This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

Recently released polling must be music to Rep. Lee Zeldin’s ears. Public polling that predicted landslide victories just a month or two ago has now narrowed to as little as four percentage points. Another new survey found the gap only slightly wider at six percentage points. Even polls that show Gov. Kathy Hochul a little more comfortably ahead, the biggest lead she has had stands only at 11 percentage points. Hardly the 24 point lead that one pollster gave her back in August. Suddenly, a Zeldin victory seems far more likely.

From The Bowery to Bushwick, New Yorkers are being barraged by black bags. Luckily, Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch is pursuing a new battle for clean streets, hoping to succeed where past administrations have failed. Expected to take effect by April 1st, 2023, Tisch and the Adams administration propose a four-hour delay in residential and commercial trash disposal, secured trash bins and increased overnight trash collection. However, the jury is still out on whether this will evict New York’s longest and hardest-to-evict residents: rats.

Next school year, New York City school children are going to have the chance to unlock some new lights within themselves – or so Assembly Member Jenifer Rajkumar hopes now that her legislation to make Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, an official school holiday, has received the stamp of approval from New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Having recently announced plans to officially recognize the five-day festival, Adams said Diwali will replace Anniversary Day on the school calendar, giving students the chance to learn more about celebrating the festival of lights.

It’s usually safe to bad mouth your well-known boss in private as you attempt to woo a new potential beau. Unfortunately for Chris Baugh, that person just happened to work for the right-wing organization Project Veritas and released your privileged conversations to the public. The Adams administration drew the line at Baugh bad mouthing cops who refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine and gave him the boot. A rough year for the now former City Hall staffer who last made headlines when he was mugged over the summer.

Amazon Labor Union president Chris Smalls’ smashing success in unionizing Staten Island’s JFK8 warehouse has been followed by successive losses in union elections at two smaller warehouses – one on Staten Island and another this week, outside Albany. The prospects for repeating the union’s David and Goliath victory at JFK8 elsewhere are looking dimmer, in part because no Goliath has ever been so well-funded and organized as Amazon.

It looks like New York City Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina likes to keep things interesting – and controversial. A week after requesting an expansion of solitary confinement for detainees at Rikers Island amid a City Council hearing to ban the practice altogether, Molina made headlines again for skipping a Board of Correction meeting Tuesday. All of this isn’t a good look for Molina as the jail complex battles the ongoing threat of federal receivership.