16 minute read
FIRST READ
A legislative year like no other came to an end last week at the state Capitol in Albany.
SESSION WRAPS UP
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Lawmakers in Albany closed the book on 2021, ending the legislative session with a flurry of bills getting passed, from larger agenda items to the mundane things like street renamings. The final days were somewhat chaotic as deals fell through at the last minute. Namely, lawmakers said they reached a deal to pass the Clean Slate Act, which would automatically seal the criminal records of many people. After discovering a technical mistake that required fixing, lawmakers initially seemed to reach a deal with Gov. Andrew Cuomo to pass the updated version with a message of necessity along with a bill of his to split the MTA leadership that had already been tabled. But the session ended without either getting approved. Other big ticket items that failed to pass both houses included the Adult Survivors Act, which would suspend the statute of limitations to give sexual abuse victims a chance to file civil lawsuits, a slate of sexual harassment and assault reforms, and several parole reform bills. One parole reform bill did make it through: The Less is More Act would reduce the use of incarceration as punishment for technical violations. The Legislature also passed measures to increase early voting locations, speed up absentee ballot counting, create a lockbox for opioid settlement funding to be used for addiction treatment and legislation that would allow people to sue gun manufacturers. The state Senate also voted to
SPORTS FINAL
Tuesday, June 8, 2021
NEW YORK’S HOMETOWN NEWSPAPER City Law Dept. is latest agency hit by hackers
SHUTTERSTOCK THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE! EXPERTS WEIGH IN ON UFO SIGHTINGS — PAGE 12 LADY JUSTICE DE-‘FILED’ Hackers have struck a city agency again — less than a week after it was revealed that the MTA was breached. PAGES 4-5
HACK ATTACK
Another week, another hack of one of New York’s essential agencies. Following news that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had been breached earlier this year, the Daily News reported that the New York City Law Department was targeted by a cyberattack that shut down its entire computer system. We can’t say for certain how the hackers got in, but we’re pretty sure running agency computers on Windows 7 didn’t help.
– state Sen. Diane Savino, on legislation she introduced on behalf of Cuomo to split the positions of MTA CEO and chair into two roles, before the bill was revived and then killed again, via Politico New York
– Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez, on why she endorsed Maya Wiley for mayor, via the New York Times approve many appointees from Cuomo, including his two picks for the Court of Appeals. That included former Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas, who faced opposition from a number of Democrats and got approved in a surprisingly close vote.
NYC MAYORAL CANDIDATES MAKE THEIR CASE BEFORE EARLY VOTING
In the final debate before the start of early voting on June 12, candidates for mayor of New York City faced off to make their case to the voters. Eric Adams – a frontrunner in the race who initially indicated he would skip the debate – bore the brunt of attacks, still reeling from reporting calling into question where he lived. Overall, the debate was notably more civil than the chaotic previous debate with policy taking a center stage. After getting major endorsements from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and city Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, Maya Wiley continued to attempt to cement herself as the candidate for progressives after the implosion of Dianne Morales’ campaign amid staff problems, and sexual misconduct allegations surrounding city Comptroller Scott Stringer. Andrew Yang touted his relationship
with CNN anchor Chris Cuomo as evidence he could get along with his brother, the governor. And on a lighter note, debate moderator Marcia Kramer asked each candidate whether they’d rather be able to fly or turn invisible.
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS ERIC ADAMS?
The Brooklyn borough president and New York City mayoral candidate was at the center of everyone’s attention when a Politico New York report came out calling into question whether or not he even lives in New York, or is residing in New Jersey. Adams owned or has owned several properties, including a New Jersey co-op he bought with his partner. In recent months, Adams has been spending many of his waking and sleeping hours at Borough Hall, and conflicting documents call into question which residence Adams actually calls home. He denied living in New Jersey and said he has lived in a basement apartment in the three-unit row house he owns in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. He even invited reporters to take a tour of his apartment to prove that he lives there. Soon after the report came out, Adams released his E-ZPass records for the past year. They seem to throw water on the idea that he has secretly been living in New Jersey, showing just a handful of hits in the state during that time.
