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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.

In a press release entitled, “REYES HOME TARGETED BY CAMPAIGN VANDALS,” Reyes says that on June 13, he returned to his Forest Hills home to find the “Welcome” mat stolen from the front of his house, and plastic forks dumped onto his lawn.

Clearly, it must have been the work of political rivals, according to Reyes.

“When I got into this race, I wasn’t expecting the opposition to roll out the red carpet for me,” said Reyes, an attorney and father of three who served as General Counsel to several city agencies during the Giuliani Administration, “But I never thought someone would come to my home in the dead of night and steal the ‘Welcome’ mat from my front door.”

In addition to the theft of the welcome mat, the intruder bizarrely emptied a box of plastic forks on the Reyes lawn.

“Political campaigns should be about the important issues facing New York State, not about childish antics that belong in Animal House,” continued Reyes, who is running in the Republican Primary in the new 15th Senate District.

Reyes recently launched a primary campaign against Ulrich and the winner will take on Queens Democratic State Sen. Joe Addabbo. The Queens Republican Party, which has long been at odds with Ulrich, is backing Reyes, while the Senate Republicans prefer Ulrich.

Though it’s not explicitly stated, it certainly can be assumed that Reyes is implicitly accusing someone from Ulrich’s camp ( the insurgent faction of the Queens Republicans that features Bart and John Haggerty) for the small-scale malfeasance.

Gerry O’Brien, a veteran consultant working for Reyes’ campaign, told me last night that he was sure Reyes was being targeted by political opponents — his children were too young to have friends that would do such a thing, and that only political insiders would have known Reyes would be out at the fundraiser.

“In Queens political circles, there’s a number of people who could have done this,” O’Brien added.

Reyes’ campaign also helpfully provided the police report number for an account filed of the plastic fork-dumping/mat stealing affair.

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

During his first week as a candidate for the state Senate, Ulrich, a Queens Republican, repeatedly criticized his opponent, Democratic State Sen. Joe Addabbo, flip-flopping on the issue of gay marriage.

In 2009, Addabbo voted against the bill as it went down in lopsided defeat, but in 2011, the Queens senator – after polling constituents in his eastern Queens district on the issue – voted in favor, providing crucial support that allowed the bill to narrowly become New York law.

“First he voted against it, saying most of his constituents were against it, and then for it, saying most of his constituents now favored it,” Ulrich told the Queens Chronicle last week. “I think people are frustrated by that. Joe’s got people upset with him on both sides of the issue.”

But Ulrich’s own record on gay marriage is just as complicated, which could undercut what what so far has been his main argument for unseating the incumbent Democrat.

Ulrich, a 27-year rising Republican star who was heavily courted to run for the Senate, grew up going to Catholic schools and considered going into the priesthood before coming a politician. He has often stated his opposition to same-sex marriage. For instance, two years before he was elected to the City Council, Ulrich wrote in a 2007 op-ed that stating then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s push on the issue was an “assault on the institution of marriage.”

But when a bill explicitly promoting gay marriage came before the City Council in 2010, Ulrich voted in favor The law, passed a year before gay marriage was legalized here, encouraged gay New Yorkers to go to other states, where same-sex marriage was legal, and get hitched there.

It did so by requiring New York City Clerk, which issues marriages licenses, to post “a list of all domestic and international jurisdictions that perform same sex marriages” on its website. The clerk’s site also must say, because of that law, that those who get married outside New York would enjoy the “benefits available to people lawfully married in New York,” further encouraging gay and lesbian couples to get married in other states.

A January New York Times article also suggests that Ulrich’s views on social issues have softened . He told the paper in an interview, highlighting his work for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, that he’s “not so off the reservation on social issues.” The article also suggests in passing that Ulrich’s pro-life views on abortion had flipped since he joined the City Council.

In a statement, Bill O’Reilly, a spokesman for Ulrich’s campaign, said the Ulrich’s vote in the City Council on gay marriage was simply in support of a “freedom on information issue,” and that he will was still pro-life.

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