Joe Bruno Gets a New JobThe former State Senate Majority Leader will be the CEO of an information technology firm — which, of course, has contracts with the state government.
Eliot Spitzer: Is He or Isn’t He?Today’s Post ran an exclusive story titled “Spitz Vows to Push for Gay Marriages.” Our immediate reaction, of course, was, “Oh, those gays will be so thrilled! We always knew Spitzer was a Big Gay Marriage Advocate.” The Post would have you believe that once Spitz gets a Democrat-controlled State Senate, he’ll push hard for it. But if you read further into the article, the story gets a little sketchier. “Two other witnesses, including an elected government official, said they couldn’t recall Spitzer’s exact language,” writes Post Frederic Dicker (you’ll recall Dicker was the one who so desperately wanted to hear Bloomberg say he’d run for governor). Apparently some guests said Spitzer just referenced the State Assembly’s passage of a gay-marriage act and was greeted with applause. So maybe, despite the headline, Spitzer’s not a Big Gay Marriage Advocate. For him to reveal himself as such would be a risky move for him now, especially after he’s lost so much political capital in recent months. Other blogs would try to make a “coming out of the closet” pun here, but not us. We just picked the gayest picture of Spitzer we could find and left it at that.
Spitz Vows to Push for Gay Marriages [NYP]
early and often
Bloomberg Toys With Gubernatorial Ambitions, UsRemember when we used to think Bloomberg’s deputy mayor Kevin Sheekey was a tightlipped strategist who stayed mostly behind the scenes? Yeah, those days are clearly over, because lately Sheekey just can’t shut up about the mayor’s political ambitions. Just days after a massive Newsweek story hit stands featuring Sheekey’s detailed plans for a presidential run by his boss, the Post reports that the political guru has also been secretly talking to state Republican strategists about rallying a Bloomberg run for governor in 2010. The story was written by Postie Frederic Dicker, who seems a little fixated on the idea but makes a good point. There are a couple of reasons why this works: One, on the off chance Bloomberg does run for president and loses, he’ll have a much higher profile after 2008 and still have time to make a go at Albany. And two, a recent poll asking voters whom they would vote for in a run between Spitzer and Bloomberg put him well ahead of the current governor, 50 to 37 percent. So is all this talk about a presidential run just a smokescreen for his real gubernatorial ambitions? Is it just an attempt to solidify his broad political appeal and influence? Could all this is-he-or-isn’t-he messing with our head be part of a larger strategy to, well, mess with our heads even more? Wow. If it is, that would be totally awesome. That’s probably exactly the kind of mind-fucking Albany needs.
Mike Secret Bid to Run vs. Spitzer [NYP]
Update: At a press conference today, when asked about the Post story, Bloomberg had this to say: “You can tell the governor he does not have to worry about me running. It is totally fictitious, I have absolutely no idea where it comes from. I’ve got the greatest job in the world and I want to finish it I categorically will not run for governor.” Fredric Dicker: the boy who cried governor.
