitting in his account at the Campaign Finance Board. While everyone else is still paying the bills on the vendors from this year’s race, Weiner has already maxed out for 2013.

“I think it would be overstating it to say that he’s stepped in and had a

profound effect,” said Norm Ornstein, a veteran Washington observer who studies Congress at the American Enterprise Institute. “But he has had one at least in countering some of the negative stuff in the debate and trying to move—especially some of the progressive members—in whatever bill emerges and gets 218 votes.”

Weiner has done this in the best way he knows how: on television. While others were drafting the bill, he was holding his own amid “weiner” jokes with Bill Maher and whoever the cable news shows put next to him. Along the way, he has become a Fox News favorite, even in spite of the White House omerta. (“Just because they’re ignoring the highest-rated cable news channel doesn’t mean we have to,”

explained one Weiner aide.)On the day of the health care debate,

Weiner did Fox twice—once in the morning, and once in the evening with Rep. Dave Camp.

Weiner does not know Camp well, but he greeted the Michigan Republican like an old friend: “brighter tie, more distinguished looking,” Weiner said, sizing up his sparring partner as they arranged themselves in the shot.

Yes, the cameraman said, but Weiner was the one who was going to be mayor of New York.

“Let’s not rush that,” Weiner said, trying to change the subject.

“I know you want that job,” the cameraman said, wagging his fi nger at Weiner. Even he will not drop the topic.

“If I was mayor, I wouldn’t get to debate David Camp,” he said, still trying to move on to a new topic.

Camp smiled politely, not really paying attention. Weiner could not resist.

“Dude,” Weiner said to Camp, trying to needle him, “Gracie Mansion has four bedrooms—I would hook you up.”

The camera went live. Prodded by the host, Camp raised what had, in the fi nal push, become a main talking point for the Republicans: the Democratic bill was going to send people to jail if they did not cooperate with the health plan.

Weiner, whose staff already presented him with this and the other arguments Camp had been making in other recent appearances, began to laugh—half sincere, half theatrical.

“If there’s a concern about going to jail,” Weiner said, a smile stretching high into his cheeks, “I’ll make the deal with him: anyone who is thrown in jail, I’ll serve the time for them. That’s how sure I am that that is just the kind of scare tactics that we frequently hear.”

(The Twitter crowd, Weiner and his staff quietly but proudly point out, went wild over this one. So did the Fox host, who asked him for the fi rst jailhouse interview and thanked him at the end for adding a little levity to the discussion. Camp seemed not to fully register what was happening.)

On the walk over, Weiner admitted that he did sometimes wonder why he bothered with these shows. He had already been on Fox once that day, and there was an MSNBC appearance that he had had to cancel that morning, but was still maybe being shifted around. But Weiner has looked at the numbers. He knows the ratings. Not many people were watching Fox’s “Health Care Countdown” special at 6:05 on a Saturday. And almost none of them were in New York.

Still, when NBC called, asking him to hang around for a few minutes to tape a short bit for the local news, he immediately agreed.

Whatever the next issue is—he expects that for him, it will

probably be immigration through his seat on the Judiciary Committee or energy issues through his seat on the Energy & Commerce Committee—Weiner believes the role that he played this summer has propelled him to a new position in the job he is likely to hold for at least the next four years.

“I think this has helped me a good deal institutionally,” he said. “And I’m pretty good at this stuff, and I see no reason I’m going to suddenly not be the caffeinated, amped-up Weiner just because health care’s done.”

He encourages anyone who thinks otherwise to check with a member of Congress from outside New York—someone like Dave Loebsack, the Iowa

Anthony Weiner’s decision to focus on Congress and the health care debate kept him out of Gracie Mansion, but did earn him a ride on Air Force One and a new level of prominence on the national stage.


BY SELENA ROSS

On the pavement of 47th Street in midtown Manhattan, below the offi ces of Sens. Chuck

Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, toddlers waved balloon animals in the air, signs reading “Senator Schumer, Stand Up for Children’s Health,” strapped to their strollers.

“We need to reward the states like New York that have done well,” said Marian Wright Edelman, the director of Children’s Defense Fund, during a slow moment at the rally. “How can we conceive that in the richest nation on earth they are talking about reform legislation that would leave children worse off?”

While the debate over federal health care reform legislation continues, in New York City, local health experts look on warily as they expect potential massive changes to the city’s health system.

S-CHIP, the public children’s health

plan, faces elimination if its current provisions expire after 2013, as currently planned in the House. The Senate must choose between an expiration date of 2013 or 2019 for the program.

But Medicaid coverage is perhaps the biggest issue for New York, a so-called “do-gooder” state that provides far more coverage than the federal government requires. Tom Duane, the chair of the State Senate Health Committee, has said for months that the state will lose out if the federal government does not continue to provide matching funds for New York’s extensive coverage.

The cost of private insurance is almost as much a concern. Most experts say that the Senate bill as it stands will not make insurance cheaper for New Yorkers who buy their own plans or employers who provide group coverage, and the bill is expected to make Americans legally required to buy coverage.

Meanwhile, public hospitals in the

city continue to struggle. The Health and Hospitals Corporation announced a hiring freeze and service cuts last March, and advocates say that public hospitals have reached a breaking point between the recession and this year’s budget cuts.

