Queens Democratic Party Chair Joe Crowley announces his endorsements.

When the Queens Democratic Party rolled out its endorsements this morning in Forest Hills, one notable demographic, African Americans, was left without a major candidate. Indeed, Queens' black political establishment looked on with disappointment as their favored candidates for mayor, borough president and public advocate were passed over for rivals.

Congressman Joe Crowley, the party chair, endorsed Council Speaker Christine Quinn for mayor and former Councilwoman Melinda Katz for borough president. While a vast majority of district leaders voiced their approval, Elmer Blackburne and several other black district leaders dissented, indicating that instead they would support Bill Thompson, the former comptroller, who is also black. Ms. Quinn and Ms. Katz are white.

"Our community tells us that they're gonna vote for him [Thompson] again," Mr. Blackburne, a district leader from a predominately black southeast Queens, told reporters after the endorsement meeting. "We feel strongly and we'll be working very strongly with Mr. Thompson. [Ms. Quinn] can't win in our district. She can't win the Bronx, from the numbers I'm getting. She can't win in her own district, I'm told--her own part of Manhattan--and she can't win in Brooklyn."

Mr. Blackburne said he understood the county organization had an appreciation for diversity but also made decisions that were not always popular with the local black political establishment. Archie Spigner, a former southeast Queens councilman and close ally of sitting Councilman Leroy Comrie, the black candidate Mr. Crowley was considering endorsing instead of Ms. Katz for borough president, expressed disappointment at the seemingly last-minute decision the county organization made to not support Mr. Comrie.

"I'm disappointed but I understand their logic," Mr. Spigner told Politicker. "We'll have to see whether Leroy continues in the race. If he continues in the race, I'll be with him. The reasons they gave me were that he was a very unsuccessful, unspectacular fund-raiser."

Sources indicated that Mr. Spigner and other Comrie allies were only informed of Mr. Crowley's decision to support Ms. Katz late Saturday and Sunday. Initially, Politicker reported that the county organization was expected to back Mr. Comrie, despite his poor fund-raising. However, according to several plugged-in Democratic sources, Mr. Comrie's candidacy was met coolly in the pivotal organized labor community, some of whom favored Ms. Katz. When other candidates, sources said, made it clear they were not going to step aside if Mr. Crowley backed Mr. Comrie, the county organization reevaluated their plans and chose Ms. Katz, a strong fund-raiser and former county-backed candidate for Congress.

Mr. Comrie currently has about $40,000 in his campaign account, compared with Ms. Katz's $337,000. Ms. Katz also secured the endorsement of a southeast Queens power broker, Rev. Floyd Flake.

In addition to Ms. Quinn and Ms. Katz, the county organization chose to back Reshma Saujani, a well-funded candidate who has never held elected office before, for public advocate. Mr. Crowley repeatedly stressed that Ms. Saujani is of South Asian descent and would be able to provide representation to Queens' burgeoning South Asian community. Ms. Saujani's victory would be historic as there are no South Asian elected officials in New York City.

However, Ms. Saujani's endorsement came at the expense of Brooklyn Councilwoman Tish James, a black elected official also favored by the southeast Queens establishment. Ms. James, like Mr. Comrie, has struggled to fund-raise.

"They didn't go with Tish, they didn't go with Leroy, they didn't go with Billy [Thompson]," lamented one Queens Democratic insider. "Billy would've made a lot of people happy. They did it purely because they have close ties to Quinn."

Indeed, Mr. Crowley's predecessor, Congressman Thomas Manton, worked diligently behind the scenes in 2005 to help elect Ms. Quinn speaker. In a short speech, Ms. Quinn paid tribute to Mr. Crowley and Mr. Manton, who died in 2006.

"I can't help but think of Tom Manton and I can't help but think of a conversation and a similar endorsement, a little different meeting, that I had with Tom Manton, where he said he was supporting me in the race for speaker of the City Council," Ms.  Quinn said. "And in doing so it was an enormous step forward in my efforts to become speaker."

John Liu. (Photo: Getty)

John Liu's mayoral campaign may be hovering around ten percent in the polls, but according to the candidate himself, they understate his support by more than twofold. Indeed, a beaming Mr. Liu told a room full of teachers yesterday that if the surveys were accurate, he'd actually have the support of a quarter of the city's Democratic primary electorate.

"My true base of support in the electorate is closer to 25 percent," Mr. Liu, the city's comptroller, exclaimed at a teacher's union mayoral forum in Brooklyn. "You add on top of that the tremendous amount of labor support I’m going to have, that puts me very much in the running--much more so than other candidates who I don’t think have any piece of their base that is not being reflected in the public poll numbers."

The Brooklyn United Federation of Teachers forum was apparently closed to the press, but Politicker wasn't kicked out until after Mr. Liu spelled out his case for victory in a 25th-floor conference room packed with public school teachers. Making an argument he's presented before, Mr. Liu went on to say the possibility of electing the city's first Asian mayor will drive that voting bloc to the polls. These voters, Mr. Liu firmly insisted, are simply not being reached due to language barriers and lack of publicly listed phone lines.

"What the polls don’t show is if you look at the breakdowns, you see breakdowns for white voters, black voters or Hispanics voters," he explained, claiming the 15 percent of the Democratic primary electorate will be Asian. "That’s it; those are the only breakdowns you’ll see. The Asian voters are not being captured in the public polls."

Marist College, one of two public pollsters that regularly releases numbers, actually does include a breakdown of the Asian vote and had recently the comptroller with 11 percent of the overall vote. Additionally, Asian Americans are only 12.7 percent of the city's population, according to U.S. Census figures, and data crunchers widely expect them to be even less of the electorate due to lagging citizenship and civic participation rates.

Once all of his support is taken into account, Mr. Liu nevertheless claimed, he'll have enough "to be running circles" around his opponents--even though two of his former associates--including his one-time campaign treasurer--were recently found guilty of committing campaign finance fraud on his behalf. He dismissed any continuing cloud over his own campaign as mere "innuendos."

"I’m certainly not only relying on the Asian vote, I only bring up the Asian vote because they are missing from the polls," Mr. Liu said. "We got a broad outreach. I’m in every community, I’m going to be running circles around all of my competitors."

Additional reporting by Colin Campbell.

Panelists discuss a progressive vision for New York City at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Short on bombast and long on analysis, left-leaning academics and the co-chair of the City Council's Progressive Caucus took to the stage at the CUNY Graduate Center last night to outline their alternative vision for a city in the twilight of the Bloomberg era.

"We've been in a kind of sitting in the laboratory, mixing the chemicals phase in the past nine months and we hope to go out and cause a few explosions in the coming months and after the elections," said John Mollenkopf, a CUNY political science professor and co-organizer of the panel discussion, "Progressive Policies for the Future of New York City," which the New York Times' Michael Powell moderated.

Rather than simply hammer away the 12-year reign of Mayor Michael Bloomberg like some of the candidates hoping to succeed him, the panel at the CUNY Graduate Center, including Brooklyn Councilman Brad Lander, sought to soberly critique the Bloomberg administration on the educational, criminal justice and economic development front. In particular, they offered solutions to what they ultimately viewed as the most glaring social ill of the last decade: rising income inequality.

"There's a sense put forward in many spaces that there is some sort of contradiction between, or opposition between, the pragmatic needs to run the city and the progressives goals of a more inclusive and more equal one," Mr. Lander said. "As though as if you really care about combating poverty ... you won't get the garbage picked up effectively. And we believe this is fundamentally false."

The panel discussion, organized by Mr. Lander and Mr. Mollenkopf, drew some of its rhetorical firepower from their 51-page progressive blueprint for the city. The report, titled, "Towards a 21st Century City for All," proclaimed that New York City has been governed by "relatively conservative" mayors, with the exception of Democrat David Dinkins, since 1977. Praising Mr. Bloomberg for hiring adroit deputy mayors, focusing on environmental sustainability and upholding the tenants of social liberalism, the report and the panelists nevertheless argued the city's billionaire mayor has failed to address a surging income inequality gap between the city's working class and top earners.

While calling some of Mr. Bloomberg's economic development policies "nothing short of magnificent," Laura Wolf-Powers, a city and regional planning professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said low income residents had missed out on much of the gains made under Mr. Bloomberg's mayoralty.

"Under Bloomberg, policies to promote growth and to activate the city's creative energies and celebrate entrepreneurship have taken place in a very different space from policies to help low income residents become less poor, have access to more opportunity and access to higher quality of life in their neighborhoods," she said, citing statistics like the city's 2011 poverty rate of 21 percent and nearly 50 percent of city households that are "near poor," meaning they are below 150 percent of the poverty line. Medium income, Ms. Wolf-Powers said, actually fell by 6 percent between 2008 and 2011.

