The Best of NYC POLITICS
BEST REPUBLICAN COMEUPPANCE: Vito Fossella
BEST TIP: John McCain
BEST EXAMPLE OF CELLPHONE-OBSESSED IDIOCY: Malcolm Smith
BEST REASON TO DECLARE WAR ON FLORIDA: Tom Golisano
BEST ECO-TERRORIST: Canada Geese
BEST WAY TO AVOID CAMPAIGN FINANCE RULES: Ignore Them
BEST TILTING AT WINDMILLS CAMPAIGN (TIE): Paul Newell and Reverend Billy
BEST STUNT MAYORAL CANDIDACY: Naked Cowboy
BEST EGOMANIACAL RANT: Dominic Recchia
TWO BEST DECISIONS EVER MADE BY A NEW YORK CITY POLITICIAN: Anthony Weiner Doesn’t Run for Mayor, asks Huma Abedin to Marry Him
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BEST APPARENT MONEY-LAUNDERING SCANDAL THAT SNEAKS THROUGH A LEGAL LOOPHOLE: Marty Golden
State Senator Golden spent more than $115,000 in campaign money on 30 events between 2007 and mid-2008, the Village Voice reported last fall. The expenses were listed as “constituent services,” including a Teachers of the Year event and a few lunches for local seniors. Where did that money go? To the catering hall he owned and operated before selling it off. Who did he sell it to? His brother. Who’s the current business manager? His wife. Who’s the landlord? Him! God knows he needs the money — $1.5 million houses off Shore Road like Marty’s don’t buy themselves.
BEST REPUBLICAN COMEUPPANCE: Vito Fossella
Last October, Staten Island’s Republican congressman was convicted of driving under the influence in a scandal that went on to unearth a secret family, including a mistress and out-of-wedlock child. A family values-preaching Republican who turns out to be a fraud? Gasp! The brouhaha resulted in a Democratic victory for a district that hadn’t gone blue in nearly 30 years, and the unctuous Vito spending five days behind bars. The only losers here are his wife and three kids. Jerk.
BEST TIP: John McCain
John McCain visited Brooklyn during last year’s presidential campaign to deliver a speech about business from a windows store on Fifth Avenue. Afterwards, he stopped in a nearby pizzeria for a slice, paying with a twenty and forgoing any change. Good tipping is a virtue — but that’s taxpayer’s money, John! So much for eliminating waste in government.
BEST EXAMPLE OF CELLPHONE-OBSESSED IDIOCY: Malcolm Smith
We hate people always playing with their stupid phones (on the subway, in the bar, and... well, that’s where we usually are). Malcolm Smith may go down in history as late-capitalist America’s biggest cellphone jerk: unable to take a meeting without checking his email (or playing solitaire?), Smith sent billionaire powerbroker Tom Golisano into a paroxysm, inspiring him to shut down Albany for weeks. Which sounds like goofy politics as usual, until you remember state government actually does things, like allocate money to organizations that desperately need it.
BEST REASON TO DECLARE WAR ON FLORIDA:
Tom Golisano
We’d like to take any opportunity to take a pot shot at Bloomberg, and this would seem just the place. But we’re just going to assume that’s a given and look at another egomaniacal oligarch: after a relatively minor slight from Assembly Leader Smith (see above), Golisano — who doesn’t even live in New York State because he doesn’t feel he should pay his fair share of taxes — took it upon himself to upend our already ludicrously dysfunctional state government. There ought to be a law to keep billionaire Floridians from meddling in our affairs, or at least one to keep Tom Golisano away from our state forever, until he pays taxes.
BEST ECO-TERRORIST: Canada Geese
No one died, so we can joke, yeah? A formation of kamikaze geese took down US Airways Flight 1549 in January by flying into the engines. No people died, but citing some “clear and present threat” (based, no doubt, on faulty intelligence), the city declared war on airport birds. Following front-page advice from The New York Post, the city just cold started shooting: Bloomberg (the news source, not the mayor) reports that “airport supervisors [are being] certified as shotgun instructors to increase the ability to shoot geese when needed.” To which we, and the geese, wonder: why don’t you stop flying your planes into them instead, jerks? Planes have hit geese more than 75 times in the last decade.
BEST WAY TO AVOID CAMPAIGN FINANCE RULES: Ignore Them
The new Senate majority leader in Albany, Pedro Espada (significantly responsible for the shameful recent brouhaha up in the capital), has found a rather brilliant approach to getting out of campaign finance regulations: New York Magazine reports that he simply doesn’t file the necessary forms. What can they do? Fine him? He just pays the fines; presumably, he has plenty of dirty money in his freezer for just such bills.
BEST TILTING AT WINDMILLS CAMPAIGN (TIE):
Paul Newell
If not guts, it takes chutzpah to run a campaign against Sheldon Silver, the Speaker of the Assembly in Albany representing downtown New York; he’s been in office for over 30 years. But Paul Newell did just that last year, challenging the assemblyman in a primary. He lost, naturally, but more courageous citizens should be fighting to dislodge epically dysfunctional Albany politicos from their gerrymandered havens.
AND
Reverend Billy
Similarly, we should be fighting harder to shake loose the billionaire oligarchs from City Hall; thank goodness, then, for the Reverend Billy, who’s campaigning electrically for mayor on the Green Party ticket. Billy might seem dismissable as schtick, but he’s surprisingly informed and articulate. Bill Thompson, the likely Democratic challenger, is an intelligent and composed politician, but city comptroller seems like the office Democrats dip into when they feel they can’t win the election. (Carl McCall, anybody?)
BEST STUNT MAYORAL CANDIDACY: Naked Cowboy
A certain preacher of the end of consumerism has been making waves on the municipal campaign trail for a while now (see above), but recently Times Square’s Naked Cowboy threw his cowboy hat into the race. We’re excited to hear how he plans to reform the city’s oppressive public nudity laws.
BEST EGOMANIACAL RANT: Dominic Recchia
At a March community board hearing on the mayor’s rezoning plan, the slimy councilman representing Coney Island took the microphone, reports the Voice, and screamed — like, at the top of his lungs — at the audience: “THE MAYOR WILL PAY ATTENTION! I DON’T KNOW ABOUT OTHER COUNCILMEMBERS! I’M RESPECTED! I AM LOOKED UPON IN THIS COMMUNITY! AND ESPECIALLY AT CITY HALL!” Many members of the Coney community do look upon Recchia… as a menace: a self-described friend of Joe Sitt, the villainous developer, the councilman is believed to have had a major role in shrinking the amusement district in the redevelopment plan by 40 percent while he advocates tirelessly on behalf of campaign-contributing landowners instead of the dupes who elected him.
TWO BEST DECISIONS EVER MADE BY A NEW YORK CITY POLITICIAN: Anthony Weiner Doesn’t Run for Mayor, asks Huma Abedin to Marry Him
We’re not huge fans of opportunistic, complainy Congressman Weiner, but we gotta hand it to him for having the good sense to not run against billionaire dictator Bloomberg (this is exactly the kind of calculated move we’ve come to expect from Weiner), and to finally pop the question to Clinton aide Huma Abedin, who is beautiful and smart and way out of dude’s league.
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