Judy Wessler, the director of the Commission on the Public’s Health System, an independent advocacy organization, says that a higher cost of insurance will drive more people to public hospitals, but the reforms threaten to reduce their funding without looking at demand, in the name of shifting funding to primary care. That spells trouble for the city, she said.

Adding to New York’s potential problems is the large population of recent immigrants who are subject to different laws, as well as the undocumented immigrants who rely on charity care. Experts are waiting to see whether the reforms will cut back not only on charity-care funding, but also on options for

documented immigrants who would not be covered for the fi rst fi ve years.

“Not only are people who are undocumented not being covered, but as well, people who have documents are not going to be covered initially either, and that’s a very serious problem,” Wessler said.

Meanwhile, Paul Howard at the Manhattan Institute has also been tracking how New York will maintain its primary care services, especially in the city. He argues that universal coverage should be held off or abandoned to prevent the kind of squeeze that both he and Wessler described.

“You’re going to put millions of new people into the system when we already have a lack of primary care,” he said. “My concern is that in the name of expanding coverage you could wind up creating headaches for access to care for people lower down on the economic ladder.” C

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City Experts Offer Advance Prognosis Of Effects Of Federal LegislationHEALTH

Democrat who almost missed a recorded vote on health care because he was in the back of the room, not paying attention, when Weiner looked up at the count on the board and screamed “One more!”

Not quite Henry Clay, but Weiner did manage to stop the Republicans from derailing the day’s proceedings and get Loebsack to the front to vote.

“There was one Brooklyn-enough guy in the place to stop the gavel from falling,” he said. “One of the reasons why Chuck Schumer kicks ass and takes numbers in the Senate is because the New York way, even when done at medium speed, is a hurricane for these people.”

Through the beginning of the year, Weiner struggled to accept what he knew would happen if he ran against Bloomberg: the mayor would spend millions to defi ne him in people’s minds, and he knew enough about politics to worry that he would never be able to redefi ne himself.

“I call it the Weiner premium,” he said, jokingly pegging the additional amount of money that the Bloomberg campaign would have needed to defeat him at $61 million.

“They would have had to conclude the deal and actually buy the Post,” he said. “Just having them working all day for them wouldn’t have been enough.”

Instead of letting himself go down as the irresponsible playboy who did favors for foreign models and missed votes to play ice hockey, Weiner is now a man who has a framed photo of him and his fi ancée (no comment on whether a wedding date has been set), Huma Abedin, staring back at him on the edge of his desk. He has built a relationship, though at times combative, with the White House, which he feels secure about professionally because the president, he said, “loves Huma, sees her every day—that protects me.”

Also through his fi ancée, his existing relationship with Hillary Clinton has grown, while at the same time, his efforts on health care have deepened his relationships with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Energy & Commerce Committee chair Henry Waxman.

“I think he’s really found his rhythm, not just in advocating for single payer, but also becoming more outspoken with the administration, in the press and even internally within the Democratic caucus,” said Rep. Steve Israel, the Long Island congressman who himself refocused on Congress after being asked by the White House to drop his plans for a Senate run the week before Weiner left the mayor’s race.

So yes, Weiner got lucky with the health care debate: if he had not suddenly found himself with a lot of time on his hands, if other members of Congress had been more willing to jump into the fray, if the debate had not happened so completely in the media, he might not have had the same opening.

Luck or not, he had a good summer in Congress. Those who know him and Washington expect that to lead to more.

“He’s got several chits to play,” said Marc Dunkelman, a former Weiner chief of staff who is now a vice president at the Democratic Leadership Council. “People owe him a lot and whatever was going to go through the Congress, he was going to have a pretty strong place to negotiate for what he wanted—which was going to be something for New York’s middle class.”

But the thought of this being his future, of Anthony Weiner growing old and gray in Congress as he slowly works his way up the ranks to become a committee chairman by about 2025, maybe 2030

(he is 19th in seniority on the Judiciary Committee, 20th in seniority on the Energy & Commerce Committee) does not quite make sense to a lot of people. He could, maybe have a sub-committee of his own by 2013, and if all goes well for him, be in a stronger position with a Democratic majority and two-term president, but Weiner says he does not know himself how to answer the question of whether he could be a lifer in DC.

He does not, after all, have the schedule of a man eager to be in Washington. Take the closing days of the campaign: Weiner reached out again to help, spending the Saturday morning before polls opened

walking Thompson through the Grand Army Plaza greenmarket. By Monday he was back in Washington. Monday night, he was at an event back in the district, slept at home, voted early the next morning, fl ew to Washington for votes, fl ew back to New York to join Thompson at the Hilton and slept at home. The next morning, he was back in DC.

“It was kind of like a week that I would have done if I was actually a candidate,” Weiner said.

And that, in a way, is exactly the point.“I still don’t think that Anthony’s fully

removed himself from ever being mayor,” Crowley said. “He’s just one of those folks that kind of exudes that energy.”

Or as Crowley assessed the situation: “Anthony Weiner, if he wants to be mayor, he’ll be mayor some day.”

Sure enough, his fi rst stop after the health care vote fi nally happened was

the steps of City Hall. He and the rest of the House kicked the bill to the Senate at 11:15 Saturday night, and Sunday at 12 he was back in New York, reading off the top 10 ways he and his staff had determined the bill would help the city: increased coverage, help for small businesses, hospital remaining open. He threw the facts and fi gures at the print reporters, four television cameras and one radio microphone, complete with three self-aware football references.

He got two questions, perfunctory ones, the kinds that desk editors make their reporters ask. The rest stared back at him, waiting for him to acknowledge the obvious, open the door for them to ask about politics.

He did not. But as the press conference broke up, they gathered around him, each wondering whether someone else would dare. When one did, they all crowded close, desperate for him to just say the one word of remorse, of agony that they were all so sure he was feeling. For all Weiner’s efforts to keep the attention on health care, for all his resistance to engage in the politics, that is all anyone seems to ever want to talk to him about.

“Isn’t it safe to come back to the steps of City Hall?” Weiner joked.

No, they said. Health care was nice and important, but they wanted to talk to him about the mayor’s race.

“Isn’t that race over?” he asked, with mock innocence.

The reporters did not bite.“The 2013 race isn’t,” one murmured.

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“Anthony Weiner, if he wants to be

mayor, he’ll be mayor some day,”

said Rep. Joe Crowley.


BY ANDREW J. HAWKINS

In his two terms so far, Michael Bloomberg has gone to great lengths to make himself out to be the Green

Mayor of New York, laying down mile of bike lanes, planting trees and staking much of his legacy on an ambitious sustainability plan for 2030.

But he has also become known as the development mayor, aggressively pushing major construction projects through the City Council and rezoning vast swaths of the city to accommodate more offi ce towers, hotels and housing.

And now, after his close re-election to a third term, those two carefully crafted images are at odds in the debate over how to clean up the fetid, poisonous waterway in South Brooklyn known as the Gowanus Canal.

The Environmental Protection Agency appears poised to designate the canal as a Superfund site, perhaps as early as December. But Bloomberg is trying to scuttle the plan, arguing that Superfund status could spell disaster for much of the development that is planned near the canal. Instead, he has offered his own $175 million plan to improve the canal’s water quality.

But the city’s timing in releasing its plan has cast some suspicions over the mayor’s motives. In April, the EPA proposed to add the canal to its Superfund program, which raises money to pay for the clean-up effort through lawsuits against past polluters. With $500 million in development and more than 1,200 units

of housing at stake, Bloomberg signaled his opposition to the Superfund plan, but did not release details of an alternative plan until months later.

Some developers, like Toll Brothers, have said that the Superfund label would lead to the drying up of their fi nancing.

“It was an impending Superfund listing that spurred them to think, ‘Oh, well, all our efforts to rezone and all our efforts to bring in developers may fall apart if we don’t jump and do something quickly,’” said Josh Verleun, an attorney for Riverkeeper, an environmental watchdog group.

Verleun added that Bloomberg’s opposition to the EPA’s plan has cast doubt over the rest of the mayor’s environmental credentials.

“Yes, he has been pro-environmental. He’s defi nitely done a lot of good,” he said. “But a lot of the [environmental] things that are in the works are still in the works. And when it’s on the ground and you see actually what is being done, a lot of it is focused on supporting developers.”

Some question whether the city has the resources to undergo the toxic clean-up effort without the guaranteed source of cash that a Superfund listing would provide.

For Superfund supporters, Bloomberg’s acquiescence to developers fl ies in the face of his carefully crafted image as a committed environmentalist.

“It’s a slap to the face,” said Linda Mariano, a member of the Friends and Residents of the Gowanus Canal, which advocates a Superfund designation. “Can Toll Brothers clean the water? Would they even want to? Are they even going to clean their land?”

Bloomberg has said he would welcome a cleaner canal, but not the stigma attached to Superfund designation, which he believes could take decades to complete. But the EPA says the city’s plan is likely to take just as long.

“The Superfund process is a streamlined, vetted process,” said Elizabeth Totman, a spokesperson for the EPA. “We know what we’re doing and we have the authority. If the city were to do the clean-up, it would still need to do all the things the EPA has to do. It’s the same process.”

Others note that Bloomberg has stated no opposition to the EPA’s announcement that it is also considering Newtown Creek in Greenpoint for Superfund designation, mainly because of the lack of development opportunities around the creek.

Critics point to other examples to bolster their point that the Gowanus is not an isolated event. Bloomberg’s advocacy for big projects like stadiums has irked many environmentalists, who feel the mayor’s priorities have less to do with the environment and more to do with spurring economic development. Opponents of

the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn say the traffi c impact of the planned development would increase pollution in the neighborhood. And critics of the new Yankee Stadium cite delays in park restoration and the city’s use of artifi cial turf as supposed evidence of the mayor’s phony environmental commitment.

But around the Gowanus Canal, supporters say that Bloomberg maintains the right balance in his plan. Besides, they say, labeling the canal a Superfund site would be an environmental disaster for the community.

“It’s like putting a sign of smallpox on someone’s front door,” said Bill Appel, executive director of the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation.

Other supporters acknowledge the mayor’s plan was designed to placate developers, but say that the plan burnishes, rather than tarnishes, his environmental credentials, because designating the Gowanus Canal a Superfund site could actually prove to be worse for the long-gestating clean-up effort.

“I would disagree that it’s a choice of development over environment because I strongly believe that waiting for Superfund would not be good for the environment,” said Hope Cohen, an associate director at the Regional Plan Association. “It would become this unending litigation process and residents will never see clean-up.” C

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In Gowanus Canal Clean-Up, Bloomberg TheEnvironmentalist Vs. Bloomberg The Developer

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Mayor Bloomberg, shown here with a group of Brooklyn legislators, has resisted efforts by the EPA to declare the Gowanus Canal a Superfund site, saying it would take too long and discourage development.


