What’s going to be the biggest news story to come out of your district in 2013?

Garodnick: Dan Garodnick will kiss every baby in Council District 4 in support of his reelection bid.

Quart: As the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway moves closer to completion, the MTA is going to have to start planning for the next phases of this project. We’ll begin discussing the next phases of construction and how to fund it.

What’s going to be the biggest political upset in 2013?

Garodnick: Hillary Clinton will take Mayor Bloomberg’s advice and run for mayor, but she will lose in a nail-biter to a young, charismatic politician who comes out of nowhere and gives better speeches. He is gracious enough to give her a deputy mayor post.

Quart: Scott Stringer winning comptroller. He has some serious competition in that race.

What will be the single most important development for the downtown community in 2013?

Garodnick: With the Roberts settlement announced, 2013 will be the year Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village tenants get management to work with them on a condo conversion, and begin the process of taking ownership of their community.

What’s one thing that everyone thinks will happen in 2013 that probably won’t?

Garodnick: Joe Lhota will lose the Republican nomination for mayor when his campaign is saddled by allegations that sometimes the MTA’s trains are late.

Who will win the Super Bowl in 2013?

Garodnick: Giants. I got this right last year, so why stop now?

Quart: Anybody but the Patriots.

Read our predictions on literature, Broadway, politics and fashion.

Photo via City & State.

Is it too early to speculate about the 2014 race for Manhattan Rep. Charlie Rangel’s seat?

Not for ex-Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV, who has been telling associates that he’s very likely to run for the seat if Rangel does not. In a phone interview, Powell confirmed his interest, saying he “probably would” run for the seat if Rangel retires.

“I don’t think he’s running,” Powell added of Rangel, when asked if the congressman’s close re-election race against State Sen. Adriano Espaillat and three others showed that it’s time for the congressman to hang it up. “There is certainly some Rangel fatigue. He’s no longer chairing the Ways & Means committee in Congress, so it’s not the same.”

Asked about a potential matchup against State Sen. Adriano Espaillat – who seems well-positioned to run for the seat in 2014 after losing to Rangel by a mere two points – Powell argued that much of the vote for Espaillat this election was simply made in protest of Rangel. He compared the situation to a 2006 race in Brooklyn, when Councilman Charles Barron got 36 percent of the vote against Congressman Ed Towns in a three-way contest. This year, Barron only got a quarter of the vote in the race for an open seat against Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries.

Powell has run for Congress against Rangel twice before: in 1994 and again in 2010. Despite a fraught history, which includes Rangel unseating Powell’s father from Congress four decades ago, Powell endorsed Rangel’s re-election bid this year.

To read more from City & State click here.

In a post yesterday, Martinez writes that Jelani Mashariki, co-founder of the Global Block Foundation, will run for Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries’ seat, which is set to be vacant after Jeffries convincingly won his own congressional primary last Tuesday.

Martinez is himself is the other co-founder of the Global Block Foundation. According to its website, the group “harnesses the spirit of innovation, creativity and activism at the core of the Hip-Hop movement to empower youth and transform communities across the globe.”

Masharik will run under the banner of an Occupy-inspired electoral politics group called “Bum Rush The Vote,” according to Martinez. He also just registered a campaign committee to raise money for a run.

Also in the race for Jeffries’ open Assembly seat are district leader Walter Mosley — who is expected to get the backing of Jeffries — and fellow district leader Olanike Alabi. The primary is in September.

Martinez only got three percent of the vote in his congressional race against Rep. Nydia Velazquez, but was the subject of a front-page Village Voice story about his candidacy.

Update: There’s another candidate for the Assembly seat I neglected to mention: Martine Guerrier, the former ”Chief Family Engagement Officer” for the Department of Education.

To read more from City & State click here.

So these three guys walk into a room. That sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it turns out that this meeting is anything but funny. The first man in the room is Speaker Sheldon Silver of the New York State Assembly. He’s the Empire State’s senior serving politician. He’s a canny, brilliant, politically astute guy who, up to now, has known how to win elections.

He is connected to the New York State power brokers and their lobbyists, like the teachers union, and he doesn’t break the paradigm of power. He isn’t about to change the game plan, even when confronted with the likes of former New York City Mayor Ed Koch. Koch, one of the great political phonies of all time, has a penchant for grabbing good issues and riding them. This time, it’s reform of the “dysfunctional” Legislature.

When really pressed, Silver gives a little to the forces of reform in the State Capitol. There are a number of ways to do that. One is to make a good bill into a lukewarm bill that will change little or nothing. That’s exactly what he did with the call for ethics reform. Gov. David Paterson correctly vetoed that joke.

Another Silver specialty has been the famous “one house bill” that he knows will never be passed in the other house. This used to be very easy when the other house was controlled by the Republicans. Now the State Senate is controlled by a group of pathetically inept Democrats who can’t get their act together, so the game is a little more difficult.

The Senate Dems’ leader is John Sampson, and he’s the second man in the room. Like his hero, that other Sampson, he has tremendous strength but is likely to be given a haircut by others in his Democratic Senate conference who just can’t seem to master the skill of playing well together. Sampson was chosen by his conference to pick up the pieces after a group un-herdable cats, among them the infamous crew of Hiram Monserrate, Pedro Espada and Malcolm Smith, came very close to committing hari-kari before our very eyes. Sampson has the respect of many internal players, but the public’s initial impression of the Senate’s ineptitude has been so lasting that no matter how much perfume they put on, the stench persists.

Sampson and Silver recently went along with Paterson’s plan to furlough state workers. A federal judge put that plan on hold and now they are hated by the unions and have little to show for their efforts.

Finally, there is Paterson, the third man in the room. He isn’t running for reelection and he knows that the way to political salvation and historical canonization is doing the right thing. His state is broke and he is trying to get civil servants to forgo pay raises. He is hopelessly outclassed by Andrew Cuomo, who is waiting in the wings but who won’t indicate what needs to be done to right the ship of state. So Paterson has put the spotlight on the Legislature and is holding tough, unable to make the other two guys come up with a plan that will allow New York to live within its means. Come January, he will be out of office and he will smell clean. The newspapers tell him that he’s doing right, but castigate him for being inept. He’s a good guy who deserves more support for what he is trying to do.

In the meantime, back in that room, chaos prevails. The reality is that the state is broke. The little boy who cried wolf is about to be eaten by that very same animal and everyone assumes that somehow this will turn out all right. As William Bendix would have said in The Life of Riley, “What a revoltin’ development.”

Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.