Aaron Pallas, a professor of sociology and education at Columbia University, further critiqued the market-oriented approach to education that has been a hallmark of the Bloomberg administration.

"There's been a rhetorical shift from a great school system to a system of great schools," Mr. Pallas said. "And much of these reforms hinged on the invisible hand of the market as the key to fostering innovation and sustaining successful practices in the form of mandates, incentives ... the alternative metaphor I want to put forward is the helping hand. A vision of a system that is hell bent on capacity building, capacity building in the form of professional development and support for school leaders and teachers."

Weighing on any reforms, the panelists said, will be the city's still precarious fiscal health. With a fragile national economy, the potential damage that sequestration could inflict locally and unresolved union contracts, the next mayor will be inheriting a comparatively robust city that nevertheless remains on precarious financial footing.

"I don't think you can actually overstate the fiscal situation that New York's gonna be in, it will be in fact incredibly dire," Mark Jacobson, former director of the Vera Institute of Justice, said.

Whether or not the next mayor will take up their solutions, of course, remains to be seen.

Jon Liu at a fundraiser in Brooklyn Friday evening. (Photo: Jill Colvin)

For nearly any other candidate, two guilty verdicts in the trial of a trusted treasurer and fund-raiser on campaign finance fraud charges would spell the end of his or her campaign. But this is John Liu.

The city comptroller soldiered on with his campaign on Friday, attending a fund-raiser where he vowed to not only continue his campaign but win the race—and slammed the feds’ case in the process, taunting them to “put up or shut up” yet again.

“I am speechless," Mr. Liu said from the living room of the opulent Cobble Hill home, where several dozen supporters had gathered to hear from the candidate. "When I walked in, I was speechless. I mean, this has been an amazing experience, an amazing ride. You could never make this stuff up," he said, insisting he can still win again and again.

"We’re a little more than four months away from the Democratic primary and we’re going to win this thing. And we’re going to win this thing and we’re going to beat back all the doubters and the haters and we’re going to win this thing. And after we work hard to win this election, we’ll work even harder to change New York City," he said, brushing off Thursday's news off as merely a "downer" day in the campaign.

“A campaign has ups and downs. You get knocked down. And yesterday was a little bit of a knockdown. But we got right back up. And we’re going to keep building momentum until we win this election," he said.

But as reporters pressed him on the impact of the verdicts, Mr. Liu's tone began to turn. He lashed out at prosecutors, castigating them for netting what he suggested were minor targets.

“I think what happened yesterday was very disappointing and honestly upsetting," he said, complaining that, "even after four years of investigating--a million documents reviewed, thousands of my supporters have been interrogated and even tapping my cell phones for what I’ve been told is an unprecedented 18 months--the only thing that could come up with are these charges against these two people?”

Asked how he remain confident in his campaign, he paused, struggling for words, before unleashing an even bolder attack.

“This has been much more about insinuations than anything else," he said, referring to allegations made about Mr. Liu's role in the scheme, even though he was never charged with any wrongdoing. "For the prosecutor to make those scurrilous statements in the closing without offering any proof whatsoever about me and then somehow using the whole taint of elected official and politicians, I think that was just ugly. And I still say: put up or shut up," he said, repeating his previous challeng. "They got something and they want to come after me? Fine. Look at everything. Anything and everything. I’m an open book and I’m right here. Just to do something."

Mr. Liu also claimed that he's received an outpouring of support from backers vowing to stand by his side.

“I’ve heard from a significant amount of people last night and this morning, people who have already supported me and people who are not yet public with their support,” he said. “But their message was this doesn’t change a thing. As soon as things are ripe and ready, they’re coming out.”

“Keep your chin up," he said they told him. "Don’t be deterred. Onward. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do," he said, dismissing the charges as "old news."

And despite the verdicts, he said he remains confident the city’s campaign finance board will award him with generous taxpayer matching funds.

“I think we’re very solid and airtight on the matching funds,” he said, adding that even if the funds are delayed, the campaign has a “deep well of support” to hold them over until the money arrives.

Mr. Liu's comments came during a fund-raiser in Brooklyn, where the audience of largely white, middle-aged supporters eagerly listened as the candidate answered questions about energy, education, stop-and frisk and drones, laughing and applauding enthusiastically. After his speech, the guests headed downstairs for a dinner of free-range organic beef, raised on the owners’ own upstate farm.