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Rep. Ed Towns has served 14 terms in Congress, represent-ing Brownsville, Cypress Hills,

downtown Brooklyn, Boerum Hill and parts of Fort Greene, among other neighborhoods, since 1983. He and his son, Assembly Member Darryl Towns, made history by becoming the fi rst Af-rican-American father-and-son team to serve simultaneously in New York pub-lic offi ce when the younger Towns was elected in 1992.

The elder Towns recently sat down with City Hall to talk about the perks of chairing a committee, hosting his own Internet talk show, his feelings about Sammy Sosa and why he may owe his career to car trouble.

City Hall: Are you a cook at all yourself?

Edolphus Towns: No, not really. My wife is a tremendous cook. She’s just gifted. She’s the type of person that can cook, she can even sew, and she’s a very talented woman.

CH: Does she kick you out of the kitchen?

ET: Yeah—that’s why I don’t even bother. I don’t even try. I put something on the grill when we cook out.

CH: Usually it’s the guy of the house that does the grilling.

ET: Yeah so that’s my thing. And my son is my next-door neighbor, so a lot of times he’s the grill guy.

CH: Whose decision was it to move in—did you move in next to them?

ET: No, I was there fi rst, and then when a physician sold his house, my son bought it. And my daughter lives four houses down on the same block.

CH: So this is, like, the Towns block?

ET: I won’t call it Towns block, but the Towns are on there.

CH: Some families do very well close together and others need more space. How does it work out for you guys?

ET: It works out real well because the grandkids run in and out of the house. I have fi ve grandkids.

CH: I noticed that you have your own YouTube channel. You really seem to enjoy interviewing different guests. Who’s been your favorite guest so far?

ET: My favorite, I guess, is a guy by the name of Armstrong Williams.

Stewed Chicken And Diet Coke With Ed Towns

Armstrong Williams is a journalist and he’s very controversial. His views are not mainstream views, so I enjoyed having a dialogue with him.

CH: Have you ever thought about switching over to do a talk show?

ET: Well, no, I enjoy the weekly show. I enjoy politics, I really do. I’ve been involved now for about 40 years, as a district leader, then, of course, deputy borough president.

CH: A lot of people your age might be going to play golf or relax with their family. Have you ever thought of retiring?

ET: I really have not thought about retiring. I feel good and I generally can compete with anybody out there. And my health is good. I enjoy what I do. I really fi nd it extremely gratifying to be able to assist people, to make life better for them, to watch the smiles on their faces and to be able to help them accomplish whatever they want. That, to me, is very touching, and I don’t want to turn that loose.

[Waitress comes. Towns orders stewed

chicken, salad with honey mustard and

ranch dressing on the side and a Diet

Coke.]

CH: You were a longtime committee member, and now you’ve recently become the chair of the Government Oversight and Reform team. When you become chair, do you get all these big perks? Like a big offi ce or someone dropping off your dry cleaning or a private jet?

ET: You get a lot of staff, to be able to do the kinds of things you need to do as chair of a committee. Of course, we have oversight of all the governmental agencies, which requires a lot of people to do that. Being the only member in the House that has that subpoena power, you know—everybody else has to go to the fl oor of the House in order to get a subpoena. I’m the only person that can do it without going to the fl oor. I can do it

right from my offi ce.CH: So you have a lot of people that

are afraid of you all of a sudden?ET: I hope not, because you try not to

use that. You try to get people to come forward with what the information is before you have to revert to that. And, of course, with the president, he believes in transparency, and that issue has been raised.

CH: The outgoing chair of that committee was Henry Waxman. Did you guys sit down and have a buddy-buddy talk about what to do?

ET: I talk to him all the time. He and I were on two committees together: Energy and Commerce, and Government Reform.

CH: So you guys used to spend a lot of quality time together. Do you miss him?

ET: I do. We talk on the fl oor a lot. He’s one of the real senior members here.

CH: On the Government Oversight Committee, you got to talk to a lot of baseball players about performance-enhancing substances. Not as a Congressman, but as a person, is it upsetting to know that some of the best players from the last couple of decades have been using substances?

ET: I regret that the names of some of the great players have come up.

CH: Were there some of them that you said, “Oh god, not him?”

ET: Yes, especially [Sammy] Sosa. Every time I hear his name, I feel bad about it.

CH: Last year, one of the major points that your primary challenger made was that you had been in offi ce too long, you were out of touch and you weren’t really active in the community anymore. Obviously, voters didn’t buy it. But has that changed the way that you’ve approached your job now?

ET: No, because it wasn’t true. Basically, I just ignored it. The statement was false, and at the end of the day he lost almost 2 to 1.

[A fellow diner comes over and

compliments the Congressman, saying

he wasn’t sure if it was him at fi rst

because he looks like he’s 28 years old.]

CH: You do look very young for 75. Do you have a secret?

ET: No, I try to take care of myself, I really do.

CH: And you do look just like your son. Do people ever confuse the two of you?

ET: Yes, all the time. I go to senior centers and people say, “Tell your dad I said hello,” and, “I love your dad.”

CH: Does your daughter look like you too?