New York City mayoral candidate Eric Adams invited the press to his Bed-Stuy home to prove he lives in Brooklyn.
Campaign text burnout is real
Texts from political campaigns, typically done through peerto-peer texting platforms in which an actual person from the campaign is at the other end of the text message, are now ubiquitous in 2021.
Political candidates filling phones with text pleas for votes or donations can feel invasive to some. “It can be very annoying and very overwhelming,” said Zach Topkis, a Democratic primary voter who lives in Brooklyn. While the texts can sometimes be relatively easy to ignore and may even be preferable for some to alternatives like physical mailers, it can be maddening when they continue to come after a voter tries to opt-out from them, or when voters are targeted by texts about candidates in races outside their district. “They’re like, ‘Can we count on you to vote?’ And it’s like, ‘No, I don’t live in your district,’” Topkis said. While some voters might get texts from districts they lived in previously, the outreach is sometimes more random; Topkis said he received text about a Manhattan district where he’s never lived.
Others see the text message as the last bastion of personal communication, as e-mail is now oversaturated with fundraising appeals, advertisements and other messages that are automatically ignored. Of course, the personal nature of texting is exactly what makes that kind of outreach uniquely appealing to campaigns hoping to establish a relationship with voters.
When the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the primary campaign season of 2020 to mostly virtual activities, texting was an important tool to continue direct voter outreach when door-knocking wasn’t a possibility. But while some in-person campaigning makes a return, as COVID19 rates drop and vaccinations surge, the use of text banking by political candidates hasn’t dissipated. “The prevalence of texting as a voter contact tool has grown tremendously over the last several years,” said Jake Dilemani, a managing director at Mercury Public Affairs, whose clients use text banking, including in City Council races and in citywide voter education campaigns. “Each year, it becomes more and more a staple of a campaign.” Candidates and consultants say that text banking hasn’t necessarily become more important than other tools, such as phone banking, digital advertisements or good old fashioned door-knocking, but it’s increasingly one that campaigns feel they have to have in their arsenal. – Annie McDonough
THE WEEK AHEAD
MONDAY 6/14
Some of the leading Black women in the state are discussing what Juneteenth means in 2021 at a 2 p.m. virtual event sponsored by City & State. WEDNESDAY 6/16
The leading Democratic mayoral candidates for New York City duke it out from 7-9 p.m. on NBC in the third and final official debate. INSIDE DOPE
Early voting started on June 12 and continues every day until June 20, meaning thousands of Democrats will have already voted before the debate. WEDNESDAY 6/16
The New York City Council Committee on Public Housing holds a 10 a.m. virtual oversight hearing on NYCHA waste management issues and pest problems.
CityAndStateNY.com6 THE
LEGISLATIVE
ALL EYES WERE ON THESE BILLS IN THE FINAL WEEK OF THE SESSION. SCORECARD
MARIJUANA legalization. Record funding for public schools. Unemployment benefits for undocumented people. Long-awaited criminal justice reforms. Democratic legislators approved a lot of high-profile ideas long before the final scheduled day of the 2021 session on June 10, but that did not mean that the Democratic lawmakers got everything they wanted this year.
BY REBECCA C. LEWIS AND ZACH WILLIAMS
WORKPLACE RETALIATION (S5870/A7101)
This proposal would classify the release of personnel records in response to complaints of workplace discrimination as an illegal form of retaliation.
SUING FIREARMS MANUFACTURERS (S7196/A6762)
Democratic legislators say they found a way around federal laws barring civil lawsuits against gun companies.
COURT OF APPEALS
The governor nominated Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas and Anthony Cannataro, administrative judge in the Civil Court of the City of New York, to the highest court in the state.
ADULT SURVIVORS ACT (S66/A648)
Modeled after the 2019 Child Victims Act, this legislation would suspend the statute of limitations to allow people to sue their abusers in civil court.
