BIRCH COFFEE TO OFFER BEER AND BOOKS
Popular java spot Birch Coffee, in the Flatiron District, will soon be opening its second location in the heart of the Upper West Side.
Thor High Street Advisors, a leasing company that worked with Birch, announced that the new 1,200-square-foot Columbus Avenue coffee shop will also feature a craft beer bar and a community library, all packed into one space.

“For its second Manhattan location, Birch Coffee required a location that was high-profile and high-traffic—but with a feel that embodied neighborhood and community,” broker Kyle Allen said in a statement. “The Upper West Side’s laid-back, sophisticated vibe, specifically the Columbus Avenue area just steps from the park, makes this an ideal match.”
The shop will be on Columbus Avenue between 96th and 97th streets.

GROUP RALLIES BEHIND TEACHERS ON UWS
City & State reports that more than 50 people rallied last week against StudentsFirstNY, a political group launched earlier this year to push for charter schools, for making it easier to lay off teachers and for other education policy changes.

Carrying signs saying “StudentsFirstNY = Billionaire$ Fir$t” and “Fat Cats – Get Your Dirty Paws Off Our Schools,” demonstrators gathered along Central Park West outside the Manhattan residence of StudentsFirstNY board member and hedge fund manager Dan Loeb.

Cynthia Williams, a parent leader with the Coalition for Educational Justice, claimed that StudentsFirstNY would push for “more standardized testing, more privatization and more school closings and more budget cuts.”

“StudentsFirstNY says they are a union for students, but we know the truth,” Williams said. “They are really a club for billionaires who don’t represent the voice of the student, the voice of the parent and the voices of community.”

Glen Weiner, the deputy executive director of StudentsFirstNY, dismissed the “silly stunts” and called for “meaningful and substantive dialogue.”

Espaillat Brings the UWS to Fracking Fields
Last Sunday, a group of about 50 Upper West Side residents piled into a bus and took off for the remote fields of Montrose, Penn. The group went to see firsthand the areas of the Marcellus Shale, the rock shelf that spreads across the tri-state area from underneath which most of New York City’s water supply derives, where hydraulic fracturing is being performed. Governor Cuomo is considering allowing limited hydrofracking in New York, and Espaillat has been a strong opponent of opening up any areas of the state for drilling

“We organized this trip because it’s important to observe the hydrofracking process first-hand, especially because the issue is being hotly debated in New York. Seeing how fracking affects the environment where it’s being conducted and the families who live there will has helped us to better understand,” said Espaillat.

Gloria Steinem via Wiki Commons.

2013 Mayoral Race

Gloria Steinem is pressuring Christine Quinn on the paid sick leave bill.

Bill de Blasio took in heavy donations from the taxi industry, which he has supported.

And Quinn took in quite a bit from a developer that was exempted from the living wage bill.

Manhattan

Voting machines in the Espaillat/Rangel primary didn’t count hundreds of votes.

The WFP is backing Adriano Espaillat’s Senate bid – after first backing Rangel over Espaillat in their congressional race.

Brooklyn

An anti-Vito Lopez faction of the Satmar community held a victory party for Nydia Velazquez.

Andrew Goundardes has $155K on hand for his challenge to Marty Golden.

Staten Island

Michael Grimm was cleared of charges by the House Office of Congressional Ethics.

State Senate

Mark Grisanti is already spending big on his re-election bid.

Elsewhere

The NYC Board of Elections will change its flawed vote-counting procedure.

To read more from City & State click here.

Christopher Moore is a writer living in Manhattan. He’s available through email at ccmnj@aol.com and on Twitter @cmoorenyc.

Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons

Manhattan

Guillermo Linares is in for a Senate run against Adriano Espaillat, while Mark Levine appears to be dropping his candidacy.

Charlie Rangel issued a statement congratulating Espaillat.

U.S. Senate

Wendy Long challenged Kirsten Gillibrand to a series of five debates.

2013 Mayoral Race

John Catsmatidis doesn’t think Christine Quinn is a lock to get Mayor Bloomberg’s endorsement.

Queens

Jerry Iannece hired the Parkside Group and picked up John Liu’s backing.

Staten Island

An Assembly candidate is trying to make hay of Marty Golden’s “feminine presence” class.

Elsewhere

After getting ballot status in 2010, the Green Party is having an easier time than usual this year.

Maggie Brooks’s fundraising haul kept her competitive with her opponent, Louise Slaughter.

To read more from City & State click here.

Alec Baldwin. Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons.

Manhattan

Despite the holiday, the Espaillat-Rangel race is still in full-tilt.

The dispute at the Board of Elections harkens back to a past race.

State Senate

How competitive will this year’s state Senate elections really be?

2013 Mayoral Race

Billy Baldwin says Alec Baldwin’s prospects of running for mayor are real.

Eva Moskowitz (who’s not running for mayor) panned Bill de Blasio (who is).

To read more from City & State click here.

