The countdown clock on Mayor
Whoever holds the mayor’s office next will chart New York’s direction. But succeeding Mr. Bloomberg is not the same as replacing him. His enormous wealth has enhanced his influence to a degree that no other political figure on the horizon can equal.
Still, it is worth understanding where else in the city power lies, the subject of this special issue of Metropolitan.
Entire classes of influence-mongers — religious leaders, representatives of ethnic and racial groups — are less formidable than they were in the past. A positive spin on that fact would be that we are now more democratic. But the diffusion of power also means that major projects often take years, even decades, to be completed, if they are built at all.
Political bosses? The very phrase seems as quaint as smoke-filled rooms and spittoons. Who replaced Carmine De Sapio as the boss of the Tammany Hall political machine? No one. For that matter, a young New Yorker might well ask, What’s Tammany Hall?
Among labor leaders there is no one like the
The diffused influence has been accelerated by the Internet, and especially by social media: forces that made possible a phenomenon like the
If there is a single dominant force in public life, it was, is and will likely always be money. This city, remember, was founded by a trading company. If anything, the superwealthy are more powerful than
ever in this age of the
Still, many important levers of power remain in the hands of people who are relatively less moneyed. Attention must eternally be paid to Albany: to the governor and to legislative leaders like Sheldon Silver, speaker of the State Assembly perhaps for life. No local legislation will get far unless Christine C. Quinn,
the
In
He may be a lame-duck leader whose name will likely never appear on a ballot again. And he may be remembered, ultimately, as a political anomaly whose staggering wealth and maverick streak often put him
at odds with the labor and lobbying forces that have typically dominated
But don’t think for a second that Mayor
After all, Mr. Bloomberg has demonstrated an unparalleled ability to change the conversation, whether through his checkbook or his policies. Sometimes, he has done this instantly, like the time he donated
$250,000 to
Mr. Bloomberg has not given any indication of what he will do next, but he is unlikely to simply walk away from the public sphere. Maybe he will continue to exert influence and shape policies through his
foundation. Maybe he will focus more attention on his media company. Or maybe he will work behind the scenes to
ensure that his preferred successor wins in 2013 — and, therefore, owes him a substantial political debt.
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Graphic: Mayor Bloomberg’s Circles of Power Michael R. Bloomberg’s main realms of power and his key aides and allies.
Using a strategy his advisers refer to as “governing on the offensive,” Mr. Christie keeps the Legislature guessing about what he will do next. He shows contempt for those who disagree with
him (calling a former
His tough budgeting and tough talk (“Get the hell off the beach,” he told residents of the
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When Gov.
And perhaps New York’s 56th governor has reason to feel monarchical. His poll numbers are sky high, and he is clearly the dominant politician in New York. He controls the
His résumé of accomplishments balances a largely centrist fiscal agenda with a signature progressive achievement — making New York the largest state to legalize
The
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Most police commissioners derive their clout from the mayor they serve, but Police Commissioner
“That’s just a sampling,” said Paul J. Browne, the aide who provided the list and serves as the department’s chief spokesman. “I didn’t want to overwhelm you with any more.”
Polls reflect Mr. Kelly’s continuing popularity, ratings that are the envy of politicians, even as he endured waves of turmoil last year over corruption scandals, the department’s street-stop and surveillance methods, and a level of budget-cutting that has shrunk the force to 35,000 officers from more than 40,000 in 2000.
On April 20,
As he was in 2008, Mr. Kelly has been suggested as a mayoral contender for next year’s run for City Hall, though he has not publicly expressed interest in the office.
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In a square, one-room office on West 23rd Street, two rarely seen faces wield untold influence over the daily lives of millions of New Yorkers. They are Masamichi Udagawa and Sigi Moeslinger, and if you ride the subways, chances are that their work influences the quality of this most intimate human encounter.
Mr. Udagawa, 47, and Ms. Moeslinger, 44, are the principals of Antenna Design, the company behind the last major changes to New York’s subway cars, in
2000 and 2006. Of the city’s 6,374 subway cars, 3,504 bear the pair’s interior and exterior
designs, as do
“We subscribe to the idea of City Beautiful,” Mr. Udagawa said, referring to an architectural and urban-planning movement from the 1890s and 1900s that sought to use attractive design to make people better citizens. “It promotes the idea that a nice environment creates nice behavior.”
Doing that underground, in a crowded, smelly subway system, presents challenges. “A simple trick can go a long way,” Mr. Udagawa said. “The new trains have a glossy black floor and light ceilings and walls, which make the space feel bigger than it is.”
