Anthony Weiner. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

by Adel Manoukian

Anthony Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin moved into a $3.3 million Manhattan apartment on Park Avenue owned by a wealthy Democratic donor Jack Rosen, according to NY Post reports.

After leaving the congressional seat that earned Weiner $174,000 a year due to his notorious sexting scandal, the couple made the drastic upgrade from their 875-square foot two-bedroom condo in Forest Hills worth $430,000 to their new 2,210 square-foot, four-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom home.

Weiner is jobless and Abedin makes about $155,000 a year as a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton so many are surprised that the couple can afford the rent on the place located at 254 Park Avenue South at East 20th Street. Real-estate experts say that the couple pays at least $12,000 to $14,000 per month while a Democratic fund-raising source speculates to the NY Post that the couple may be living there gratis, as Rosen is a close friend of the Clintons. Rosen has given money into Bill and Hillary Clinton’s election campaigns for years, even flying the Clintons in his private plane. He has also contributed thousands of dollars to Weiner’s financial reserves.

Abedin’s job forces her to face restrictions on receiving gifts and must disclose any financial dealings so her decision-making is not swayed by private interests. But an official who knows the couple denies the notion that Rosen would try to affect Abedin who could then influence Clinton.

Via Wiki Commons.

2013 Mayoral Race

Bill de Blasio outraised his potential rivals for mayor.

Anthony Weiner referred to speculation about a comeback as a “clown question.”

Public Advocate

Daniel Squadron is leading the fundraising race.

Queens

The Queens DA may look into an Assembly candidate’s running of prostitution ads in his newspaper.

The Queens BP race is heating up.

US Senate

Wendy Long’s campaign remains in deep debt.

Brooklyn

Abraham Tischler says he would vote for Ruben Diaz, Sr. for majority leader.

State Senate

The Senate GOP has a major cash advantage over the Senate Dems.

Neil Breslin slammed his primary challenger for taking IDC money.

The IDC PAC has more than 300K on hand.

Elsewhere

Lots of money has been raised in the race to replace Jack McEneny.

Erie Democratic chairman Len Lenihan retired.

via Wiki Commons

2013 Mayoral Race

Anthony Weiner’s wife is reportedly urging him to give a tell-all interview, amid rumors that he’s considering a run for mayor or public advocate.

John Liu raised $600K despite his fundraising scandal.

Tom Allon himself raised $250K.

Christine Quinn is already focused on fundraising for a possible general election.

Queens

One of the contenders for Assemblywoman Grace Meng’s seat runs prostitution ads in his Korean-language newspaper.

The state GOP infused cash into Councilman Eric Ulrich’s Senate bid.

State Senate

Democratic State Sen. Jeff Klein is surprisingly running with the support of the Bronx GOP.

Dean Skelos now has a war chest of more than $2 million.

Suffolk County GOP State Sen. Owen Johnson suddenly decided to retire.

David Valesky surprisingly has no GOP challenger.

To read more campaign coverage from City & State click here.

Via City & State.

Ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner’s just-released campaign finance filing shows that Weiner continues to pay rent for a campaign office. Most recently, on July 7, Weiner paid $5,438.23 to SL Green, for “Office Expenses Rent” – and Weiner also continues to pay a monthly phone bills for the office.  A source confirmed that Weiner continues to keep a campaign office open.

It’s interesting that Weiner continues to have at least a bare-bones campaign operation, since the ex-congressman said recently that he’s not planning to step back into public life. Weiner has been pontificating recently about the Supreme Court’s health care bill decision, but his mayoral ambitions were seemingly vanquished by his tweeting scandal.

A spokeswoman for Weiner did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

To read more from City & State click here.

Anthony Weiner. Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons.

WINNERS

Adriano Espaillat –  Early last week it looked as though the race was over, but a series of BOE mishaps and a savvy court case later, and Espaillat is still in the game.  There may not be a redo election, as Espaillat hopes, but the outcome of the primary is currently in doubt, and his name is staying in the headlines. Even if he has to head back to the State Senate, he’s the man who brought Rangel to within an inch of the end of his Congressional career. With his name going national, Espaillat might have a much easier time winning the seat should he ever try again, especially if the venerable Rangel should choose to retire.

Bill Magnarelli and Catharine Young – Assemblyman Magnarelli and State Sen. Young made waves this week in Albany for something quite unusual – being the two lawmakers in each house who succeeded in passing the most legislation this year, per numbers guru Bill Mahoney’s NYPIRG report. Neither one of them is prone to splashy displays otherwise, so this is basically a coup for modesty and hard work. Nice.

