Doug Muzzio

Michael Bloomberg’s tax policy is giving his political allies a headache.

At a breakfast in midtown last week, State Senate Republican Majority Leader Dean Skelos tried to send a clear anti-tax-increase message to business leaders.

“As I said before, the Senate is ready to do what’s appropriate to reduce spending, but we should not raise taxes, as some have indicated. In this fragile economy, it would be disastrous to raise taxes,” Skelos said.

The speech, hosted by the Association for a Better New York event, went over well with the pro-business crowd. But speaking with reporters afterward, Skelos had a slightly harder time dealing with a question about Michael Bloomberg's recent comments that, in order to balance the budget,  read more »

As Liz noted, some of the state’s leading unions have been eerily silent ever since Joe Bruno announced his retirement. (A spokeswoman for 1199 SEIU, for example, declined requests for comments for two days.)

Two people I spoke to downplayed how durable or partisan the unions' allegiances might be.

“[The unions are] so big, and they have so much money, that even if they were to fulfill their commitment to Bruno by supporting all the Republican candidates this fall, and the Democrats win, they’ll still land on their feet,” said one leading union official who asked not to be named.

“The next election is only two years away and they, and the teachers, are in a separate category of political actor,” this person said.  read more »

Here’s Doug Muzzio, so flustered during his unannounced visit to my desk at City Hall today that he gave an unusually short rant on what he's thinking about today: the heat, Michael Bloomberg, and David Paterson's rent-controlled apartment.

Here's Baruch College Professor Doug Muzzio at my desk in City Hall, talking about Michael Bloomberg as a possible vice-presidential candidate.

“It’s interesting because of his checkbook, but it ain't gonna happen,” Muzzio says.

Here’s political science professor Doug Muzzio, who says there may not be much to look at, literally, once Michael Bloomberg’s two terms as mayor are over.

Doug Muzzio is putting his money on Christine Quinn and the congestion pricing supporters in the Council. According to Muzzio, a political science professor at Baruch College, it is less about the substantive pitch Quinn is making, and more about the strategic decision members make to avoid becoming one of her enemies.

Muzzio told me, “Those people who are wishy-washy, I would bet most of them go to the pro-side, Chris’ side. She controls the institutional agenda, she controls the perks. Why piss her off?”

In just 90 seconds, Baruch College's prolific political analyst Doug Muzzio takes on the New York Times story about John McCain, the current state of  read more »

Inspired by the ado over Barack Obama's use of Deval Patrick's phrasing, and similar use by Hillary Clinton of at least one Obama phrase, I emailed a few quotable people in New York for them to give them the opportunity to put a catchphrase of their own on the record.

Here they are:

Simcha Felder:
“Do not place unsolicited advertising materials on this property."

Brian Ziff-Levine:
“It’s the undecideds, stupid.”

Joe Mercurio:
“Silence is an incredibly stupid communications strategy. No wait I actually stole that from Frank Luntz.”

Doug Muzzio:
"'If a frog had wings he wouldn't be bumping his ass on the ground' (cribbed from my father-in-law, Darrell Saunders)."

Phil Anderson:
"No reform, no raise."

Charles Barron:
“The renter's rebate. Rock Hackshaw gave me that idea when I was running for mayor in 2005. The next thing I know, Gifford Miller is talking about it, and now, Christine Quinn is."

More after the jump.  read more »

"What was never going to happen, is not going to happen,” said political science professor Doug Muzzio of Baruch College. “Coming out of Oklahoma, Michael Bloomberg is where he was before he went to Oklahoma and that is, not running for president.”

He continued, “Obama looks like and feels like a transformational leader” and he is taking voters “where they are not now and where they want to be. Michael Bloomberg, at best, is a transactional leader, and his call is competence. And we’re beyond that. We’re into faith and ecstasy here,” he said, referring to catch phrases made popular by James MacGregor Burns’s 1978 book on leadership.

“What Obama is offering is inspirational leadership. And Mike Bloomberg’s never been a leader. He’s always been, at best, a very competent manager. He’s never been a leader. He’s never inspired and he’s never sought to inspire," said Muzzio.

To counter this notion, I asked Muzzio about Bloomberg's advocacy for the smoking ban, trans-fat ban, taking over city schools? Weren’t those displays of leadership?

“That’s policy stuff," said Muzzio. "And policy, don’t get me wrong, policy stuff is extraordinarily important. It is the nuts and bolts. But there is more to politics than nuts and bolts, it seems."

Here's Baruch College political science professor Doug Muzzio discussing, somewhat cruelly, Eliot Spitzer's next step: “Where does he go from here? He writes a book titled Steamrolled: How to Blow a Huge Electoral Mandate.”

Eliot Spitzer is making his second trip to Washington D.C. today, to explain his decision to back off his plan to allow illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses.

Spitzer will make the announcement flanked by New York’s Democratic congressional delegation, which almost uniformly opposes a related aspect of that driver’s license policy: the federal Real ID Act.

The long-term political question is going to be whether this will be the beginning of a second act for Spitzer, in which he finally regains control of a governing agenda that's been getting away from him since he took office. Short-term, though, the question will be whether this will really allow him to step away cleanly from the licensing issue at all. Certainly, his Republican opponents will do their best to see that the controversy lingers.

More after the jump.  read more »

Here’s Doug Muzzio, a professor of public policy at Baruch (and one the most quoted people in politics) on the Rudy Giuliani-Bernie Kerik story.

Speaking to me inside City Hall, Muzzio said the two were “made for each other.” Muzzio said Giuliani probably could survive this. Unless, of course, other stuff comes out. "Are there other skeletons," he asked. "Are there other things like this?”

Here's Republican strategist Bill O'Reilly's take on the Kelly for Mayor mayor boomlet that found expression in the Times and on the opinion page of the Daily News over the weekend:

“All the buzz about Ray Kelly shows how eager New Yorkers are to keep the city moving in the same direction. There is definite fear out there about handing the keys to City Hall back to a career politician. The past 16 years have been a wildly successful experiment for New Yorkers; they have shown that extraordinary individuals from outside the normal political process can do the job better."

Which I imagine is also a neat preview of the argument John Catsimatidis or whoever the main non-Democrat is going to be if Kelly doesn't run.  read more »

So, what's the significance behind David Paterson's major fund-raiser last night at the Penn Club on West 44th Street, where the minimum contribution requested was $500?

The money raised is for his new committee, Paterson for New York.

Which tends to indicate, once again, that his energies aren't exactly being directed towards ensuring a long and prosperous future at Eliot Spitzer's side.

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New York’s Mayor doesn’t “do” anger very well.    read more »

In the hours leading up to his defeat in the Democratic Mayoral primary, Gifford Miller campaigned v  read more »

We just couldn't resist piling on our embattled Governor in this week's issue, tracing his path from an apparent revival a couple of months ago -- when he was telling backers that he was starting to raise "federal money" -- to the current mess.

You'll be glad to learn that the Patakis' personal economic development policy apparently includes an office park...in Georgia. And that somehow a few New York State contractors turn up among the tenants.  read more »

"I don't think it's premature for an obituary," Baruch's Doug Muzzio told us, reflecting a growing consensus. "Forget it. The guy is not going to be President."

Based on our conversation yesterday with Pataki advisor Kieran Mahoney, we feel confident that he will consider both Muzzio and the authors of the article morons.