Dale Stephanos

Early on a Friday morning last month, a deranged shooter walked into a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., and sprayed enough bullets to injure 58 people and murder 12. A few hours later, Mayor Mike Bloomberg was set to go on his weekly radio hour with 710 AM radio host John Gambling.

No sooner had the host, who has met with the mayor nearly every week at the same hour for the last decade, said “Good morning,” than Mr. Bloomberg, his voice trembling with anger, slammed the nation’s political culture for sitting by while the bodies piled up.

“You know, soothing words are nice, but maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be President of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it, because this is obviously a problem across the country,” he inveighed.

Mr. Gambling suggested that perhaps now was not the time to be talking about gun control, with the nation mired in a political season and the candidates playing to caution.

“There’s something more important than getting elected, and that’s standing up and saying what you think is right. I mean, I listen to this all the time, everything—oh, it’s getting re-elected. Getting re-elected or elected isn’t everything...You’ve got to look your family in the eye, you’ve got to look yourself in the mirror and say, this is what I really believe, and this is what I’ll do if I get elected,” the mayor responded.

Before the extent of the carnage was even known, Mayor Bloomberg had appeared on the CBS Evening News that night, Face the Nation Sunday morning, Morning Joe on MSNBC on Monday morning and Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN that evening.

Every time, it was the same thing: slamming Mitt Romney and Barack Obama for their silence on the gun issue and calling on the rest of the nation to start demanding answers.

After nearly two weeks of silence from the candidates, and some public figures, like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, even accusing the mayor of “trying to make a political issue” out of the shooting, Mr. Bloomberg granted an interview with The Huffington Post, a rarity.

There, he mocked elected officials for surrendering to the “aura” of the NRA, in which the gun lobby is seen as “so powerful, if you don’t go with them, they’ll take you out and destroy your ability to feed your family.”

And he told the website that he doesn’t really need to run for president to get his message out, since  “Just remember that I can, anytime I want, talk to you, write an op-ed piece and do those kinds of things.”

Indeed he can. The hours after the Aurora massacre marked an unprecedented media blitz by Mayor Bloomberg, who has generally preferred to space out his national media appearances. His post-Aurora appearances were the latest tactic in Mayor Bloomberg’s six-year battle with the gun lobby—and they have helped shape the contours of a gun debate in advance of the November elections.

Mayor Bloomberg’s attention was first focused on guns by the scene that played out and over and over in his first term in office, in hospitals across the city, during the darkest hours of the night: a police officer had been shot somewhere in New York, and the mayor and the NYPD brass rush to the hospital. Crime had remained low, despite post 9/11 concerns that a faltering economy would lead to a spike. But still, Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly remained bedeviled by a murder rate that seemed unable to fall below a certain threshold.

“It was intellectual, but it had a heart component to it that you don’t always see with Mike Bloomberg,” said John Feinblatt, who has served as the mayor’s Criminal Justice Coordinator throughout his tenure and as his chief policy director for the past term. “It’s the mayor who gets the real 3 am phone calls in the middle of the night and has to go to the emergency room and break the news that is going to break somebody’s heart.”

In 2003, two police officers were shot execution-style on Staten Island during an undercover operation to bust an illegal gun ring. At his second inaugural, in 2006, Mr. Bloomberg said, “Our most urgent challenge is ending the threat of guns and the violence they do,” and in a line that brought sustained cheers from the audience gathered on a cold January 1 at City Hall Plaza, “We will not rest until we secure all the tools we need to protect New Yorkers from the scourge of illegal guns.”

The mayor began by focusing his attention on the relatively easy task of tightening New York City’s gun laws, before turning to the slightly more difficult task of changing New York State’s laws, and finally the even-more-daunting mission of tightening gun laws nationwide.