CLEAN SLATE (S1553/A6399)
It could become way more easier for people to get their criminal convictions sealed after prison terms and parole end.
ANTITRUST LAW (S8700/A10870)
Companies would be presumed to be monopolies if they have more than 40% market share.
IMPEACHMENT $$$ (S7195/A8024)
Lawmakers want access to a $159 million state fund to pay for a potential impeachment trial of Cuomo.
ABSENTEE COUNTING (S1027/A7931)
Election results would be known a lot sooner if boards of elections could count absentee ballots sooner.
A Q&A with communications expert
GEORGE ARZT
You’ve been around politics as a journalist, Ed Koch’s press secretary and now running your own communications firm. What’s your definition of opposition research? Opposition research is anything negative you find on your opponent. So, you’re there looking for, looking through his or her history and looking for negatives that you can use in a campaign against that person.
Can you cite examples of opposition research from your years in politics? Someone was challenging an incumbent Congress person recently, and the guy running as an insurgent had done their opposition research against the incumbent. We represented the incumbent, and we did a lot of research on (the insurgent) and found out that he had a lot of tweets out there shaming women. We put it out there in the campaign and I think it helped reelect the incumbent. Another one that comes to mind is a little bit bizarre from when I was covering politics as a reporter. Koch was running against then-Lt. Gov. Mario Cuomo in the Democratic gubernatorial primary election, that was 1982, and Koch knew that there were 37 phantom staffers on the lieutenant governor’s payroll. (Cuomo denied knowledge of the fake staffers when the news eventually came out.) And there was an agreement not to use this knowledge in the first debate that was coming out. Well, Koch got crushed. He badly lost the debate by not using that. The idea in the Koch camp was that they thought that they would defeat Cuomo in the primary, which they didn’t, and that they would unite the party afterward and keep Cuomo as a friend. But not using that led to Koch’s defeat. Why do opposition research? If it’s a close race or if you’re behind, you need everything that you can put out there to win the race. Sometimes, if you put opposition research out there, you’re afraid that there might be a backlash against you. So you’re trying to put it out without fingerprints. You’re hoping to just place it in a paper, or have a reporter ask the question. But in most cases, it’s easily traceable to an opposition camp, an opponent’s camp. You’re always going to look at all the opposition research in your portfolio to find out what you have and what you can or cannot use, what you can use in a debate when someone comes at you. You see it in the debates. It levels the playing field.
You mentioned a backlash. If there’s something terrible, something personal about an opponent, it might hurt your campaign by putting it out. Even if you put it out, with no fingerprints as they say, because it’s going to come back in some form ... So you leave it alone. If someone else puts it out, OK. But your camp doesn’t want to do it because it could hurt your campaign. People might think it’s underhanded. – Ralph R. Ortega
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McGuire has support from some of New York City’s wealthiest neighborhoods.
RAY McGUIRE
He wants you to know that he’s more than his background on Wall Street.
By Kay Dervishi
CEDRIC WOOTEN RAY MCGUIRE’S CASE to become New York City’s mayor rests significantly on his time as a top Wall Street executive. He leans on his record at Citigroup to prove he can manage the city’s finances, saying at the bank he handled a budget larger than those of many states.
But the former investment banker has taken a very careful approach to talking about his time on Wall Street, where he served as one of the few top Black executives, often contrasting it with his childhood being raised by a single mother in Dayton, Ohio. “People know me as a guy who’s made it,” he said in his campaign launch ad. “But I’m also the son of a single mother who worked unbelievably hard to give me every opportunity she could.”
That often creates tension where McGuire is simultaneously touting his financial chops while also trying to avoid being pigeonholed as the Wall Street candidate. When described as a “finance guy” during a radio appearance in April – after himself promoting his record in the corporate world – McGuire eschewed the description: “It’s not a finance guy, but it’s a guy who grew up in the neighborhood.”
