This was the week that Andrew Cuomo, fresh off beating up on his "brother from another" Bill de Blasio during budget season, got taken down a peg. When Preet Bharara sounds the alarm on your perceived ethical triumphs, you know you are having a bad stretch. In fact, de Blasio traded up from his role as "lead punching bag" to "defender of embattled ally," standing up for his buddy Rev. Al Sharpton, who was victimized by an ill-timed story about his days as an FBI informant. Ah, politics. One week you’re the goat, next week you’re on top. Now for this week’s winners and losers:?

WINNERS

Charles Barron - Barron has made party crashing an art form, but he outdid himself this week, showing up uninvited at the ground breaking of the Livonia Commons housing and retail complex in Barron’s backyard in East New York. The Livonia deal was a pet project of Barron’s for some time, and was negotiated by the previous administration and City Council, so he clearly had a right to be there. But subtlety is not one of Barron’s strengths, and he managed to steal the show from Mayor Bill de Blasio by bluntly criticizing him at his own press conference. That’s one way for an ex-public official to get some easy press.

Preet Bharara – When the Times tried to pry a critical word out of Bill de Blasio this week about his fremeny Andrew Cuomo, the mayor said, "Nice try." De Blasio had good reason to hold his tongue; Cuomo had spent the last 100 days showing him who’s the boss in this state. There is one man, however, who apparently missed the memo: Preet Bharara. Bharara had no apprehension about ripping into Cuomo for bargaining away the Moreland Commission, going so far as to leave open the possibility of investigating the governor’s conduct—news no elected official wants to hear from a U.S. Attorney—especially when it comes from the Southern District. The governor might be scary, but Preet is terrifying.

William Destler - Rochester Institute of Technology is the first private school to be approved as part of START-UP NY, which greenlit tax free zones for facilities in Rochester and in nearby Henrietta. The college says they are going to seek high-tech partners to move into the spaces, which you'd think would be tough. Consider the choice: California or Rochester? California or Rochester? We'll see if that tax-free incentive pays off, but either way, it's a good week to be the school's president, Bill Destler.

Tom DiNapoli - DiNapoli threw a flurry of punches up State Street toward the Capitol this week when he declared he wouldn’t opt in to the new public campaign finance system created just for his race. In a series of jabs, DiNapoli essentially called the pilot program a joke and singled out lawmakers for shouldering him with an experiment made to fail. In so doing, the state Comptroller proved he’s not one of Cuomo’s underlings to be pushed around. He also did himself a solid by siding with good government groups, who will continue their assault on the current campaign financing system during high profile races this fall. That’s a smart move for a man with a couple million in the bank.

Nirav Shah - Trading in Albany for Southern California is reason enough for some to take a new job. For Shah, it’s just a bonus. The state health commissioner is stepping down in June to take an executive position with the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan. Presumably Shah is getting a big bump in pay, as evidenced by the governor’s comments that state salaries make it hard to keep good employees. Shah also gets to rid himself of worrying about the two words that have undoubtedly driven him mad since the governor made him the scapegoat for the slow pace of the most controversial state review process in recent memory: hydraulic fracturing. Given his record to this point, he probably wasn’t going to say anything about that before June anyway.

LOSERS

Andrew Cuomo - Riding high after getting his fourth on-time budget deal last week, the governor fell off the horse this week. The first blow was from good government groups—and DiNapoli, too—who continued their assault on the cheesy public campaign finance plan passed in the budget. Then came a shot from Preet Bharara over the disbanding of the Moreland Commission. There’s also the uncertainty about if the Working Families Party and NYSUT will back him this fall—not a major problem, but one that undoubtedly will affect the numbers he’s looking to crush Rob Astorino by. The good news is he hosted a beer, wine, spirits and cider summit earlier this week, so hopefully he brought home some samples to help him forget about a tough go of it.

Sean Eldridge – Looks like Eldridge and his fellow Democratic congressional candidate Aaron Woolf are running the same game plan. Both are unknown in their respective districts, look on paper like carpetbaggers, and don’t want to have any unscripted interactions with the media. This Rose Garden strategy might set first-time candidates like Eldridge and Woolf at greater ease, but it’s a terrible optic for voters who already harbor doubts about their authenticity and ability to relate. This week’s Politico profile of Eldridge—minus Eldridge—was a killer, certainly making it seem like Mr. Chris Hughes was not ready for prime time.

Richard Iannuzzi - The head of the state’s giant teachers union was taught a lesson this week when he got ousted from the job he has held since 2005. NYSUT, which has some 600,000 members, voted Iannuzzi out amid criticism that he was too timid amid tumultuous battles over state education policy. Honorable mention for our winner’s list goes to Karen Magee, who replaced Iannuzzi, and to Michael Mulgrew, the head of the UFT and an outspoken Iannuzzi foe.?

Kieran Michael Lalor - Earlier this month, Republican Assemblyman Kieran Michael Lalor blasted Gov. Andrew Cuomo for having former state senator and ex-convict Nick Spano hold a fundraiser for the governor’s re-election bid. But Lalor is now facing fundraising questions of his own after the Post revealed that he had raised $1.77 million for war vets running for Congress—but only passed along $91,500. Lalor denied any wrongdoing—then quickly decided to shut down the political action committee.

Al Sharpton - Regardless of whether the FBI informant story is old news, the timing could not have been worse for Reverend Al, as the recycled revelations broke right as Sharpton was holding his annual National Action Network convention, with President Obama set to attend. Lucky for Sharpton, the fallout could have been much worse, as Mayor Bill de Blasio stuck up for him at a press conference not long after the story broke, proving once and for all that it pays to have friends in high places.