Democratic City Councilman Tony Avella of Queens doesn’t think he’ll have a primary when he runs for mayor next year.

“I’m not so sure the other two actually run,” said Avella, referring to his known rivals, City Comptroller Bill Thompson and Representative Anthony Weiner.  read more »

Jordan Thomas, the founder of Brooklyn for Barack, was flying home last week from Denver, where he was a field organizer, when a question popped into his head.

Could he still organize people in time for the mayor’s race, and do it without using Obama’s name?  read more »

City Councilman Vinny Gentile of Brooklyn thinks Michael Bloomberg's recent call for severe budget cuts provides an opportunity for those who are considering challenging him in next year's mayoral race.  read more »

Representative Anthony Weiner was leaving the lobby of the Sheraton a few minutes ago, trading in the state Democrats' party in midtown for an event in Harlem.

But why?

“That’s more of a party of people rather than politicos,” Weiner said. “I think it’s appropriate we should be on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard when they announce Barack Obama as the next president of the United States.”

The rotunda inside City Hall is full of people and reporters awaiting Michael Bloomberg's 9:30 a.m. bill signing ceremony, where he will officially sign into law the term-limits extension that allows him to run for a third term.

He will also have to listen to testimony from voters.  read more »

Bill Clinton can talk a lot.

Speaking at an event to help reelect Representative Anthony Weiner at Queens College on Thursday night, Clinton stood in a somewhat ill-fitted dark suit and in front of a big yellow sign that said “Weiner” and talked about the impressive diversity in the borough (“This room has Muslims and Jews, this room has Christians and Sikhs and for all I know Buddhists, Hindi and everything else”); the importance of electing a Democratic State Senate, his “love” of the subway; the importance of electing a president who understands the need to invest in “public mass transit or the rail network for the country” to create jobs and reduce the threat of global warming and “increase the economic independence of urban areas”; the “unchanging interest” Americans have in building a strong middle-class society; health care; Winston Churchill; bringing troops home from Iraq; obligations to veterans; Hillary Clinton; Barack Obama; the two million foreclosures this year and its ramifications on the credit markets and the entire national and then global economy.  read more »

One of the casualties of Michael Bloomberg’s move to run for a third term, it seems, is next year’s Democratic primary.

Yes, it’s still 11 months away, and the mayor has only just finished announcing his intention to overturn term limits, but the prospect of Mr. Bloomberg—and his billions of dollars—running again may have ended the contest before it even took shape.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a Bloomberg ally who was the favorite of much of the city’s business establishment, reacted immediately by announcing that she would abandon a planned run if the mayor went for reelection.

City Comptroller Bill Thompson, the only minority candidate in the prospective Democratic field, says that he’s running, but doesn’t sound incredibly convincing.  read more »

Anthony Weiner is also criticizing the City Council for introducing legislation to change term limits because he says  changing the law legislatively "takes away the right of New Yorkers to vote."

Always on message, Weiner also notes that there is some geographic snobbery in the fact that hearing on the bill will be held in Manhattan.

Today's announcement that there will be a hearing – beginning at 3 pm
– for citizens to come to Manhattan and complain is not a substitute
for a vote by all our citizens. It's symbolic of the overall process,
which takes away the right of New Yorkers to vote, allows the Council
to rush the process and offers only one afternoon of hearings on such
a fundamental change.

"New Yorkers around the city deserve hearings in their boroughs, and a
normal process for considering this important legislation.

Here’s Bill Thompson at the annual conference for Al Sharpton’s National Action Network event last Saturday at the Sheraton in midtown, reading old quotes from when Michael Bloomberg and Christine Quinn opposed changing the term-limits law.

Thompson said the question facing those two now is whether to "listen" to what the "people of New York City have said on more than one occasion.”

Anthony Weiner was also there and spoke out against the proposed change.  read more »

Here’s Representative Anthony Weiner saying that the vice presidential debate proved “undeniably, undeniably, we saw a vice presidential candidate who had nice legs. I won’t dispute that.”

Weiner, who is dating Hillary Clinton’s body person Huma Abedin, went on to say, “but we also saw a vice-presidential candidate who tried to explain her running mate’s health care position.”  read more »