Joe Crowley, Melinda Katz and Helen Marshall.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn't seem like Mayor Michael Bloomberg will debate Public Advocate Bill de Blasio on his tax-the-rich policy proposal. "I don't think you're going to be seeing that debate happening," his new communications head, Marc Lavorgna, said on Inside City Hall. "The public advocate's running for mayor, so are a number of other people. The mayor is the mayor and has to run the city."

It looks like Congressman Joe Crowley is truly playing the Queens Borough President field after all. At former Councilwoman Melinda Katz's kickoff event last night, Mr. Crowley told Politicker he's "happy to lend our name" to Councilwoman Leroy Comrie's campaign kickoff event too, and he's in talks to do so. Additionally, Mr. Crowley said he would attend the event for all "Democrats in good standing who ask, who are serious about running." We asked if that meant Ms. Katz, who ran against his endorsed candidate, Councilman John Liu, for comptroller in 2009, was officially in his organization's good graces. "She's always been a Democrat in good standing," he replied. "The past is the past and we've got to move forward."

Also attending were Brooklyn Councilman Domenic Recchia--campaigning outside his turf for comptroller himself, perhaps--current Borough President Helen Marshall, Councilwoman Karen Koslowitz, and other elected officials. We asked Ms. Koslowitz, who represents Ms. Katz's old district, if her presence could be counted as an endorsement, and she said nope.

"When you're an elected official and you get that title of politician, this is unfortunately what happens; you become a very big target," Congressman Michael Grimm told WNYC of his controversies. "But I think it's in all sincerity and I don't want to seem arrogant in any way, and I don't mean it in an arrogant way, but it is a result of my success."

Another interestingly line from the same article, as we experienced the same odd problem when attempting to write a profile of Mr. Grimm's challenger, Mark Murphy: "WNYC made multiple requests to sit down with Murphy to talk about the race. We were given a few minutes over the phone."

ACCORD, the Asian American Community Coalition on Redistricting and Democracy, wasn't happy with the draft map of the City Council's redistricting plan, and they expressed so at a Queens hearing yesterday. You can read their testimonies here and here. Steven Choi, the Executive Director of the MinKwon Center for Community Action, was particularly direct, "expressing disbelief and anger," that their map proposals aiming to maximize the voice of communities of interest were "ignored."

Bronx Assemblyman Eric Stevenson is doing a push today for partitions between bus drivers and their passengers.

Gatemouth gave a lot of ink on the Independence Party primary between Assemblyman Steve Cymbrowitz and his two challengers last month. In a nutshell, he argues Mr. Cymbrowitz's Republican rival Russ Gallo is overstating the damage caused by the Board of Elections disenfranchising voters.

State Senator Rubén Díaz, Sr. is out of the hospital and politicking again. He endorsed another GOP assembly challenger in Brooklyn, Joseph Hayon, a social conservative who's running against incumbent Helene Weinstein in a rather Democratic district: