Winners and Losers 03/13/15

The five members of the New York City Health Board who were no shows for the earth-shattering vote on whether ferrets can be pets were clearly losers in the New York Times' book this week. The furry rodents commanded remarkable ink in the dailies, thanks in part to Rudy Giuliani weaseling his way into the Mustelidae controversy. (It's a family thing) Putting science aside as our polls clearly do, here are the Winners and Losers. 

WINNERS

Judith Chin, Catherine Collins, Judith Johnson, and Beverly Ouderkirk - While the fate of the teacher evaluations and school aid continues to be debated at the Capitol, (how many rallies have there been, again?) at least two people have benefited from the public’s concerns about Common Core. A couple of long-serving Board of Regents members were ousted this week and replaced with some new blood. Education is sure to continue to be a hard fought battle, so hopefully these four new members will be able to tough it out. Good luck, folks!

Diana Durand - Anyone who gets news that they will not face any jail time gets to call it a win. The ex-girlfriend of former Rep. Michael Grimm faced up to year in prison for making an illegal contribution to his campaign. While this is good news for her, someone somewhere is sadden at the potential loss of his-and-hers prison jumpsuits.  

Jeff Klein - Almost everyone thought the IDC leader would be saying goodbye to his power in the state Senate after Republicans won a majority last November. Then Klein was able to get into the room for the budget negotiations. And this week he was able to get two IDC-backed proposals into the state Senate’s one-house budget, including paid family leave, shocking many observers.  

Benjamin Lawsky and Cy Vance - The money keeps rolling into New York State. This time, Commerzbank admitted guilt and forked over a cool $1.5 billion dollars to close the book on several investigations. Once again, Lawsky was at the front of this one. But the investigation began when Manhattan DA Cy Vance probed into the German financial services company and its dealings with Iran and Sudan. Heck, Preet Bharara and other Feds even took some of the credit, but this week we are going to stick to praising the city and state officials who drove the car on this case. 

Eric Schneiderman - The AG is reveling in the good publicity this week, having reached a settlement with the three largest U.S. credit-reporting agencies aimed at better protecting consumers from inaccurate reports. The announcement of a coalition of attorneys general to crack down on the herbal supplement industry—an issue Schneiderman has been leading the charge on—was just the icing on the cake. We figure this more than compensates for reports from last week that the AG is getting probed for soliciting campaign funds from Donald Trump’s daughter. 

LOSERS

Bill de Blasio - The mayor couldn’t seem to catch a break this week. The Post made sure it was punctual on publishing piece after piece after piece after piece about his tardiness. State Senate Republicans reportedly punished de Blasio for campaigning against them by nixing mayoral control of schools and including the city in a 2 percent property tax levy cap in their budget plan.  Gov. Cuomo mocked his campaign to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Republicans are scouring the city for 2017 candidates, and charter school executive Eva Moskowitz is already talking about a Democratic primary. And the Times headlined an editorial on de Blasio’s tax-exempt lobbying group “Dark Money, Blurred Principles.”  

Andrew Cuomo - Luckily for the governor his email scandal isn't grabbing as many headlines as a fellow New York Dem, but he still can't shake the boat loads of bad press and now legislation challenging his administration's policy of deleting emails after 90 days. On top of that, he's dealing with questions about potentially politically damaging emails from 2007-2008 between him and his future State Ops Director Howard Glaser, profiled in a recent ProPublica and Times Union story. He should probably stick to the phone. 

Rudy Giuliani - America's mayor keeps saying the darndest things about President Obama—First that he doesn’t love America; now that the President's “tone” is responsible for such incidents as the recent shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, Missouri, and that he should try “saying the kind of stuff Bill Cosby used to say.” Cosby? Really? Have you been reading the news lately? On the flip side, he is still findng a way into the headlines. 

Rachel Goodman -The Chief of staff to City Councilman Brad Lander has been indicted on charges accusing her of purposely submitting inaccurate paperwork to the city’s Campaign Finance Board. A somewhat sympathetic New York Times article reports the type of errors in question are often caught by the board and corrected without issue. Unlike two others indicted after a probe into the Working Families Party’s campaign practices, Goodman’s name was blacked out. But she will no longer be afforded such secrecy as the case progresses.

Julie Wood - Talk ain’t cheap – at least not when the chatter is among past and present city officials. The New York City Conflicts of Interest Board fined the former first deputy press secretary to ex-mayor Bloomberg $2,000 because she violated a provision prohibiting public servants from appearing before the agency they served within one year of leaving government. Wood, now at Kickstarter, attended a meeting about the city’s tech sector hosted by deputy mayor Alicia Glen and the city’s Economic Development Corp. She also gave Glen and other officials a tour of Kickstarter’s offices.