1/31/01
Four days after suing to overturn the campaign
finance law, Mayor Giuliani offered an alternative
system, offering two dollars for every dollar
contributed rather than four. (NY
Times)
Giuliani, who endorsed his father, will not
endorse Andrew Cuomo for governor. (Daily
News)
Jimmy Meng, a Chinese-American and a registered
Republican who owns a lumber business in Queens,
has helped rake in a whopping $123,700 for
Democratic City Comptroller Alan Hevesi's
campaign. (NY
Post)
The first forum for mayoral hopefuls took
place in the Village. (Washington
Square News)
1/30/01
Andrew Cuomo Declares Bid for Governor in
2002 (Daily
News)
Hevesi is lining up endorsements from African-Americans,
including Brooklyn Democratic Chairman Clarence
Norman; Congressman Major Owens of Brooklyn;
former Congressman Floyd Flake of Queens;
state Sen. David Paterson of Manhattan (Crain's
New York)
1/29/01
"While the debate on the safety of New York
City dominated the mayoral campaign of 1993,
and the city's racial climate played a major
role in the 1989 race, the subject of improving
the quality of education" is already the major
theme of this year's mayoral campaign. (NY
Times)
1/28/01
Real estate developers and other businessmen
"who need a friend in City Hall," as Bob Liff
puts it, are the major contributors to Democratic
candidates, often giving to several candidates
in the same race. For example, both Red Apple
supermarkets owner John Catsimatidis and publicist
Howard Rubenstein gave to all four of the
leading Democratic contenders and to both
candidates for comptroller. Rubenstein also
gave to two candidates for Brooklyn borough
president, and two for Queens borough president.
(Daily
News) .
1/27/01
Mayor Giuliani files suit to end the latest
version of the campaign finance law. (NY
Times) (Daily
News)
1/26/01
Mayor Giuliani is said to want to cut the
budget of the Campaign Finance Board in half
(NY
Post)
In 1997, Campaign Finance Board had demanded
refund of unspent funds from Mark Green, while
it fined Alan Hevesi and Giuliani for accepting
illegal contributions. (NY
Post)
Andrew Cuomo, son of the former governor
and immediately past secretary of the federal
Housing and Urban Development, is said to
be mulling abandoning the race for governor
in 2002, and running for mayor this year instead.
(Newsday)
Michael G. Den Dekker, running to replace
John Sabini in the 25th City Council district,
claims the backing of the powerful president
of the Sanitation union, Peter Scarlatos.
Scarlots is also co-chair of the Municipal
Labor Union, and a man "who rarely delves
into electoral politics," as reporter William
Murphy puts it. But Den Dekker is a sanitation
worker. (Newsday)
Terry Bastone, a candidate to succeed June
Eisland in the 11th Council district in the
Bronx, said she sought the backing of Assemblyman
Jeffrey Dinowitz and Congressman Eliot Engel
and their Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic
Club, but was told she would not get it "because
I don't have a nice Jewish name," a charge
both men deny. Riverdale Democrats have been
encouraging Attorney General Oliver Koppell
to run for the seat. (Daily
News)
1/25/01
Ferrer: Give teachers a 30 percent pay hike,
and require them to work over the summer.
(Daily
News)
1/24/01
The new, expanded campaign finance law will
cost city taxpayers as much as almost $79
million this year, more than three times more
than the bill's backers had anticipated when
the law was passed in 1998. One of its authors,
Public Advocate Mark Green, defended the law,
which puts a cap on individual contributions
and bans corporate giving. "For $7 per New
Yorker, we have created a near-model electoral
democracy." (Daily
News)
There are six candidates for Kathryn Freed's
City Council seat, in District 1: Rocky Chin,
an attorney with the New York City Commission
on Human Rights; Margaret Chin, an executive
with a non-profit advocacy group, Asian Americans
for Equality; Democratic District Leader John
Fratta; Community Board member Alan Gerson;
Brad Hoylman, an attorney with New York City
Partnership, and Kwong Hui, who has worked
closely with a labor advocacy group, Chinese
Staff and Workers Association. Assembly Speaker
Sheldon Silver says he will endorse either
Fratta or Gerson. (Downtown
Express)
Though he is one of the 15 members of the
City Council who is eligible to run for his
seat again this year, Republican James Oddo
faces two opponents in the 50th council district
on Staten Island. The two Democrats, who will
run in the Democratic primary, are Joseph
Wein, former aid to Councilman Jerome X. O'Donovan
(now a candidate for borough president) and
public school teacher Libby Hikind. (Staten
Island Advance)
1/23/01
Hevesi faces uphill struggle for the African-American
vote. (NY
Post)
1/22/01
Among those who have so far contributed $187,523
to Norman Siegel's run for public advocate
are Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, David Geffen,
Steven Spielberg, Whoopi Goldberg and Barbra
Streisand. (Crains
NY)
Council members are still contemplating the
overturn of term limits (NY
Times)
1/21/01
In a column that focuses on how much money
various candidates have raised in a slew of
races, Bob Liff highlights the race for Brooklyn
borough president. Councilmember Kenneth Fisher,
who has been raising money for three years
in anticipation of a run for mayor he decided
to abort, now has $622,945 for his race for
borough president. Another candidate, State
Senator Martin Markowitz, reports having raised
$179,463. Deputy Borough President Jeanette
Gadson, running with the backing of her boss
Howard Golden, has raised $120,834. (Daily
News)
1/20/01
Hevesi may support a bill to overturn term
limits as a tactic to one-up Vallone, one
of his opponents, who has opposed such a bill.