Michael Bloomberg – Sometimes the mayor snaps at reporters. Sometimes he sounds completely out of touch. Sometimes, when he thinks people aren’t listening, he lets loose a swear word. Sometimes he pauses in the middle of his annual remarks on the Hot Dog Eating Contest Weigh-in ceremony to wonder who wrote his ridiculous pun-laced speech and asks, “Who wrote this s#*t?” The mayor, not fond of bull, was using his cut-the-crap attitude in an appropriate way to express the will of the people, who can no more tolerate that many puns in one sentence than the world’s fanciest billionaires. Let’s all just admit it – the mayor is pretty funny, and that can be a pretty great thing.

Anthony Weiner – Late last week, scandal-plagued former Congressman Weiner made his first foray into the public arena since resigning his office, when he went on Brian Lehrer’s show to talk about the Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act. You may not have noticed that, which is why Weiner wins. He’s made his reentry into political life by talking on a subject of such massive importance that there was no way he could overshadow the actual news. He was heavily involved in the healthcare law, and this way, whichever outlet he decides to speak to next will no longer be able to claim he’s speaking “for the first time” since his departure from office. Brilliant.

Bald Eagle - The bald eagles of Narrowsburg, New York faced danger if town officials permitted a fireworks display near the national bird and formerly endangered species’s habitat. Thank the lucky stars (and stripes) the US Fish and Wildlife Service threatened the town with heavy fines if they went ahead with their potentially bird-immolating light show. The town moved the fireworks, the eagles were safe, the residents were cheered and patriotism was well-displayed. Compromise. God Bless America.

LOSERS

Marty Golden- What do women want? Maybe not a workshop about “posture, deportment, and the feminine presence.” Golden’s Bay Ridge Senate district isn’t exactly the hippest, but his well-meaning jobs seminar for ladies took us all the way back to a pre-Betty Friedan era whose social mores we can’t even appreciate ironically. Golden got an earful about it from every progressive and zeitgeist-y blogger there is, even drawing scorn from the Daily Show, which is kind of hard to come back from (ask Fran Narcington). The senator might need his own seminar — on how to help people find jobs without offending them.

NYC Board of Elections – The Board’s handling of the Rangel-Espaillat recount was a new low, even for the notoriously dysfunctional body, but, really, for years now each successive election has just been another disastrous opportunity for the Board to demonstrate its deep-seeded culture of cronyism and incompetence. If you think the Board’s ability to run a low-turnout primary in June was bad, just wait until November when all of the state races will be on the ballot along with the vote for President.

Nan Hayworth – After Sean Patrick Maloney’s commanding win in the Democratic primary, it became even clearer that Hayworth needs every last vote she can get to fend off her well-funded challenger. That’s why the Westchester County Supreme Court’s decision this week to bounce Hayworth from the Independence line for not having enough valid signatures was a blow to her reelection campaign. Hayworth could still be reinstated on appeal, but if she isn’t, the math gets a lot more difficult for her to win. Riding the Tea Party wave in 2010, Hayworth still only squeaked by the incumbent John Hall with fewer than 11,000 more votes—5,444 of which came from the Independence line. Now that her district has been drawn even more blue following redistricting, those Independence votes have more of a chance than ever of being the margin of victory—or defeat.  

Chris Collins – Just when it seemed like everything was back on track for Collins—whose resounding victory over David Bellavia in the Republican primary made him one of our winners last week—the former country executive committed an unforced error that quickly attracted national attention and ridicule. Collins has previously suffered from foot-in-mouth disease: note his comparing Shelly Silver to both “Hitler” and the “anti-Christ” and telling a female acquaintance that she could get a seat at the State of the State address in exchange for a “lap dance.” This time, he announced that “people now don’t die from cancer, breast cancer and some of the other things.” Regardless of whether this remark was taken out of context, as Collins claims, it makes him look out-of-touch and insensitive.

Seth Pinsky – The chief of the city’s Economic Development Corporation is now the head of an organization that has had to admit to illegal lobbying on behalf of the mayor’s economic development agenda at Willets Point, a charge that comes with no civil or criminal penalties, just ignominy. The charge is a black mark on what is supposed to be the mayor’s great economic development agenda, a far-reaching plan in all five boroughs meant to secure his legacy after 12 years in office, not undermine the law.