Photo by John C Abell. Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons.

Could the board just be after a little fun and excitement? If there was a reliable count last week on election night, we’d have been certain whether or not Congressman Charlie Rangel staved off his strongest challenge in four decades by beating State Sen. Adriano Espaillat in the Democratic primary. We thought we were sure last Tuesday night that Rangel won handily, but we soon learned that many votes had not been counted in election districts where Espaillat had strong support.

Now we have the drama of Rangel, the former powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, declaring victory only to have it cast in doubt. If Rangel is certified the winner, his victory will be that much sweeter, and if Espaillat prevails in a recount, the heartache of Rangel’s fall would be compelling.

It’s stuff worthy of an HBO movie. Maybe the elections board figures a cliffhanger is needed to get more voters to come out in future elections.

Or maybe the BOE is feeling nostalgic for the not so olden days of the creaky voting machine levers. The machines were finally scrapped in 2010 in part because they increased the chances of human error.

At the end of the election night, often in dimly lit rooms, weary Board of Election workers would peer into the small boxes next to each name to look for the number of votes each candidate got at that machine. It was common for a number such as 150 for example, to be recorded as 50. So the election night return numbers typically were adjusted a week later when the machines were reexamined.

It all might be a little funny if there wasn’t the pesky problem that we may not be sure if the people of the 13^th Congressional District will end up getting the representative the voters chose last week.

Reporters swarm Espaillat campaign spokesman Ibrahim Khan outside Manhattan Supreme Court

At a hearing in State Supreme Court in lower Manhattan today, State Sen. Adriano Espaillat’s counsel Martin Connor announced the campaign’s intention to file a petition that could potentially pave the way for a do-over of last week’s Congressional primary election.

Espaillat lost to Rep. Charlie Rangel by what was initially reported as several thousand votes, but Rangel’s margin of victory is now about 2 percent, or 802 votes. The Espaillat campaign is hoping that voter complaints about irregularities at polling places and the existence of roughly 2,000 uncounted affidavit ballots could reverse the election’s outcome.

On Friday, Connor filed a petition against Rangel, the New York Police Department and the City Board of Elections asking the Court to watch over the counting of outstanding votes, a process that is not scheduled to begin until Thursday.

The new petition, which the campaign intends to file tomorrow, will include another statute covering “irregularities” in the primary process. If a judge does find evidence of irregularities, it could give Espaillat grounds to ask for a new primary election, said campaign spokesman Ibrahim Khan.

“The petition allows you to file for the election to be redone,” Khan said. “Today was about preserving all of our legal options.”

Initial reports from the BOE on primary night showed Rangel winning the race by roughly 2,000 votes out of more than 40,000 cast, but by last week’s end, an error that left votes from 79 of the 506 district precincts unaccounted for lowered the Board’s accounting of Rangel’s victory margin to 800 votes.

Rangel campaign manager Moises Perez would not comment on the reports of problems from primary night, including voters’ complaints about a lack of available bilingual poll-workers to help Spanish speaking voters.

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

Adriano Espaillat, phtoo courtesy of wiki commons.

Manhattan

As Rep. Charlie Rangel’s margin of victory narrows, he and Adriano Espaillat are going to court today.

A Dominic-American group is demanding the Department of Justice monitor the vote-counting process.

Marty Connor is leading Espaillat’s legal efforts.

Brooklyn

The degree to which the two Satmar sects played a role in Nydia Velaquez’s victory is in dispute.

The faction that opposes Vito Lopez claimed credit for Velazquez’s win.

Hakeem Jeffries was tapped for an important Democratic Party fundraising position.

Staten Island

Mark Murphy is touting an internal poll showing him down 15 points to Michael Grimm.

State Senate

David Carlucci’s Republican opponent won’t get the Conservative line because she supports gay marriage. (And she happens to herself be a married lesbian.)

Elsewhere

Harry Giannoulis of the Parkside Group and Hank Sheinkopf got into a bitter email exchange.

To read more from City & State click here.

Bob Turner. Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons.

As legislators scrambled to get their bills passed with the session coming to a close this week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo saw his marijuana legislation go up in smoke, reviving questions about a second-year slump, but sealed a deal on teacher evaluations with the strategic mastery politicos have come to expect from the governor. So with mixed results for Cuomo, we looked elsewhere across the city and state for this week’s winners and losers.

Peter Rivera – When Gov. Cuomo nominated the assemblyman a few months ago to take over as commissioner of the Labor Department, Rivera indicated that it was a hard sell and said that the governor had to convince him to leave. But he’s following a well-worn path to Cuomo-land, a haven for Assembly refugees. And with Rivera’s ties to a troubled Bronx nonprofit, whose executive director was just convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice, the assemblyman may have decided that it was time to go.