(NY
Post)
1/19/01
When the four leading Democratic candidates
for mayor, two of them Jewish, celebrated
Martin Luther King Day at the political headquarters
of the Rev. Al Sharpton, it highlighted the
power that Sharpton will have in the campaign,
according to Rachel Donadio in The Forward,
a Jewish weekly. Sharpton told her he has
"specific demands" for the candidates, implying
that, if he does not himself enter the race,
he would endorse one of the four based on
their positions in areas such as police reform
and education. "I'd be interested in whether
they'd support a slate of candidates for City
Council and district attorney," he also said.
Though some New Yorkers still associate Sharpton
with remarks that were at least insensitive
to Jews, "he has made several efforts in recent
years to mend fences with Jewish figures,"
Donadio reports, "with mixed success." (The
Forward)
1/18/01
In his first extensive interview about his
mayoral ambitions, Michael Bloomberg told
Elizabeth Bumiller he would run on "a platform
of budget discipline, nonpartisan decision-
making and an open City Hall." He dismissed
the focus on his fortune. "What's a billionaire
got to do with it? I mean, would you rather
elect a poor person who didn't succeed? Look,
I'm a great American dream." He also called
the campaign finance law "an incumbent protection
program. (NY
Times)
In the latest Marist College Poll, the best-known
of the mayor candidates, Mark Green is viewed
favorably by 55 percent and unfavorably by
16 percent with 29 percent unable to state
an opinion. Peter Vallone is seen favorably
by 45 percent of the voters, unfavorably by
16 percent, while 39 percent have no opinion.
The other two major candidate, Alan Hevesi
and Fernando Ferrer, both have favorable ratings
around 40 percent, unfavorable ratings about
10 percent with more than 40 percent with
no opinion either way. Rev. Al Sharpton, who
received nearly 40 percent in the Democratic
primary for mayor four years ago and has said
he was thinking about running for mayor again,
is viewed negatively by most voters, 61 percent.
Only 30 percent have a favorable view. (NY
Times)
"Millionaire car dealer Howard Koeppel, a
friend of Giuliani who has raised tens of
thousands of dollars for him, hosted a fund-raiser
for Green last week." (NY
Post)
1/17/01
Yesterday's deadline to file campaign finance
statements showed the following amounts raised
by the candidates in the race for Public Advocate:
Assembly member Scott Stringer, $427,134;
former Parks Commissioner Betsy Gotbaum, $199,
317; Norman Siegel, who has taken a leave
from his job as head of the New York Civil
Liberties Union, $187, 523; City Councilmember
Stephen DiBrienza, $89,313 (NY
Post)
For Queens borough president: former Board
of Education president Carol Gresser, $200,000;
City Council member Sheldon Leffler, $124,000;
Assembly member Audrey Pheffer, $70,000; City
Council member Karen Koslowitz, $53,000. The
amount for City Council member Helen Marshall
was unavailable by press time, and Assembly
member Anthony Seminerio did not file. (Daily
News)
1/16/01
Four Democratic mayoral candidates visit Sharpton
headquarters on Martin Luther King Day; Hevesi
expresses regret for previous positions, but
gets heckled. (NY
Post)
In City Council District 25 in Jackson Heights,
Queens, twelve people so far, including two
gay activists, a nurse, a locker-room attendant,
and a couple of staffers of public officials,
have announced their candidacy for the City
Council seat held by John Sabini. The field
is so crowded and so diverse, observes Rob
McKay in City Limits Weekly, that the winner
may wind up needing only 10 percent of the
vote. The candidates include two members of
the Lesbian and Gay Democratic Club of Queens,
Jimmy Van Bramer, who is considered one of
the front runners, and P.Wayne Mahlke. There
are several members of local school boards,
including Louisa Chan (the nurse), Frank Castro
("locker floor manager" to a ritzy health
club) and Ellen Raffaele, who is an ex-aide
to Sabini. Though the district is 40 percent
Latino, "Latino" is not a voting bloc in an
area with so many different countries of origin:
Two other candidates are William Salgado,
a Colombian, and Rodolfo Flores, a Peruvian.
