Senate IDC Leader Jeff Klein shot down the governor's repeal of a bank tax, but he didn’t get a real plan on public financing of elections. Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos had to tolerate some vague language on public financing, but he didn’t really seem to commit. Then they made each other losers by keeping each other up late for a debate on their resolution—or maybe they were just trying to outlast us and stay off our list this week. Of course, we won’t know who comes out on top until the real budget is done, but there were still plenty of winners and losers.  

WINNERS

Susan Del Percio – Del Percio became the latest pawn in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s efforts to undercut Rob Astorino, who is campaigning to unseat him this year. Rather than let Astorino scoop up one of a very small group of downstate Republican strategists, the Guv gave Del Percio the exceedingly vague job title of special advisor for “operations and special projects,” with a salary of $160,000. Cuomo obviously wants a big win for re-election, so it would hardly be shocking if Del Percio offers some advice on how to peel off support from Astorino in her new gig.  

Dottie Gallagher-Cohen – Feeling priced out of New York City? That’s because the Big Apple, along with Honolulu, Hawaii, is the most expensive city in America, according to a new ranking this week by Forbes magazine. Fortunately for New Yorkers the most affordable metropolitan area in the nation, according to Forbes, is also in the Empire State: Buffalo. That distinction makes for a great selling point for Dottie Gallagher-Cohen, the president and CEO of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, which promotes job growth and investment in the region, and may be further evidence that Buffalo is on the upswing.

Carlos Menchaca – Menchaca added another notch to his legislative belt when he was elected co-chair of the City Council’s Brooklyn delegation. Technically, Menchaca is sharing the role with Darlene Mealy, but as a freshman member it is impressive that he garnered more votes than more senior members like Steve Levin. Menchaca has been painted as a rising star ever since his upset victory over incumbent Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez in 2013, and this leadership position, in addition to his chairmanship of the Immigration Committee, will only embellish that narrative. After all, Bill de Blasio once held the exact some position as a councilman.

Ed Mangano – After a mild start to the week, the temperatures wasn’t the only thing that suddenly turned frosty on Long Island. A state Supreme Court judge upheld Nassau County’s wage three-year wage freeze for municipal employees. For Mangano, that’s a bargaining chip when it comes to getting unions to make a deal. For unions, the choice is to take a closer look at the county’s offers or stay iced. While the county’s financial control board offered the unions terms to lift the freeze, it has already put its foot down, rejecting a trio of deals made between three unions and Mangano.

Sheldon Silver – The state’s upper house made the Assembly look good this week, with Republican and Independent Democratic Conference leaders in the state Senate struggling to reach a compromise on their budget resolution. And despite harsh criticism of the Board of Regents, whose appointments are largely controlled by Assembly Democrats, Speaker Silver was able to re-elect three of four Regents who were up for a vote and to install a fourth one to replace a Regent who stepped down. Plus, that whole Vito Lopez thing went away fairly quietly, with a judge ruling that the Assembly was not responsible for the former lawmaker’s alleged acts of sexual harassment.

LOSERS

Greg Ball – People who appear on our losers list usually aren’t too happy about it, but maybe Greg Ball won’t give a s---. The senator told Fred Dicker that’s how he feels about party politics, only the Talk 1300 AM censor didn’t catch the expletive in time. The “salacious language”—as Dicker called it when he brought it up a day later—is yet another oddity involving Ball: just last month, plagiarized language in his killer whale bill made headlines across New York and beyond. There’s growing speculation that Ball will run for Putnam County executive this fall, and maybe voters there don’t care about Ball’s expletive or his views on partisan politics. But only time will tell if maybe they actually do give a s---. 

Bill de Blasio – The mayor continued to endure a lot of headaches, some self-inflicted and some not. He picked a fight with Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy charter schools last week, resulting in a lawsuit filed this week against his administration for denying a co-located space in Harlem—feeding a narrative, unfounded or not, that he is “waging a war” on charter schools. Meanwhile, the governor continues to stonewall de Blasio’s proposal to pay for universal preschool by raising taxes. And two buildings collapsed in East Harlem, which was no fault of the mayor’s, but it’s bad optics to not have appointed his own Buildings and Fire commissioners prior to this tragedy. Unfortunately for de Blasio, he is becoming a semi-regular on the loser side of this list.  

Richard Funke – The state Senate candidate didn’t know there was anything funky about his new communications director. That’s basically what Funke told reporters when he learned—apparently the first time—that Peter Hong, whom he had just announced as his chief spokesman, was convicted in a St. Paul, Minn., prostitution sting in 2008. It took just an hour for Funke to backtrack and say Hong wouldn’t play a permanent role in the campaign. With the Republicans trying to steal back the seat from rookie Sen. Ted O’Brien, maybe it would have been safer for Funke to bring on someone with the name John, not someone who was one.

James Jackson – The furor over Common Core wasn’t enough to topple three of the four members of the Board of Regents up for re-election this week. But one, James Jackson, stepped aside before lawmakers could take a vote. What must add salt to the wound is that his replacement on the Board is one Josephine Finn, a peddler of spiritually-based diets. And for some reason, she took down her web site just after getting elected.  

Kristy Mazurek – The Buffalo News headlines about the WNY Progressive Caucus PAC have focused on its top donor, political operative Steve Pigeon, but the person who really stands to lose from the scrutiny in the short run is the organization’s treasurer, Kristy Mazurek. Mazurek, the co-host of a political debate show on the local NBC affiliate and one of the women allegedly sexual harassed by her ex-boss, former assemblyman Dennis Gabryszak, is now rumored to be eyeing the seat Gabryszak gave up when he resigned in disgrace. While Mazurek has high name recognition and there don’t appear to be any other Democrats lining up to run, a State Board of Elections probe is just the type of attention one doesn’t want to attract when contemplating a bid for office.