Winners & Losers
This week’s biggest Winners & Losers
Who's up and who's down this week?
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s grand gesture of cancelling the city’s contract with the Trump Organization to run the skating rinks wasn’t all it was cracked up to be – the contract was going to expire in April anyway. But instead of letting the city’s icy relationship with Donald Trump’s company stay frozen, the mayor took an ice pick to it, and planned to close the rinks early, depriving New Yorkers of a rare outdoor activity in winter. Cooler heads prevailed, and the deal was smoothed over Zamboni style – the rinks will stay open. Somehow, even on ice, de Blasio got burned.
Cy Vance -
In a surprise to probably nobody but himself, Donald Trump loses yet again in court on Monday, and has to fork over his financial records and years of tax returns. There’s probably few happier than Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, who tweeted an ominous “the work continues” after the news broke. Vance might want to hold off on celebrating, though — odds are he’s been paying more in taxes than a billionaire for years. That’s gotta sting a little.
Maya Wiley -
It’s not over yet for New York City mayoral hopeful Maya Wiley. The MSNBC star and former legal counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio landed a major endorsement to bolster her campaign – and no, we’re not talking about Nicole Kidman. The city’s largest union, Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, is backing Wiley’s run, delivering a much needed boost for her campaign after falling short of a fundraising threshold to qualify public matching funds.
Dawne Mitchell -
With COVID-19 vaccines still in limited supply, there are still plenty of limits on who's eligible for the coveted jabs. Luckily for some teens in homeless shelters, foster care facilities and juvenile detention centers, they are now officially able to get immunized against COVID-19. Dawne Mitchell, who heads The Legal Aid Society's juvenile rights practice, was among the advocates pressing for clarity on whether youth who are 16 year old or older in residential programs would qualify for the vaccines. While the hard part comes next – actually getting the vaccines into arms – it's still an important step for protecting some of New York's most vulnerable teenagers.
Andrew Cuomo -
It takes a hell of a lot to end up a loser two weeks in a row – but this week’s events made adding Cuomo back on this list a no brainer. Lindsey Boylan, a former aide to the governor and current Manhattan borough president candidate, accused him of sexual harassment in a damning essay that detailed a forced kiss and an invitation to play strip poker. The nursing home scandal is ongoing. And the heat on JCOPE has turned up. Let’s see if Cuomo’s new spokesperson will be able to save him from week number three on the loser list.
Philip Grillo -
Nothing spells loser quite like getting arrested for storming the Capitol. This Republican district leader from Queens was apprehended on Tuesday, shocking some of his colleagues in the borough, who didn’t think he was that kind of Republican. Grillo does call himself “The Republican Messiah” on Facebook, so color us a little less surprised by this development.
Dweynie Paul -
Every couple weeks it seems, a report emerges of a judge in the state behaving badly. This week, Judge Dweynie Paul holds the distinction. Dweynie stands accused of paying a home health care worker watching her mother as little as $2.29 an hour, sometimes for 24-hours a day. All told, Paul is accused of cheating the worker out of $264,000 in a lawsuit. Paul recently got the backing of the Brooklyn Democratic Party in her bid for Surrogate’s Court, a promotion compared to her current Civil Court judgeship. Normally, that would all but guarantee her election, but who knows how this lawsuit will affect Paul’s aspirations.