To vote for this week’s ultimate political winner and loser visit City & State by clicking here.

Photo by Andrew Schwartz

After four years as editor in chief of The Onion, comedian Joe Randazzo is leaving the paper, and America’s self-proclaimed “finest news source” is relocating its offices from New York to Chicago. City & State editor Morgan Pehme talks with Randazzo about his tenure at the helm of the popular satiric publication and asks him if there’s anything funny about Andrew Cuomo.

City & State: What’s so funny about politics?

Joe Randazzo: You have a high concentration of egotistical people who oftentimes put their worst qualities forward to get noticed and to be recognized, and this lack of compassion, humanism and altruism often leads to success in politics. These are the worst qualities of humankind that people who are being put forth to represent all of humankind are embodying, so that inherently is a tragically hilarious juxtaposition.

CS: How seriously does The Onion take itself?

JR: I think it’s understood that there’s this bedrock responsibility to speak truth to power, to call out bullsh-t when The Onion sees it or hears it, and to always try to fall on the right side of issues, to never be against the victim—and not to try to maintain objectivity but to keep any target open, so Democrats are just as open to ridicule as Republicans. But in order to get to the good jokes that make The Onion successful, all the writers have to do is make each other laugh. I think a responsibility to the broader social conversation is genetically encoded in The Onion as an institution and that rubs off on the writers, but on a daily basis Onion writers aren’t thinking about their responsibility or taking themselves very seriously. It just needs to be funny jokes.

CS: At The Onion, are you a journalist first or a comedian?

JR: I come from a little bit of a journalism background. I majored in journalism at Emerson and I worked for NPR, but I’m definitely a comedian first.

CS: Earlier this year, Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana mistakenly thought a story in The Onion about a planned “AbortionPlex” was genuine. On other occasions The New York Times and Fox News have reported on your articles as fact. How blurry is the line between real news and fake news in the current media environment?

JR: That one was really wonderful, because the whole point of the AbortionPlex story itself was to try to give as much credence to what we imagined every right-wing nut job’s worst nightmare of Planned Parenthood could be and to explore that and give it The Onion treatment, which is to present it in a very dry, authoritative way. That’s our formula; that’s the lens through which we observe the world—that’s where 90% of our comedy comes from—so when we do it really well, sometimes people who aren’t familiar with us take it seriously. I think it does to a degree speak to—especially during the Bush Administration and the rise of FOX News, not that Rupert Murdoch is an evil person, per se—this sort of reinventing news as entertainment that that has really taken hold in American culture.

I think in [Rep. Fleming’s] case, he’s a pandering guy who’s not that intelligent, who thought that something obscenely ridiculous like the AbortionPlex could ever possibly be real. But actually, one of the things that lent it some credence was that somebody went and created an actual Yelp site for the AbortionPlex—we didn’t solicit this, they just did this of their own accord, organically—and hundreds of people who were in on the joke started giving it thumbs up or thumbs down and writing reviews like “It was great! My husband and I are going to go there every year for our anniversary” and stuff like that, which sort of gave texture to this world we created that we never could have done on our own. I think that story, paired with that kind of real-world response to it, painted this picture that for some people made it much easier to believe that it was real, even though the story itself was ridiculous. I mean, it’s a $7 billion AbortionPlex or something like that, where they’re killing, like, 1500 babies a minute. There’s waterslides, and you can have a martini while you wait. It’s like there’s no way that would ever be real, even from Planned Parenthood. It’s delightful when people take that stuff seriously.

CS: Does constantly mocking hypocrisy and ineptitude in government make you hopelessly cynical about the state of our country?

JR: I think a lot of comedians are cynical. I’m generalizing, but comedians tend to be fairly sensitive people who have to kind of harden their souls to the fact that they’re going to get hurt, and that everybody’s going to get hurt, and that people are imperfect and that, you know, ultimately we’re all going to die. I think that’s actually the background of every comedian’s mind. So, I think there’s a side to that sensitivity that hopes for good, that wants to be optimistic, that wants to be idealistic, but that’s a vulnerable place to be, and rather than going out and trying to collect names for Children’s International, comedians write nasty jokes about Rush Limbaugh. Personally, I wouldn’t say that I’m cynical, but I’m not an activist.