David Michaelson, 48, one of the attendees, said he remained a staunch Liu voter, despite the verdicts, pointing to Mr. Liu's knowledge of the city’s budget. He accused the media of unfairly targeting the candidate, whose campaign appeared to him to have "meticulous" bookkeeping.

“He’s probably the most honest of all the mayoral candidates,” said Mr. Michaelson. “He strikes me as the most honest and the most transparent, and that’s what I’m voting for."

Another supporter, Lucy Koteen, acknowledged the young Ms. Hou may have made mistakes, but argued that any campaign would be found guilty of some minor offenses if it were subjected to the same scrutiny as Mr. Liu's.

"Everyone makes mistakes," said Ms. Koteen, 64, who had attended several days of the trial and said she was "shocked" by the guilty verdicts.

“I think the prosecutors had absolutely no case,” she said.

Both Mr. Pan and Ms. Hou plan to appeal.

Rudy Giuliani making the case for Joe Lhota's candidacy for mayor. (Photo: Jacob Kornbluh/YouTube)

At a fund-raiser last night for his one-time deputy mayor Joe Lhota, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani not only came out swinging against Democratic officials' counter-terrorism policies, he blasted this year's crop of Democratic mayoral candidates, saying neither they--nor President Barack Obama--had ever held a real job.

Mr. Giuliani, one of Mr. Lhota's biggest backers as he seeks the Republican nomination for City Hall's top job, touted his former attack dog's record in the private sector and as the city's once-budget director.

"That's exactly what we need. Not these career politicians who have never really held a job. Like our President, who never really held a job,” he said, to laughs, according to footage of the speech at the Excelsior Grand in Staten Island, captured by blogger Jacob Kornbluh.

Mr. Giuliani went after the Democratic candidates for being too closely aligned with local labor unions, whose endorsements are expected to play a key role in the race.

“The Democratic candidates are going to be owned by the unions,” he said, according to the footage, pointing to the fact that all of the city's unions are now operating without contracts, waiting to strike more sympathetic deals with the next administration.

"What they’re signaling to us is they want a lot more money than they think Mike Bloomberg would give them,” said Mr. Giuliani, warning that, with the wrong person in charge, the city could easily endure a repeat of the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, when the city was on the verge of bankruptcy. “What they are threatening to do is to take that crisis into ruination which will result in ridiculously high taxes and the fleeing of business from Nee York City."

Mr. Giuliani also did his best to woo the  Staten Island crowd, touting Mr. Lhota's "obsession” with the borough, which Mr. Giuliani carried to Gracie Mansion when he first won.

“You are the hard-core middle class and upper-middle class of this city. We need a mayor who understands that this city is not all about Manhattan,” he said, in a not-so-subtle shot at the current mayor. “You haven’t had that, really, since I was the mayor."

In fact, Mr. Giuliani appeared to have a generally gloomy view of the city under Mayor Bloomberg, lamenting that things just can't get any worse.

"With all the crime and all the deficits and all the unemployment and all of the welfare, my slogan was, ‘Vote for me, you can't do any worse,'" Mr. Giuliani said of his own campaign platform. "Well you know something? That slogan applies today. You can't do any worse. And in fact you will do worse, a lot worse, if you don't elect Joe Lhota.”

Still, he acknowledged that Mr. Lhota is facing an uphill battle for the mayoralty. While Mr. Lhota leads his fellow Republicans, he remains far behind all of the major Democratic candidates in recent polls. Mr. Giuliani urged the crowd to pony up contributions to make him a viable candidate.

“We cannot give this city back to a bunch of Democratic machine politicians,” he argued.

We reached out to the Democratic candidates, but did not immediately receive any responses.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

As the spotlight shines on mayoral hopeful Christine Quinn’s record as City Council Speaker, at least half a dozen members are considering forcing measures she opposes to the floor in an unprecedented display of rebellion, Council sources said Friday.

At least one member has already collected the seven signatures needed to file two motion to discharge petitions to bypass Ms. Quinn—a tactic that was threatened in the paid sick leave fight, but that no member has dared yet under her tenure.

The move comes after Ms. Quinn surprised her colleagues this week by announcing her opposition to legislation that would allow people to sue the NYPD in state court for racial profiling--but said that she would nonetheless allow the measure to go to vote.

It would be the first time under Ms. Quinn's tenure that a bill would pass without her vote.

“The Speaker is allowing a bill to come to the floor for the first time that she doesn’t support, so now there are many of us who have bills which the Speaker does not support who are going to take a serious look at exercising the same option,” City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. told Politicker Friday.