The two designed cars with digital station listings to help passengers track their progress, and with diagonal metal bars by the doors because, Ms. Moeslinger said, if the bars were horizontal, riders would
climb them. “We’re trying to lead people to behavior,” she said. “But there are limits to how much design can control the situation. Then you have to come in with rules and
regulations.”
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In the past year, Preet Bharara, the
As
Mr. Bharara also announced in March that a city contractor,
Rose Gill Hearn, commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation, which referred the CityTime case to Mr. Bharara and regularly sends corruption matters his way, said: “He reaches out:
‘Let’s meet.’ ‘Let’s talk.’ I think he understands that there are significant cases being generated by D.O.I., and he wants to do them.”
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When it comes to
With no city financing, Ms. Cohen has been scrambling to find $50 million in sponsorships. She has also been trying to persuade community boards and local groups to embrace her plans to devote precious street and sidewalk space to bike stations, with an avalanche of planning meetings and open houses in the city. “She has established a lot of trust with a lot of very skeptical New Yorkers,” said Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a bicycling and public-transit advocacy organization. (She earns points by biking to meetings.)
Ms. Cohen has drive. She held her
The program “will cement the importance of the mayor’s vision that New York should be a city not just where people come to work, but where families and residents, tourists, visitors can enjoy
the city together,” said Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a business group.
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Among the residents of New York, there may be no population with less power than illegal immigrants. Most live in the shadows of society, trying to avoid the kind of scrutiny that might lead to their deportation.
But some illegal immigrants have cast off their anonymity: the Dream activists. The name comes from proposed federal legislation known as the Dream Act, which would create a path to legal status for young illegal immigrants who go to college or serve in the military. The legislation has surfaced in various forms over the past decade and has been repeatedly defeated, but some states have passed or, like New York, are considering versions that would make young illegal immigrants eligible for financial aid at public colleges and universities.
Hundreds of Dream activists, working individually and under the banner of youth-led groups like the
Mr. Cuomo has been noncommittal on the legislation so far. But regardless of whether it
passes, supporters say the Dream activists have irrevocably changed the complexion of the immigration debate in New York.
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Yellow-cab drivers may not like Carl E. Heastie, the six-term assemblyman from the Bronx who has helped to lead efforts to expand livery pickups in northern Manhattan and the other boroughs.
But political insiders say Mr. Heastie’s power lies in his ability to unite the famously fractious Bronx, where rival political families have taken grudge-holding to new levels (Example A: the Díaz versus Espada saga). Now, for the first time in years, there is a truce in the borough, with political leaders not just on speaking terms but also actively working toward common goals like economic development.
Mr. Heastie, 44, a native son of the Bronx, was part of a 2008 coalition of politicians that cut across racial, ethnic and socioeconomic lines. Called the “Rainbow Rebels” by the news media, they took control of the Bronx Democratic County Committee from the forces of the longtime party leader, José Rivera.
Mr. Heastie took over as county leader, and he is said to be a consensus-builder. “There are two ways that political leaders try to accomplish their goals,” said Jeffrey Dinowitz, a state assemblyman
from the Bronx who works closely with Mr. Heastie. “One way is to yell and scream, and that’s not his way. The other way is to try to bring people together.”
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Not all that long ago, Steve Israel was just another Democratic House member from New York. But with the 2012 elections just six months away, Mr.
As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Mr. Israel has a role in tailoring his party’s national message, controls millions of dollars in campaign money and is turning grateful candidates across the nation into potential allies.
But the job is not without risk. Come November, Mr. Israel will be judged, fairly or not, on whether Democrats pick up the 25 seats they need to reclaim the majority in the House.
In some respects, Mr. Israel is an odd choice for such a partisan job. Over six terms in Congress, he has earned a reputation as a centrist representing a modest district of bedroom communities on Long Island.
But he is also ambitious and energetic. Two years ago, he was ready to defy his party’s leadership and stage a primary challenge against Senator
Mr. Israel has another important qualification: He is a fierce fund-raiser. Since taking the helm of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee 16 months ago, the committee has raised about $83.6 million
— about $10 million more than the House Republicans’ campaign organization.
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Hakeem Jeffries, a state assemblyman, is the front-runner in the
race for the Brooklyn Congressional seat held for 15 terms by Representative
In the State Assembly, Mr. Jeffries sponsored a bill, passed in 2010, that prohibited the police from collecting data on people stopped
and frisked but not charged with a crime, a major issue for minority voters. He lives in Prospect Heights with his wife and two sons, and he may have higher political ambitions, judging by his observation
in an interview that the city’s black power center had shifted from
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When a city politician speaks about schools, you can be sure a conversation with Michael Mulgrew happened first. Mr. Mulgrew, president of the
Labor has fallen out of favor in City Hall thanks to a wealthy mayor who does not depend on unions’ donations or their formidable get-out-the-vote efforts, but that will change in 2013, when the race could be decided in a Democratic primary with heavy turnout from the left-leaning teachers’ union, which has 200,000 active and retired members.