ET: No, my daughter is actually adopted. Well—she looks like the family. I guess if you feed them long enough, they’ll look like you.

CH: You grew up in North Carolina. So how did you end up in New York?

ET: My family moved to upstate New York, to Niagara Falls… it was too cold there. As soon as I had enough money to get out of there, that was it.

CH: So how did you pick Brooklyn?ET: Some of the guys on the basketball

team were from Brooklyn.CH: You played basketball?ET: Yeah. So when I was separating from

the military, I was making phone calls, “Hey, what’s going on?” And [my friend] says, “Why don’t you come through?” Because I was going back to Niagara Falls. So I came through. And had car trouble. And in the process of trying to get my car fi xed, I started looking for a job.

CH: So basically, you ended up in Brooklyn because you had car trouble, and you never left. That’s a good story. What kind of car was it?

ET: It was an old Corvair. It had the engine in the back. … Shirley Chisholm had a lot to do with my career. Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm was the fi rst black woman to be elected to Congress and I probably would not have met her if my car hadn’t broken down.

CH: I’ve talked to other members of the New York Congressional delegation, and they have nothing but horrible things to say about the food in Washington. What’s your take?

ET: I believe that the food in New York is defi nitely better than the food in Washington. It’s a major difference.

CH: People complain that you can’t get a good pizza or a good bagel.

ET: Yeah, same thing with the hamburgers there. The only thing you might be able to compare is steak, but New York hamburgers are much better.

CH: What about your wife—how long have you guys been married?

ET: 51 years.CH: You must have had a big party

for the 50th anniversary.ET: We did. It’s been really fun. I

asked her, “Would you marry me again?” And she said she’d have to think about that. C

[email protected]


BY CHRIS BRAGG

In early September, Richard Iannuzzi boarded Air Force 2 and took a seat next to Secretary of

Education Arne Duncan.Iannuzzi, president of the powerful

600,000-member New York State United Teachers union (NYSUT), had been invited to the vice president’s plane to make the case that the state deserved a major slice of the $4.35 billion in federal stimulus funds, which Duncan will soon dole out to states that appear to be implementing his agenda.

By the end of the fl ight between Washington, D.C., and Syracuse, Iannuzzi says he was convinced that Duncan had gotten the message.

“I left confi dent that the secretary understood my explanation,” said Iannuzzi, “and he indicated that there would be no barriers for applying for the funds.”

Yet despite Iannuzzi’s lobbying efforts, others remain concerned about the union’s—and the state’s—approach to

winning the funds from the program, known as “Race to the Top.”

Back in June, Duncan singled out New York as an example of a state that could miss out on the money because of a law capping the number of charter schools in the state at 200.

But so far, the state has stuck with the cap, even as other states have changed their laws in order to try and qualify for funds. Only 12 to 15 states are expected to receive a portion of the money.

The cap would also throw a major wrench in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s third-term agenda. Bloomberg made building more charter schools a centerpiece of his campaign rhetoric, and the state could hit its cap of 200 by the end of this year.

But Ianuzzi said the Bloomberg’s vision is too extreme because it lacks adequate checks and balances to ensure accountability for the new schools. Ianuzzi said he would be open to lifting the cap if such checks are put into place.

Charter school advocates, however,

remain skeptical of Iannuzzi. Peter Murphy, policy director for the New York Charter Schools Association, said the state was missing an opportunity by not proactively reforming its laws to fi t Duncan’s criteria, especially in light of $700 million in education cuts proposed

by Gov. David Paterson.The fi rst round of Race to the Top funds

are likely to be disbursed in January. A

second round will likely be distributed around April.

Murphy speculated that Iannuzzi was banking on the infl uence of Sen. Chuck Schumer and the union’s own power to try and win funds without actually reforming its policies.

Murphy predicted that Iannuzzi will only prod the Legislature to reform the state’s education laws if it comes up dry on the fi rst round.

“He’s playing an insider’s game, saying he has the ear of the administration,” Murphy said. “What the state should be doing is playing both cards—playing the insider’s game and actually making the reforms.”

Iannuzzi, however, countered that he is simply trying to push the best policies possible for the state’s students—and that he has already faced some pushback from union membership for embracing reform as strongly as he has.

“The greatest challenge is fi nding time to explain that these things are in their interests,” he said. C

[email protected]

“He’s playing an insider’s game, saying he has the ear of the administration,” Peter Murphy said about Iannuzzi. “What the state should be doing is playing both cards—playing the insider’s game and actually making the reforms.”

NYSUT President Tries To Infl uence Approach On Charters

BY ANDREW COTLOV AND CHRIS BRAGG

It is not often that a member of the New York Assembly gets the attention of the President of the

United States. But the confl uence of a green energy

president and the state’s recent passage of a sweeping new green energy program meant that in September, when Barack Obama was in town to speak at Hudson Valley Community College, Assembly Member Kevin Cahill got a chance to get close with the commander-in-chief.

“The president said, ‘We’ve been following what you’ve been doing in New York and you’re doing great work,’” said Cahill, an Assembly sponsor of the legislation. “The president told me so, personally.”

After months of political wrangling, the Green Homes/Green Jobs program signed by Gov. David Paterson in October represents a major coup for environmental advocates, a lobby that had grown frustrated as one of the major initiatives had been bottled up in the State Senate.