Mr. Vallone said that he is seriously considering using the tactic to push forward two stalled bills that he has sponsored: one that would remove fluoride from the water supply and another that would give communities notice and attempt to regulate the placement of cell phone antennas.

He is also among seven members who have signed onto a discharge motion on a resolution calling for church groups to be allowed to meet in public school buildings. Another bill moving forward, sources said, would establish a "Tenants Bill of Rights."

Mr. Vallone’s plan to use the tactic was first reported Friday by the New York Post. But sources said the plotting extends far beyond his office.

Members have long been fearful of crossing Ms. Quinn because of the enormous power she wields. She has repeatedly been accused of withholding member money from those who cross her--a charge the Speaker's office has repeatedly denied.

But members considering the tactic said their resolve has grown as Ms. Quinn's record as Speaker has come under greater scrutiny in recent weeks, both by the press and by her mayoral rivals, who have slammed her repeatedly at debates and other events for her decision to delay the paid sick leave vote and called for reforms to the member item system.

“This is occurring because there’s a real sense in which members want to experience true democracy,” said one Council source, who said the New York Times story on Ms. Quinn’s temper had also made them feel more confident that she would be held accountable if members pushing their legislation saw budget cuts.

“Now members are starting to feel that there’s a level of transparency that they perhaps feel wasn’t there before,” said the source. “Everybody’s watching her.”

Another Council source said they expected more members to test the tactic once budget season is over at the end of June and they no longer have to worry about the potential loss of funding for their districts.

“There were rumblings that paid sick was going to be the one that broke the flood gate before this,” he said, adding: “It’s going to be interesting."

Whether fellow members are willing to vote for legislation introduced without the Speaker's blessing remains to be seen.

Bill deTerminator (Image Composite: Wikimedia/Getty)

A mayoral election season that has been dominated by one hum-drum debate after the next got a rare moment of levity Friday when former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made an unannounced appearance, courtesy of Public Advocate Bill de Blasio.

Mr. de Blasio was making the point that New York City would soon eclipse Silicon Valley as the nation's tech capital, so he channeled the none other than star of Kindergarten Cop.

“If Arnold Schwarzenegger were here, he would say this: No-thern Ca-lee-for-nia, your domination of the tech industry is being Terminated,” said Mr. de Blasio in his best (though lacking) Schwarzenegger accent.

The gag drew laughs from the audience gathered at the New York Law School to hear the candidates talk about tech—but his electoral rivals were less than impressed.

“That was a bad imitation Bill,” said former Comptroller Bill Thompson, judging the effort wanting.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn also put her foot down.

“I’m terminating all accents that are not actually yours, moving forward at all debates!" she declared, laughing. "There’s a new City Council rule on that."

Mr. de Blasio, undaunted, said he knew his accent would be a hit.

“An Arnold Schwarzenegger reference always works," he said. "I just want to say on it on the record."

The debate in question focused on the candidates’ visions on technology in the city, with inquiries on whether tablets should be used in schools and wireless accessibility.

No word yet on whether de Blasio's Terminator will be back.

Update (4:06 p.m.): Here's the video, via Capital New York.

A passerby and Speaker Quinn had a spirited discussion about term limits during her campaign launch. (Photo: Hunter Walker)

Christine Quinn's mayoral campaign scheduling arrives with a caveat that her rivals rarely, if ever, employ: "NOT FOR PRINT OR BROADCAST" and "ALL ITEMS EMBARGOED UNTIL DATE AND TIME OF EVENT."

Beginning with her bid's launch last month, the Quinn campaign has told reporters they cannot reveal Ms. Quinn's whereabouts until the event she is attending is underway. In contrast, all but one of Ms. Quinn's competitors have no stipulations whatsoever, oftentimes simply stating "Media Advisory" or "For Immediate Release." Only Public Advocate Bill de Blasio's campaign says, "For Planning Purposes Only," but there is no specific order to avoid publishing the details.

But Ms. Quinn’s spokesman Mike Morey insisted the “embargoed” directive was “standard practice.”

“It’s a template that we use on the public schedule,” he said, noting that her appearances at many public forums are reported elsewhere anyway, including yesterday's. “In any campaign, there are times in which you embargo a news event that you plan to hold that day. But in this case, obviously this was a public event.”