Richard Iannuzzi – The Legislature’s passage of a bill to limit disclosure of teacher evaluations was a rare win for the NYSUT president, who has found himself a political punching bag for months as the national political discourse turned toward talk of taming the unions. But Senate Republicans gambled this week on siding with NYSUT over Mayor Michael Bloomberg, both party benefactors, despite Bloomberg’s largesse toward the conference and disapproval of the bill. Iannuzzi, unlike Bloomberg, isn’t a lame duck.

Preet Bharara – We weren’t keeping track with an abacus or anything, but we’re sort of stunned to realize the Southern District U.S. Attorney had notched 60 convictions in insider trading cases over his term in office, including his conviction last week of former Goldman Sachs board member and McKinsey & Co. head Rajat Gupta, a case that had news outlets pondering whether he’d replace Eric Holder as Attorney General or whether he might be the next Eliot Ness. In the middle of it, Bharara took time out to seek the safe return to Mongolia of a dinosaur skeleton, showing there’s no case too big, or too prehistoric, for him to tackle.

Clyde Williams – Prior to Saturday, former DNC political director Clyde Williams’ campaign for Congress was largely ignored, as the media reduced the five-candidate field in NY-13 to Rangel vs. Espaillat. Then came the Times endorsement and a glowing follow-up profile by the Grey Lady. The next day the Daily News added their nod. All this ink might end up being too little too late for Williams, but his campaign couldn’t have hoped for a better final stretch before Tuesday’s primary.

Bob Turner – Turner’s Senate campaign again showed its mastery at pulling off publicity stunts. The same team that engineered last summer’s defeat of David Weprin brought Turner to south Brooklyn this week to sing God Bless the U.S.A. with a bunch of kindergartners, in protest of reports that the kids were being forced to sing Justin Bieber at a graduation ceremony instead of the patriotic song. But the protest turned ugly as the kids were heckled by adults – and when the whole thing was caught on video, Fox News and other conservative media outlets had a fit. Then, Turner blamed the whole thing on Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who he may face this fall. In an otherwise low-interest Senate race, Turner found a way to get himself noticed by conservatives.

George Maragos - The GOP candidate for U.S. Senate tried to spin his decision to pay himself back $795,000 of the money he lent his largely self-financed campaign as savvy fiscal management, but it was hard to construe the six-figure withdrawal, which was disclosed in a late filing, as anything other than a tacit admission that his campaign is a sinking ship. Candidates who believe they are going to win pour every last cent they have into the final days of a tight race. Soon-to-be losers, well, they do what Maragos did.

Michael Grimm – The Staten Island congressman is celebrating “Take Your Dog To Work Day” today with his Yorkshire Terrier, Sebastian, but what’s really dogging him these days is the FBI’s investigation into his campaign fundraising. His most recent campaign disclosures listed hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees – far more than he brought in during the same period – and several people on his campaign subsequently said the FBI had been asking questions about 2010 campaign donations and who collected them. A “ruff” time, indeed.

Nick Spano – Some tax cheats do pay the price, it turns out. Once one of the state’s most influential lawmakers, Spano this week was sentenced to a prison term for failing to pay $53,000 in taxes, though the year and a day he’ll spend behind bars is at least somewhat less than the 18 months the prosecutor asked for. He’ll also get to enjoy his freedom through Independence Day – when he’ll perhaps ponder his betrayal of the public trust and the black mark he brought to Westchester’s powerful Spano family – before being locked up on July 9.

Yossi Gestetner - Gestetner resigned his new job as director of Jewish outreach for the state GOP this week after reports surfaced of his past work for an anti-Zionist group and defense of accused sex offenders. That wasn’t exactly convenient for the state GOP, which is trying to make inroads into Brooklyn’s Orthodox community, though the whole thing did seem a slight bit unfair. A well-known Jewish blogger, Gestetner blamed the whole thing on his past, negative writings about Senate candidate Simcha Felder.

Larry Seabrook - What could be worse than facing a corruption trial? Answer: facing your second corruption trial, on the same charges, after having the first one declared a mistrial. No matter what the verdict in the City Councilman’s second case, and despite what, if any, good he’s done as a lawmaker, he won’t be able to shed the ignominy of his doctored receipt charging New York taxpayers $177 for a $7 Snapple and a bagel. That’s a pretty harsh sentence all on its own.

To vote for the ultimate political Winner & Loser from this week visit City & State by clicking here.

Charles Barron, photo courtesy of Wiki Commons.

Brooklyn

POLITICO looked at Ed Towns’ unexpected endorsement of Charles Barron.

Wall Street and the city’s political class are fearful of a Barron win.

Hakeem Jeffries and Barron debate foreign policy.

Queens

Rory Lancman is pounding the issue of protecting social security.

Bronx/Manhattan

Charlie Rangel skipped a debate in the Bronx, which Adriano Espaillat criticized.

Espaillat himself denied that he is ignoring African-Americans by skipping a forum.

At a debate both attended, they debated the virtues of longevity.

U.S. Senate

Rudy Giuliani appeared in a radio ad for Bob Turner.