The new law will provide $112 million to retrofi t one million homes and small businesses within the next fi ve years. The funding will be parceled out to homeowners and commercial property owners in loans, between $13,000 and $26,000, which are meant to be paid back with the money saved from becoming

more energy-effi cient.Lawmakers around the state are

lauding the measure, predicting it will create thousands of new green-collar jobs while also saving billions in energy costs for consumers. This helped the bill win bipartisan support.

“We need jobs, period,” said Assembly Member Tom O’Mara. “Whether they’re green, red, white or in between, that’s the bottom line: we need people to get to work.”

For New York City, this could mean the chance for hundreds of unemployed workers to fi nd new green jobs in a variety of fi elds. Supporters hope that jobs generated by the new program will come as an economic boon for the city, especially as unemployment continues to climb.

When the Senate was mired in chaos in July, the Independent Power Producers of New York, a trade group that represents energy suppliers, managed to kill the bill.

This time, however, the Working Families Party, which has also grown frustrated as a divided Democratic Senate has been unable to pass many elements of their aggressive agenda, helped push the bill through by an overwhelming margin.

Yet some business groups remain concerned about its effects. The money for the program was pulled from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a cap-and-trade program

consisting of 10 northeastern states. Since 2003, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority has been meticulously planning with the energy industry how to run the program, as they have sought to strike a balance in the rates charged to businesses for carbon credits that then go to fund specifi c energy-effi ciency programs.

Ken Pokalsky, legislative director for the Business Council of New York, said Green Homes/Green Jobs could now make RGGI a cash cow for the Legislature and had strayed far from its intended purposes.

Advocates Look Forward To Green In Pockets From Green Jobs Program Concerns remain about role of ACORN, 10-state cap-and-trade program

“This program has morphed into a revenue producer rather than a regulatory program,” he said.

But advocates of the program argue that Green Homes/Green Jobs fi ts well into the spirit of how the RGGI funds were supposed to be spent, since the money will still go to making homes more effi cient.

Cahill, the Assembly sponsor of the bill, dismissed concerns from the energy industry.

“It’s appropriate for those people in the business of selling more power to object to a program that calls for using less power,” he said.

There also remain questions about who will actually get to share in the $112 million windfall. On the Senate fl oor, Republicans railed that the money could go to the parent organization of the Working Families Party, ACORN, which in recent months has come under scrutiny for potentially using state money earmarked for foreclosure relief programs instead for political purposes.

Environmental advocates note, however, that ACORN is not actually mentioned anywhere in the legislation and that other groups could instead be tapped to implement the program.

Paul Steidler, of the NY Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance, said that the state should consider setting up a website similar to that used in the federal stimulus bill to track where all the funds are going.

He said that this should be done if only to assure the public that the money is not going to ACORN, given all the controversy swirling around the group.

“There are plenty of other proven folks with an expertise in these areas,” Steidler said. C

[email protected]

Gov. Paterson signing the Green Jobs/Green New York Act into law.

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Conservative Chair Mike Long Stays Put in Bay Ridge When Campaign Heats Up In Frigid Upstate

The last days of the campaign for Congress in upstate New York may have been grueling for the candidates and their supporters, with 20-hour days not uncommon and photo ops scheduled as early as 6 a.m. But Mike Long took a softer approach. At 11 a.m. on the Monday before the election, he was fi elding calls from campaign operatives, national reporters and aides to presidential candidates in his pajamas.

Long spent most of the election season at Conservative Party headquarters in Bay Ridge, just a block or two from his apartment and across the street from Long’s, a liquor store on Fifth Avenue that he used to own.

He told Hoffman as much at the outset of the race, telling him, “I don’t want to be the one to talk you into this. I’m not coming up here to campaign for you. I’m going to be down in Bay Ridge.”

Still, even in Bay Ridge, Long could not escape the frenzy of the campaign.

Long, who was perhaps more responsible than anyone else for Hoffman’s insurgent campaign—and the national phenomenon it sparked—spoke regularly with national Republican leaders, including Newt Gingrich, who called him in September before formally endorsing Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava. He also coordinated regularly with GOP operatives who had parachuted into New York to help Hoffman, including Daniel Tripp, an aide to former Tennessee Senator Fred

Thompson, one of Hoffman’s earlier big-name backers.

Even on the street in Bay Ridge, Long’s celebrity surpassed him. As he walked down the street, drivers would regularly roll down their windows and yell, “Go Hoffman!”

Education Heavyweights Go Toe-To-Toe At Hunter College Forum

A Nov. 4 forum at Hunter College on the election and public education brought out the heavyweights of education policy. And while there were no knockout punches from any of the featured speakers, there were a few swipes and a couple of jabs, refl ecting how education is likely to remain a hot button issue even after the campaign has ended.

Eva Moskowitz, former Council education chair and Harlem charter school operator, and Board of Regents

the moderator, New York Times reporter Jennifer Medina, switched subjects to the teacher’s union contract and how negotiations were unfolding following Mayor Bloomberg’s narrow re-election.

Michael Mulgrew, the new president of the United Teachers Federation and a fellow panelist, grinned wolfi shly.

“I’m not surprised that subject has come up,” he deadpanned.

Halloran Goes On, Graciously

Around midnight, Dan Halloran

held a miniature press scrum on the patio of Sullivan’s, a bar in Bayside where his election night victory party was raging.

The Republican had learned hours before that he had won a seat on the Council over Democrat Kevin Kim, in what can easily be described as the dirtiest Council race of the year.