Mr. Mulgrew, 46, a
He plans to endorse a mayoral candidate, unlike in 2009, when the union declined to pick a favorite. And polls show that voters trust the union over the mayor to protect students’ interests.
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Slightly built, soft-spoken and unfailingly courteous, Seth W. Pinsky, 40, seems ill suited to drag New York City’s economy back from the brink of financial crisis. But for the past four years, that has been his task as president of the Economic Development Corporation, and the biggest idea he has championed has been to build an engineering school from scratch on some underused city property.
After the
It turned out that Mr. Pinsky could. Not swayed by Stanford’s cachet, he and his negotiating team insisted on stiff penalties if the university did not meet its promises in setting up shop on Roosevelt Island. Stanford balked, and now, Cornell University plans to build a $2 billion campus in the same spot. Mr. Pinsky said he was “100 percent satisfied with where the process ended up.”
In April, he had the bonus of standing beside Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to announce that the city had gotten “two for one,” because
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A prime example of the rise of New York’s tech companies from economic engine to civic presence is the board of the New York City Investment Fund. When the fund was founded 16 years ago to funnel city elites’ energy and money into public projects, its board was filled with the usual do-gooders from the real estate, financial and legal industries. Now two seats belong to members of the Internet community: Kevin P. Ryan, chief executive of the online retailer Gilt Groupe, and Fred Wilson, a founding partner of the venture capital firm Union Square Ventures.
“What’s happening is that as tech in New York becomes bigger and more mature, some people are getting more successful and more plugged in,” Mr. Ryan said. “And so the sector as a whole has more seats at the table.”
Sometimes this involves mayoral candidates like Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, or
While the tech industry has spawned a few influential (and donation-ready) fortunes, smaller companies believe they have a different kind of clout. In November, for example, when Congress held a hearing on the Stop Online Piracy Act, Tumblr, a micro-blogging site based in New York, put an icon on its home page that allowed users, with a single click, to call their elected representatives directly to complain. In one day, 90,000 users did so.
Andrew McLaughlin, former deputy chief technology officer for President Obama and now a vice president at Tumblr, said the “start-uppy, more nimble” parts of the sector were starting to practice what he called “civic hacking.”
To capitalize on tech’s newfound muscle, Brad Burnham, Mr. Wilson’s partner at Union Square Ventures, recently recruited an advocate — he avoided the word “lobbyist” — to represent the industry’s concerns. The advocate, Nick Grossman, will be based at and partly financed by Union Square Ventures. His mandate, Mr. Burnham said, will be “to alert people to issues and to organize opposition to ones detrimental” to the tech sector.
Mr. Burnham added, “We want to use the Internet to save the Internet.”
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The Rev. A. R. Bernard, pastor of the 36,000-member Christian Cultural Center in southeast
Mr. Bernard, 59, is an adept political force in
Mr. Bernard lives in Smithtown, on
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Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the city’s health commissioner, is the man behind those graphic anti-obesity ads on the subway, the crackdown on
At meetings, Dr. Farley said, his staff is often approached by health officials from other places, “and they’ll say, ‘What’s the next big idea?’ “
Dr. Farley, 56, an infectious-disease specialist, came to New York from the
His next target? “Prescription painkillers,” he said. “Really a national epidemic.”
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While the city parks department’s budget for maintenance and operations has been slashed by $54 million in the past four years, capital spending on parks — the purview of the first deputy mayor, Patricia E. Harris — has gone emphatically in the other direction. Over the past decade, the city has spent $112 million on the first two sections of the High Line, allotted $208 million for Brooklyn Bridge Park and disbursed $60 million to Governors Island while committing $306 million through 2021.
The parks department is only part of Ms. Harris’s portfolio; she also oversees the
Just as outside observers point to Ms. Harris, 56, she points to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. “Parks were always a very important part of the city for him,” she said. “When he became mayor, he said, ‘This is a priority for our administration.’ ”
The parks agenda was laid out in PlaNYC, a 2007 manifesto that spawned, among other things, initiatives to plant a million trees, convert schoolyards to playgrounds and pour $291 million into eight regional parks in underserved areas. Total parkland has increased by 725 acres under the Bloomberg administration.
Holly M. Leicht, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, a nonprofit group, called Ms. Harris “a tremendous advocate for parks,” saying she had been “vital to keeping the administration’s
signature projects on track in this time of drastic budget cuts.”
