Fractures in the Monolith?

Isn’t it funny how the number of Council committees and subcommittees is always equal to the number of council members, minus whoever is being punished by the Speaker?

The Council resumes its 2014 session with a brand new committee on Courts and Legal Services, to be chaired by Rory Lancman. Somehow the city’s courts and legal system functioned for decades without a council committee to oversee them, but now it has been found necessary to establish council oversight. And fortuitously, it happened just at the same moment that CM Lancman had demonstrated his readiness to play ball on the Speaker’s team.

How Lancman gained the Speaker’s favor is not clear—perhaps his vow to introduce a bill outlawing police chokeholds was enough to bring him out of the outer darkness. What is really piquant however is the list of remaining (Democratic) council members who are still in the cold.

Ruben Wills needs little explanation—his indictment for fraud makes it hard to countenance giving him much in the way of oversight. Andy King might suffer from being from the Bronx, whose delegation opposed the Speaker’s candidacy until the bitter end. Councilmember King is making the best of things anyway, flaunting his bow ties and sherbet-colored outfits in tabloid features and at Bronx Fashion Week. At King’s Times Square presser this week to announce his proposal to regulate the beggars who dress like cartoon characters, one passerby shouted out, “Which character are you?”

The fate of Councilmembers Annabel Palma and Rosie Mendez is puzzling as well. One might assume that Latina unity would suffice to get these veteran legislators a committee chair, although maybe it works the other way, and the Speaker wants to demonstrate that she does not play ethnic favorites. Palma contested the Speaker for the job, but unlike some of the other candidates, she doesn’t have the political weight behind her to ensure that she picks up some spoils. Again, being from the Bronx doesn’t help. It is widely known that the Speaker had wanted the last redistricting to remove her Bronx constituency entirely, and put her squarely and solely in the Manhattan delegation.

Rosie Mendez may have annoyed the Speaker by going after de Blasio in the mayoral primary race last year, when she supported Christine Quinn. Councilmember Mendez filed a COIB complaint two weeks before the election, questioning whether Public Advocate de Blasio was using his “worst landlords” list as extortion for campaign donations, a move that the de Blasio camp saw as going too far.

Does it look good that the Dems without committee chairs are all people of color? I doubt that the Speaker is losing sleep over it.

The primary election Tuesday didn’t do a lot for the reputation of the Mayor or Speaker as powerbrokers. Mark-Viverito looked absurd praising the upstate conservative LG candidate Kathy Hochul’s “progressive values,” and de Blasio’s grotesque performance at the Labor Day parade, shielding Governor Cuomo from having to acknowledge Zephyr Teachout, was embarrassing.

De Blasio acting as Cuomo’s wingman is the emblem of the Progressive sellout to the mainstream Dems—or rather, it demonstrates that the WFP Progs were never that “progressive” to begin with. They were always just another faction of transactional politicians who were on a run, bludgeoning their opponents as the enemies of progress. Well, now that Governor Cuomo has the WFP line, where does that leave the WFP? Does anyone imagine that Cuomo’s presumed victory in November will be a blank check for the Progressives? Not bloody likely, especially after so many of them defected to the left, giving him barely 60% of the primary vote.

So Cuomo extracted a vague promise from Senator Jeff Klein to return to the Democratic fold…big deal. The IDC came out ahead Tuesday night, and with Cuomo and de Blasio bruised, there is little leverage on Klein to lift his hand from the seesaw. The Senate remains in his control, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. You count the Bronx out at your own hazard.

We may see some stirrings of revolt in the Council, which has marched almost monolithically behind the Mayor. But now that de Blasio is preparing to bring the horse carriage issue to a head, splits are forming that could potentially derail the Progressives’ momentum.

Councilmember Rafael Espinal, Chair of Consumer Affairs, has publically come out for the carriage industry and against the ban. Legislation on the carriage horses would normally have to go through his committee, so the Speaker is shopping around to find somewhere else to introduce it.

Espinal is showing some fortitude here, and is likely playing a long game. The Progressive leadership has been getting a pass on a lot of its early foolishness, but de Blasio’s honeymoon will only last so long. If in the next 18 months the city begins to sour on its new executive, the pols who stuck their necks out early will look like heroes with foresight. Rafael Espinal could be jockeying to look like one of the sensible ones if and when the Progressives take a serious fall.