Though the election was over, the topic on reporters’ minds was the enmity that had emerged in the campaign. In particular, Halloran was asked how he could possibly work with Kim, who serves as Rep. Gary Ackerman’s community liaison, or, for that matter, Ackerman himself. Ackerman was an enthusiastic

Kim backer and the Queens Tribune, which Ackerman founded, hounded Halloran throughout the campaign for his unusual pre-Christian religious beliefs. In addition, a subsidiary of the paper, Multi-Media, which served as Kim’s campaign consultant, also launched a number of attacks against Halloran. In the end, Kim’s campaign paid over $117,000 to the company.

As Halloran answered the questions, Steven Stites, Halloran’s attack dog campaign spokesman, chuckled. He whispered that a photographer snapping pictures a few feet away was, in fact, from the Tribune.

But Halloran declined to take a last shot at the paper. Dee Richard, a columnist for a rival paper, the Queens Times Ledger, who throughout the campaign was one of Halloran’s staunchest defenders, asked Halloran how he would work with Kim and other rivals from the campaign.

“I’ll make it work with him, and Congressman Ackerman,” Halloran said.

“Good for you,” responded Richard, nodding her head in admiration. C

By Chris Bragg,

David Freedlander, Sal Gentile

and Andrew J. Hawkins

Chancellor Merryl Tisch traded a few blows over the coveted status charter schools have enjoyed under the current administration. Tisch, wearing large-framed glasses and a brightly patterned kerchief, repeated several times how

charters were the “darling” of the education world, and frequently hired some of the

better-skilled teachers and administrators away from public schools, a practice she called “creaming the

top.”Moskowitz, wearing a bright

red suit, balked at Tisch’s characterization. Charters had to fi ght tooth and nail to get to where they are today, the fi ery former Council member said, and to suggest they enjoyed preferential treatment did them a disservice.

For a moment, the tension rose on the eighth fl oor of the West building at Hunter. Tisch and Moskowitz went back and forth a few more times, arguing over whether Tisch helped Moskowitz get her charter with the Department of Education by greasing the wheels with Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

Before it could devolve into a “yes you did, no you didn’t” back-and-forth,

AN

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s election night party at the Sheraton was one that befi t a billionaire. There were long lines to get in, guests were wanded, food and drink were brought around on trays. Late-night host Jimmy Fallon introduced the mayor, and a host of city big wigs and administration offi cials attended. Large

Election Night Parties A Study In Contrastsfl at-screen TVs hung high above the festivities and played out a montage of scenes from the party and from the mayor’s tenure.

It felt like a nightclub. One half-expected bottle service.

Bill Thompson’s party, meanwhile, was just a block away at the Hilton, but a world apart. It befi t a man that ran low in funds throughout, and who ran a race that few expected him to win. A far smaller press gaggle attended, and guests had to pay for the coat check. Most of the attendees were Democratic Party regulars—Assembly members, Council members, a couple of stray senators and committee members. Everyone crowded around the couple of TVs wedged into the corner when results came in that showed a race far tighter than anyone expected.

And while the Bloomberg party towards the end of the night became mired in worry and second-guessing, the Democrats partied and whooped and hollered as if Thompson was in fact the winner.

And of course, most people who attended either party were strong supporters of their side, and so were obligated to stay until the end. So they awaited anxiously for reports from the other party going down the street.

Indeed, when one reporter showed up at the Thompson event with Bloomberg press credentials, one Thompson staffer could not help but examine them closely and sniff, “Ha.


and the quality of the interviewing. It’s probably a little too care-free to pick every number from every poll and just say they’re the same. Everyone knows that not every doctor is as good at providing diagnosis and not every car provides the same gas mileage.

CH: Thompson pollster Geoff Garin seemed to have had the closest numbers, about a six- to eight-point margin. LM: Oddly enough, Garin’s poll, which obviously was sponsored by the Thompson campaign, was, believe it or not, way off on the numbers each candidate got. They had Bloomberg in the mid-40s and they had Thompson in the high-30s. When you look at the point spread, it’s almost like reporting the score of a baseball game without telling you what both sides got. What you have in this poll, ironically, which is being touted as having the moral victory of calling the race in terms of the margin, missed Bloomberg by around 5 points and was close to 10 points off on the Thompson number. Now that’s what you’re measuring. You’re measuring Bloomberg, you’re measuring Thompson, and you had an undecided vote of 17 points. All of the other polls actually nailed Bloomberg’s number pretty close, and the Thompson number comes from the late action that was moving his way. Not to sound totally contrary, ironically, but from a poll interpretation, the Garin poll was actually the farthest off, not the closest.

CH: As we become a more wireless culture, what needs to change about the technology of polling going forward?LM: It’s a huge challenge and we are trying to deal with it just like many other organizations. Most people are including cell phones in their samples. Again, for the organizations that aren’t doing this, that’s something the media should note. The problem from a polling standpoint is a much more ineffi cient process to include cell phones. There’s no master list of cell phones. There’s a lot of things you have to ask people on a cell phone like, “Are you using heavy equipment or not?” You can’t use auto-pilots. Your yield on a cell phone is much more reduced. You’re addressing a non-coverage bias because there are people who we are missing potentially. In the 2008 presidential campaign there was a huge concern because of the cell phone issue and the youth vote.