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The job of the state’s chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, who leads not only New York’s highest court but also its vast judicial bureaucracy, by definition comes with clout. But in Judge Lippman’s
11 years as the top administrator under the last chief judge,
Some judges and lawyers fear Judge Lippman because he knows the administrative machinery that court officials can use to punish and reward. New York’s liberal establishment has been largely neutralized
as a source of criticism because he has staked out a progressive role, not only in individual cases, but also on causes like increasing state financing for lawyers who represent poor people. He is also
a schmoozer who has had lunch with
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The developer Stephen M. Ross is not afraid of a fight. Mr. Ross, 72, the chairman and chief executive of Related Companies, has clashed with fellow developers like Donald Trump and Joseph Moinian, and has wrestled with New York’s powerful construction unions over wages and work rules. Now, at the planned $15 billion, 26-acre Hudson Yards development on the West Side of Manhattan, he is trying to overhaul the way projects are built in the city by getting more concessions from the unions and by eliminating subcontractors, cutting a traditional layer of costs.
It is unclear if he will win, but it is hard to bet against him. Mr. Ross and his partners at Related built the $1.7 billion
In fact, Related is juggling six projects in the city right now, including the first phase of Hunters Point South, the largest affordable-housing complex built in New York since the 1970s. On the weekends,
Mr. Ross has been trying to turn the
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A friend of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s and an advocate of many of his education reforms, Merryl H. Tisch is also the highest-ranking thorn in the mayor’s side from her post as chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents.
Take school improvement grants: federal money given to failing schools by the Obama administration. While visiting one city recipient, Ms. Tisch, 56, called schools like it “warehouses” for struggling students, who were put there after the city closed the schools they used to attend. She admitted to regretting her choice of words as they came out of her mouth, but said she did not regret the ensuing debate. “The ultimate result was to have a much better conversation,” she said.
She said that the differences between her and the mayor were often smaller than people thought, and that they arose because the Bloomberg administration was so goal-oriented. “I think they believe that policy gets in the way of the choices they would like to make,” she said. “In our judgment, those choices are sometimes superb, and sometimes we question those choices.”
One of those choices has been Mr. Bloomberg’s expansion of
Ms. Tisch will be around to prod the next mayor, too: her term on the Board of Regents does not expire until 2016.
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It is not as if the Jews of
When Bob Turner, a Republican, defeated David I. Weprin,
a Jewish Democratic candidate, in a special election for
When Councilman Lewis A. Fidler, a Democrat from south Brooklyn, failed to win outright a seat in a special State Senate election in March (the vote count is still held up in court proceedings), it was partly because David Storobin, the Republican candidate, criticized his opponent’s support
of
Both races were covered extensively on the Web sites of Voz Iz Neias (“What Is News,” in Yiddish) and Yeshiva World News,
and debated on
Amid the special circumstances of the elections, one outcome was clear: “The Orthodox community has emerged as a stand-alone force that needs to be reckoned with,” said Ezra Friedlander, who runs a public-affairs consulting company.
Though Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn are registered mostly as Democrats, their recent history, and their support of
The Orthodox community, led by younger social media-aware voters, tends to focus on social services like tuition assistance for yeshivas, busing and housing, but votes socially conservative on issues like same-sex marriage. Their numbers are growing. According to the census, since the previous count, Borough Park was the one neighborhood in the city with more than 100,000 people that grew, by 5.2 percent.
The Orthodox influence will likely be diluted on the state level, at least, by redistricting, which has concentrated the Orthodox of south Brooklyn into a “Super Jewish” district.
But in the city, the group’s impact on the 2013 mayoral election could be significant in the Democratic primary, and perhaps more so if Police Commissioner
“I don’t think the Orthodox community has made up its mind who it will support,” Mr. Friedlander said. “No candidate should take the Orthodox community for granted.”
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Nobody calls the cardinal’s residence on Madison Avenue “the Powerhouse” anymore. Mayors no longer consult regularly with the church about appointments to the health and Education Departments, police promotions or Family Court vacancies. Nor has any recent leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York been called “the American Pope,” as one predecessor was.
But while decades of demographic changes have cost the archdiocese much of its political clout, it does have the newly appointed Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan to its
Still, the church has learned to pick its fights. Last year, it largely sat out the politicking that led to the legalization of
“Loss of the statute of limitations literally could have put the church out of business,” said James F. Gill, a
Cardinal Dolan recently told Catholics that with the church’s fighting the government on several fronts, “we are called to be very active, very informed and very involved in politics.”
But will Catholics vote the church line? Does the archdiocese still wield power?
“Not as much as they think they do,” said Assemblywoman Margaret M. Markey, a
James T. Fisher, a theology professor at
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