A dozen or so of the nation’s mayors met at Gracie Mansion and formed “Mayors Against Illegal Guns”—backed by the mayor’s millions—to try to provide an alternative to the NRA. The group now boasts a membership of more than 700 mayors around the country, and has organizers working in Washington, D.C., and around the country (most often part-timers affiliated with an elected official who is part of the coalition.)

It has been slow going. Soon after the group formed, Mayor Bloomberg went down to Washington to try to persuade then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, a budget rider that makes it harder for law enforcement to trace illegal guns. Ms. Pelosi rebuffed him, saying that the politics of guns were terrible for Democrats.

As a result, progress has been glacial ever since, with Congress declining to renew the assault weapons ban or to close gun show loopholes that allow non-dealers to sell guns without running background checks. The biggest anti-gun victory has been the defeat of a bill that would force states that forbid concealed-carry permits to honor those permits across state lines.

“There has been a political calculation that it is better to run for cover,” Mr. Feinblatt said. “Mike Bloomberg makes a different political calculation.”

Time was, after a horrific mass shooting, the nation would engage in a few moments of collective grief. After last year’s shooting in Tucson that injured Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, the mayor addressed a church in Brooklyn, and over the next few days held a City Hall press conference with other members of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition, calling for tougher background checks. A few weeks later, he joined Martin Luther King III and victims of gun violence in the City Hall rotunda to repeat the call.

Mostly, though, the messaging was done by the crew often called on after such tragedies: survivors, family members and pols like Carolyn McCarthy, the Long Island congresswoman who ran for office after her husband was gunned down on the Long Island Railroad, and who has self-deprecatingly called herself “The Gun Lady” for the media’s propensity to drag her in front of the cameras every time there is a tragedy.

The mayor’s aides say that the his message has been consistent since he first started talking about guns, and it is only the media’s focus that has shifted.

“He talks about this stuff all the time,” said spokesman Marc LaVorgna. “The microscope is on the issue in a much bigger way during these instances. Look back at his remarks every single time there is a police officer shot, and every single time, he bangs Congress, he bangs the NRA, every time. These are being written at 3 am as we are sitting there in the hospital figuring out what we are going to say.”

Still, it is hard not to notice that there is a new urgency behind the mayor’s words, that he seems to be trying to make the fight against guns more visible.

“The fact is there is no one with any national stature talking about this,” said William Cunningham, who served as the mayor’s communications director during his first term. “Carolyn McCarthy has spent years talking about this, and no one pays attention. When Bloomberg talks, he has a big megaphone.”

Ms. McCarthy agrees.

“I work on gun violence constantly, but let’s face it, as this dies down, try to get on a TV show and talk about it, try to get on a radio show and talk about it. They are not interested anymore. He has the power to bring up the issue at any time,” she said. “He is speaking almost like a victim. He is speaking like a victim because he is the one that has to go the funerals and speak to the families.”

But the fact that he is not a victim changes the nature of the debate. When Ms. McCarthy—or anyone else who has been affected by gun violence more personally—goes to speak about the issue, the conversation can’t help but be shrouded in grief and tragedy. When the mayor speaks, it can’t help but be pointed and political, especially once he calls out politicians with specific criticism.

“I think one of our problems is that after a horrific shooting, everyone is very respectful and [thinks] there should be a moment of silence, but then that moment of silence should end,” said Jackie Hilly, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. “Having a mayor stand up and say, ‘This is crazy!’ is, I think, good.”

It remains to be seen, however, how much this more-aggressive approach will move the needle. Experts in the politics of guns say that what really needs to occur is for a politician to stand up aggressively against the NRA and live to tell about it at election time.

“Memories of lost elections loom large,” said Kristen Goss, a professor of public policy at Duke and the author of Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America. “There is still a perception that Al Gore lost Tennessee in 2000 because of gun control. It’s gotten to the point where there are going to have to be some elections where people took risks in favor of gun control and survived.”

And if a spate of mass shootings hasn’t changed many minds about gun laws, it remains to be seen how much can be done by Mr. