This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

From chasing fire trucks on his bike as a boy to being named commissioner of the agency that dazzled his childhood dreams, there’s perhaps a poetry to Robert Tucker’s ascension. But challenges loom. Like his predecessor, the private security company CEO has never been a firefighter. Tucker will have to put out fires inside the department as well as outside of it. Still, his passion for the position clearly burns bright.

The Democratic presidential ticket may not have been in Harlem for this week’s unofficial New York campaign kickoff, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell based on the A-list political attendees. Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Rep. Adriano Espaillat and a slew of other political bigwigs all showed up to the event organized by Harlem Democratic operative Corey Ortega.

Citizens Union Executive Director Betsy Gotbaum must feel vindicated as a proponent of even year local elections. The New York City Independent Budget Office projected that switching local elections to even-numbered years could save New York City up to $42 million every other year. It’s vindication for Gotbaum, who has long championed even-year elections. Money talks. and there’s growing momentum in Albany around shifting the five boroughs’ local races to presidential and congressional election years.

Minouche Shafik joined the former presidents of Harvard and UPenn on Wednesday when she announced her resignation. After just 13 months as president of Columbia, the baroness is fleeing the colonies and returning to her seat in the UK’s House of Lords. With students returning for the fall semester and protests likely to resume, Shafik has washed her hands of the issue and left the unenviable task of handling campus protests to interim president Katrina Armstrong and whomever succeeds her.

As if TWU International President John Samuelsen needed another reason to hate Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chair Janno Lieber! A scathing new report on subway worker safety from the Federal Transit Administration, which the MTA has disputed, found that subway track workers face a growing pattern of safety failures at the MTA. Take that, another new report on growing LIRR train door-related delays, and the rest of the congestion pricing-related chaos at the MTA over the last couple months, and Lieber’s summer is looking pretty hellish.

RFK Jr.’s presidential race is on the chopping block after a trial ruling got him kicked off the New York ballot for using a “sham” primary address on his campaign petitions. He is already facing similar challenges in other states, and California (where he seems to actually live) could be next. Kennedy may have finally accepted that he won’t be president; he reportedly met with both Trump and Harris to ask for a cabinet position in turn for his endorsement.