I think that our country, if we continue on this path which is consumed with the endless obsession with consumption—that’s physically unsustainable, spiritually unsustainable, and culturally unsustainable. Politics is just a reflection of that, trying to keep order out of all these different types and groups of people, who are all basically just trying to get by in a material world—I think Madonna said that at some point. So I don’t actual think I’m cynical, but I’m not holding out a lot of hope for, like, big change. For one thing, we’ll probably have to wipe out, like, three quarters of the population maybe before anything good can happen, and that’s okay, I’m comfortable with that. I’m just enjoying my life while I can before the big purge comes.

CS: As a comedic journalist, when scandals like the ones that brought down Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer hit the papers, do you just think to yourself, Thank you!?

JR: Something like Eliot Spitzer or Anthony Weiner is a little more in the purview, from The Onion point of view, of late-night talk shows, like one-liners and zingers. The Onion tends not to really comment on those types of little blips, and when we do it tends to be more of a comment on the media’s take on something. We try to write stories that can be evergreen, that you can read in 10 years and they would still make some sense. We try to look at it with more than a 24-hour news cycle mentality. When Anthony Weiners come up I think we actually say, “Sh-t!” because we have to either figure out a joke that nobody else has done, or we won’t be able to cover it at all.

CS: The Onion hasn’t really run a satiric article featuring Andrew Cuomo since his days as HUD Secretary. Is there just nothing funny about Cuomo to write about?

JR: I don’t think there is. He’s boring, right? That’s his whole thing?

CS: In 2009 The Onion was awarded a Peabody, and last year you actively campaigned for a Pulitzer. Does The Onion really deserve journalism’s highest award or was that just a shameless publicity stunt?

JR: I think that we would all actually really like to win a Pulitzer—and now that I’m leaving in two days, I think I can say that The Onion absolutely does deserve a Pulitzer. In terms of commentary I don’t think there’s anyone who has consistently done a better job with sort of more integrity that The Onion has. The Onion also does lots of stupid, horrible jokes that have no business being published, but I think there isn’t any other organization that has for 20 years observed the American condition as consistently as The Onion has. It’s been amazing to be able to work for them for six years. The Pulitzer campaign was definitely tongue-in-cheek. It was meant to be sort of a comment on awarding prizes for journalism, which is kind of a weird thing. In many ways, even though you are talking about things that are supposed to be good for the community, it can get wrapped up in just as much vanity as the Academy Awards can. So we thought it would be funny, instead of pretending we don’t care about prizes like many news outlets do, just shamelessly going for one and saying we will actually just buy one from you, if you allow us to do it.

To read the full article at City & State click here.

With Anthony Weiner out, Bill de Blasio is trying to position himself as the inside the Beltway candidate.

John Liu penned a pro-pension op-ed in USA Today.

Scott Stringer jousted with Mayor Bloomberg over solar energy.

Manhattan

Vince Morgan is dropping his congressional bid and endorsing Adriano Espaillat.

Charlie Rangel makes his first public appearance in months this morning.

Brooklyn

Lincoln Restler has a challenger for district leader.

Queens

Rory Lancman had strong words about the new contender in the NY-6 race, Jeffrey Gottlieb.

Dan Halloran blasted Gottlieb’s entry into the race.

Michael Reich doesn’t believe Lancman’s assertion that a Jewish candidate was recruited into the race.

Gottlieb could have problems getting around his current position at the Board of Elections.

U.S. Senate

Bob Turner is headed on an upstate swing.

State Senate

Sen. Mark Grisanti has two challengers – so far.

Elsewhere

Assembly Majority Leader Ron Canestrari is retiring.

A challenger to Rep. Nan Hayworth raised $320,000 and is now moving into her congressional district.

To read more from City & State visit their website at www.cityandstateny.com.

Pollster Matthew Weaver, of Bronstein & Weaver Inc., broke down the borough’s 2005 Democratic primary and noted how areas with a lot of bus commuters, train riders and car drivers voted in each election district. Weaver did similar studies in other races throughout the country, he said, but found that the pattern is prominent in Manhattan.

“This is a level deeper, to try to categorize people who otherwise may be very similar in their demographics, but very dissimilar in other areas of their lifestyle, such as commuting and how far you commute,” Weaver said.

In the 2005 race between District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and Leslie Crocker Snyder, Weaver saw that bus and train commuters preferred the challenger whereas the incumbent scored with voters who have a 30-minute commute.

In the 2005 mayoral primary, victor Fernando Ferrer was popular among bus and train commuters while runner-up Rep. Anthony Weiner was a hit with car drivers.

“It should force [candidates] to redefine to what they see as relevant interest groups, and relevant target strategies in terms of spending,” Weaver said.