Mr. de Blasio's campaign declined to comment, but Jonathan Prince, the campaign manager for another contender, former Comptroller Bill Thompson, said he couldn't understand why Ms. Quinn wouldn't inform the public of her whereabouts beforehand.

“Our schedule is public, because Bill believes that when you're asking for public trust and support you need to be accessible to the public, to answer their questions and hear their concerns," Mr. Prince said in a statement. "Personally, I can't understand why any candidate for Mayor would want to hide from the public, but I can't explain the strategy of the Quinn campaign.”

Another campaign was much harsher.

"That’s a poor reflection of what kind of mayor she'd be, transparency is an important quality in a mayor," said Todd Brogan, a spokesman for former Councilman Sal Albanese. "It doesn't reflect well on Christine Quinn that she wants to keep the public from knowing what she's doing."

Some operatives speculated the schedule strategy was to help Ms. Quinn avoid the clusters of dedicated protesters that seem to shadow her at many events, something Mr. Morey said was not the case. But one leading Quinn gadfly, documentary filmmaker Donny Moss, believes otherwise.

"Of course Quinn wants to keep her schedule private. She doesn't want to have to explain why she's greeted by protesters day after day," he explained. "Our presence reflects poorly on Quinn, and it begs the question among the thousands of people who pass us, 'What has Quinn done to stir up so much anger that people have taken to the streets to protest her?'"

Mr. Moss added, "We've watched her and her entourage navigate around piles of garbage to avoid passing by us."

Additional reporting by Jill Colvin.

The Democratic candidates sparred during their first televised debate. (Photo: NY1)

Longshot mayoral candidate Erick Salgado wants to bring Mayor Rudy Giuliani back to City Hall-- this time as the new police commissioner.

Mr. Salgado, a socially conservative reverend, said he’d love to keep current Police Commissioner Ray Kelly on as the city’s top cop, but has at least one back-up choice in mind.

“I would consider Ray Kelly if he’s available. If he’s not interested, maybe I ask Rudy Giuliani to come and serve as police commissioner,” he said during the campaign’s first televised debate, which was held at John Jay College and sponsored by NY1.

The mayoral hopefuls have been asked repeatedly about their thoughts on Mr. Kelly, who remains one of the city’s most popular officials, despite criticism over many controversial policies, including stop-and-frisk.

The idea got a thumbs-down from at least one of the other candidates.

“I oppose Rudy Giuliani as the Police Commissioner for the City of New York,” said Bill Thompson, eliciting the first loud applause of the night and a round of laughs from his fellow candidates.

After the debate, Mr. Salgado explained that he wanted to see the best person in the job to keep the city safe, and had a lot of respect for the former mayor.

“Maybe if he doesn’t want to be a mayor any more, maybe you want to come and do a tremendous job,” he explained..

“It would be Salgado and Rudy Giuliani. That would be a good team.”

John Catsimatidis, Joe Lhota and George McDonald. (Photo: Jill Colvin)

The three leading Republican candidates for mayor all support the use of controversial unmanned drones to watch over New York City--as long as cameras aren't peering into their bedrooms.

"I'm absolutely for it," said former MTA Chair Joe Lhota, speaking at a candidates' forum hosted by the New York Young Republican Club in Midtown Tuesday night. "Drones to be used from a surveillance point of view, so long as it understands people's privacy rights."

He pointed to the Boston Marathon bombings and said that drones could have been used just like helicopters to find suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was discovered hiding inside a boat, obscured by its cover.

"They're not to be used in a military fashion, in the way we use them in the Middle East," he said. "But from collecting intelligence, from following what's going on, a drone is no different than having a camera on the street corner watching what you're doing in a public place. And we now know how important cameras are to how quickly law enforcement was able to get to people in Boston."

Supermarket magnate John Catsimatidis also endorsed the technology and vowed to do anything in his power to keep the city safe.

"I think we have to use 21st Century technology like we talked about to help keep New Yorkers safe, and I'm fully committed to anything that exists to keep New Yorkers safe," he said. "I will press that button and make sure it happens."

Doe Fund Founder George McDonald agreed that more surveillance was inevitable, saying that "Cameras are going to be a part of our life, whether we like it or not."

But he stressed that there needs to be a balance when it comes to privacy.

"Obviously I don't want a drone lookin' in my bedroom," he said. "And I think that all of us have to stay vigilant about the line where our individual freedoms and our collective responsibilities begin."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently said that he, too, had concerns about the technology, but thought the reality of drones hovering over the city's skyline was inevitable.