There was a sense that Obama was going to do very well with the youth vote and they were going to be undercounting

him. It turned out it wasn’t the case because young folks who had cell phones and young folks who had landlines didn’t behave differently in the voting booth. There’s no guarantee that such an example will continue indefi nitely; in fact there will be more of a cell phone issue and less of a landline issue. There’s a way of addressing it, and so far it hasn’t been the sort of macro distortion that some people have feared.

Certainly, that wasn’t going on with anything related to the mayoralty election. It played pretty true to form as far as the way things were breaking down in the numbers. In four to fi ve years from now, maybe even sooner, there’s going to be a more mixed-mode ways of collecting data. You should know that on Sunday and Monday, in the poll that we could not release or chose not to release, we actually did mixed-mode interviewing in both New Jersey and New York City, which included the traditional telephone survey, cell phones and interactive voice recording (IVR).

CH: Why wasn’t that released?LM: I’m glad you asked. Not everyone does. [Laughter] The reason we don’t release it is just from a confusion standpoint, this is one place where polling can be confusing. If you put out some numbers on Tuesday, Election Day, based on your Monday night election polls, it will be the most accurate of all your polls because it’s closest to the actual event. If I put a poll that said Bloomberg was up 8 points, that’s not a good thing to be putting out on Election Day.

CH: So is being a pollster a good job or not?LM: The whole polling thing is a very, very misunderstood process. It’s the farthest thing from picking up the phone, interviewing 1,000 people and fi guring out what percentage each candidate is getting; it’s light years away from that. There are so many nuances into this. The amazing thing is not that polls by different organizations vary; the amazing thing is how often they’re similar. That’s why I was struck by the Marist, Quinnipiac and the Survey USA polls [that] repeatedly had Bloomberg in the low 50s in most of their clockings, and it really didn’t look like Bloomberg was locked in. We were all showing very similar results and I thought that was interesting given that there were three different organizations showing that. To me, it was actually the opposite conclusion when I saw that Bloomberg got 50, 51 percent. To me, that was very confi rming. I’m sure I was in for some hard interviews but I spoke at great length six days before the election at City Hall and really cautioned them to watch out for this… and it was going to get close. I was asked if Thompson could win and it wasn’t really our place to call that. I would have been very surprised if this race didn’t end up in single digits. C

—Andrew J. Hawkins

[email protected]

The Prognosticator

City Hall: Why were the polls unable to predict the narrowness of Mayor Bloomberg’s victory?Lee Miringoff: That was a very important point. I think there has been a tremendous amount of misinformation regarding the pre-election polls and the results of Election Day, which I must say we saw coming and tried to steer the media in the direction that this race was in fact going to get closer. Six days before the election, we released our fi nal pre-election poll—and when you’re six days out from the moving event, it’s not designed to get precisely the margin.

When you have a well-known incumbent and a relatively less well-known challenger, as was in this case, the incumbent typically gets what he’s getting in the pre-election polls. What we saw was that in all the pre-election polls save one, I think, Bloomberg was always getting 51, 52, 53 [percent], which was very close to what he ultimately got. What that means from an accurate interpretation of poll results, not the horse race margin but the actual interpretation that you need, is that almost half of the city electorate was saying, “I’m voting for the other guy,” or, “I’m not sure.”

What you don’t want to do is focus on the margin. Let me give you another important example of why Bloomberg didn’t win in a landslide, which he was never going to do. The Bloomberg people understood that. The Thompson people understood that. The people doing the pre-election polls understood that. The problem was that most of the electorate, about 80 percent, thought Bloomberg was going to win. So the feeling was in from the beginning, and that created an atmosphere that this thing was done from day one—and that wasn’t really the case.

CH: So if a lot of the problem rests with how the polls are being interpreted, how do we change the way that polls are discussed in the media and the way the information is disseminated?LM: I think it’s important to include in the interpretation of the polls what the interpretation is. It was done in some instances to the point of beating a dead horse a week before the election, and going into the election on Monday and then Tuesday. Every time I talked to someone, I said that this race was going to get closer and that’s all you can do from a polling standpoint. It’s very hard if the focus is on the margin and Bloomberg is up by 12 points. You’re trying to look at a moving target and the pollsters have to try to communicate the best that they can and the media has to try to provide that context. It can’t just be the horse race and it can’t just be the margin.

CH: Did any of the post-election commentary focusing on how the polls were wrong strike you as similar to reactions last year with New Hampshire and Hillary Clinton?LM: We were up in New Hampshire at the time and on the ground, almost all the reputable polls ended in the weekend. Monday morning was the time that Hillary welled up over what was going on and there was the suspense of how this race needed to continue. … Polls are estimates of where things are, and I think the numbers look very precise and scientifi c, but if you do polls or you’re a close poll-watcher as a journalist, you understand that these are ranges and moving targets at a point in time. In an ideal world, the media would look at the track record of the poll, how the people were selected

After the shock over a closer mayor’s race than anyone expected has worn off, some might think that Lee Miringoff, master pollster for Marist Poll, would strike a conciliatory tone and admit he had it all wrong. Nope.

Miringoff, who loves going inside the numbers on elections the way others obsess over baseball statistics, explains how the polls accurately predicted Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s slim margin of victory, why Bill Thompson’s pollster Geoff Garin’s poll was way off, and what to do about cell phones and young people without landlines.

The following is an edited transcript.

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