McGuire told The New York Times editorial board, “If you look at me as a Wall Street person, I actually embrace that.” But not long after, he seemed to walk back on that statement. “Those people who have cast me with that brush, I don’t accept. My brush is coming from the bottom to get to this point.”
This highlights one of McGuire’s lingering challenges on the campaign trail. He’s attracted plenty of support from wealthy New Yorkers who’ve crossed paths with him in finance or
McGuire is a Harvard graduate and former finance executive, and he often emphasizes his less-than-elite upbringing.
philanthropy. Among his notable donors are Leonard Lauder, chairman emeritus of the Estée Lauder Companies, Republican megadonor and Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone and members of the Tisch family, who own significant chunks of Loews Corp. and the New York Giants. Numerous former Citigroup colleagues have also made contributions to his campaign, including Mark Shafir, global cohead of mergers and acquisitions at Citi, and Frank Yeary, who used to hold a similar title at Citi. McGuire has also received the greatest proportion of donors contributing $1,000 or more to his campaign, compared to any other mayoral candidate.
But the major fundraising gains he’s made have yet to translate to broader public support as the primary nears. Despite raising $9.7 million and loaning his campaign another $2 million, McGuire consistently has ranked in the single digits in polling that’s been released thus far.
McGuire’s campaign declined multiple interview requests seeking to discuss his time at Citigroup and the specific deals he worked on. City & State’s requests for interviews sent to multiple former executives at Citigroup also went unanswered.
“During his career, Ray McGuire recruited and retained the world’s most talented professionals to advise him, and empowered them to do their jobs,” said campaign spokesperson Lupe Todd-Medina in a statement. “He is the only candidate in the field who has had to perform and deliver measurable results under the highest level of scrutiny for decades.”
McGuire’s first job on Wall Street was in First Boston’s mergers and acquisitions group in 1984. He went on to follow two mentors, Joseph Perella and Bruce Wasserstein, to a firm they founded, before going on to work at Merrill (previously known as Merrill Lynch) and Morgan Stanley. But McGuire is most known for the work he did while at Citigroup, which he joined in 2005 as global co-head of investment banking.
When he first joined Citigroup, The New York Times wrote about the time that McGuire aimed to elevate
the bank’s status to become a “trusted adviser” on the mergers-and-acquisitions side. While there, he worked on high-profile multibillion-dollar deals. For example, McGuire advised Time Warner during negotiations that led to AT&T’s major $85 billion acquisition of the media company in 2016.
There are several instances in which McGuire’s work with certain clients at Citi landed him unfavorable media coverage during his mayoral run. Some critics questioned his liberal credentials because he represented Koch Industries – a chemical giant owned at the time by conservative megadonors Charles Koch and the late David Koch – during its $21 billion purchase of Georgia-Pacific in 2005. A recent City Limits article outlined how mergers he helped negotiate led to layoffs.
The McGuire campaign responded to City Limits saying that McGuire helped companies stay afloat, and argued that his business experience will help him lead New York City through the challenges of a post-pandemic shift toward telecommuting.
While details about specific mergers he negotiated are unlikely to dwell on the average voters’ mind, coming from a high finance background may be off-putting to some Democratic primary voters. “The vast majority of New Yorkers don’t love Wall Street types,” said Doug Muzzio, a political science professor at Baruch College. Ronnie Oliva, founder and CEO of Sykes Global Communications, said McGuire is struggling to connect with voters despite his careful messaging. “It’s really hard to talk out of both sides of the mouth. … ‘I’m humble, I had this poor background, but my claim to fame was working on Wall Street.’ It’s hard to get around that.”
What also might be making McGuire’s case to voters more difficult is the crowded field of candidates who may be attracting potential supporters. Front-runners Andrew Yang and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams are also running in the pro-business lane. “It’s difficult to see how (McGuire) could break through,” Muzzio said. ■
– campaign spokesperson Lupe Todd-Medina in a statement