McKay quotes a Jackson Heights politico as
predicting that several of the candidates
will drop out and form coalitions with the
others. (City Limits)
Three-party race for Staten Island Borough
President: Democrat Jerome X. O' Donovan,
a city councilmember; Conservative James Molinaro,
deputy borough president; Republican Robert
Straniere, a member of the New York State
Assembly (NY
Times)
1/15/01
Lack of affordable housing likely to become
the number one issue in this year's mayoral
race, Rob Polner reports, at least among the
Democratic candidates (Newsday)
1/14/01:
City Council District 45 in East Flatbush,
Brooklyn, as Bob Liff reports, is an example
of an "immigrants' coming of age" story. At
least 12 candidates from eight different Caribbean
islands may run for the seat being vacated
by Lloyd Henry, who is prevented by the new
term limits law from running again. They include:
Colin Moore (from Guyana), Democratic district
leader Kendall Stewart (St. Vincent), former
leader James Connolly (Cayman Islands), Omar
Boucher (Jamaica), school board head Julia
James (Dominica), Ernest Emanuel (Haiti),
Sam Tate (Barbados), council aide Anthony
Alexis (Trinidad) and lawyer Sam Nicolas (Haiti).
(Daily
News)
01/13/01:
With the Democratic primary eight months away,
each of the four main Democratic candidates
so far has raised more than $3.5 million for
the September contest, with Comptroller Alan
Hevesi widening his lead. The estimated totals
to date are Hevesi, $ 6.5 million; Public
Advocate Mark Green, $4.3 million; Bronx Borough
President Fernando Ferrer, $3.8 million; City
Council Speaker Peter Vallone, $3.56 million.
(NY
Times)
Michael Bloomberg will hire Frank Luntz,
Giuliani's pollster, and William Cunningham,
former top aide to Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan, as part of a team to help him in
his not-yet-declared bid for mayor. (Daily
News)
01/12/01:
No candidates have formally announced in the
race to replace Fernando Ferrer as Bronx Borough
President, but those people who are considering
a run include: the singer Willie Colon, City
Councilmembers Adolfo Carrion Jr, Wendell
Foster and June Eisland, and newly elected
State Assemblymember Jose Rivera. (Crain's
NY)
Bloomberg Courting Liberal Party (Crain's
NY)
01/11/01:
Green Calls for Soft-Money Ban in Mayoral
Campaign; Dismissed As Ploy by Three Opponents.
(NY
Post)
Mayor's Aides Quietly Helping Hevesi (Daily
News)
D'Amato Offers State Comptroller McCall
His Financial Support If He Runs for Mayor
Instead of Governor (NY
Observer)
01/10/01:
Election 2001 Overview
(Village
Voice)
Giuliani Rules Out Run for
Attorney General (NY
Post)
01/09/01:
Spitzer Says He Would "Relish Every Moment"
of a Campaign Against Giuliani for Attorney
General (NY
Post)
Analysis of Mayoral Race
(New
Republic)
Four Leading Democratic Mayoral
Candidates Agree to Spring Debate (Daily
News)
01/08/01:
Spouses and Children of Term-Limited City
Council Members Are Seeking their Seats (Newsday)
Vallone: I'm Going to Israel,
and Writing to Clinton on Its Behalf (NY
Post)
Arthur Nitzburg in his column
on politics (Queens
Courier) lays out the political landscape
in Queens. There are already 100 candidates
for the 14 open council seats. "What total
chaos. What a mess we are all in. How delightful."
Then he adds: "But wait until they get into
the Council. The winners won't believe how
meaningless a job they've won." Of course,
all this new blood could (and probably will)
change the Council itself for the better."
There are at least eight candidates to succeed
Claire Shulman as Queens Borough President,
he says. There are two Republicans, Mike Abel
and Al Stabile, both current members of the
City Council. There are six Democrats, each
one representing "an entirely different section
of this intensely diverse county," Nitzburg
says, and one of them likely to win, since
Queens has not elected a Republican borough
president for 40 years. "My best guess at
this moment is that the race will come down
to two key contenders - Douglaston's Carol
Gresser or Corona's Helen Marshall. But don't
count out the other candidates-Audrey Pheffer,
Karen Koslowitz, Sheldon Leffler and Tony
Seminerio."
01/07/01:
Daily News:
14 City Council Members Running for Other
Offices
Daily News:
Michael Bloomberg Edges Closer to Run for
Mayor
S.I. Advance:
Race for Staten Island Borough President Will
Be Competitive
Riverdale Review:
Former Attorney General Koppell Urged to Run
for Bronx Council Seat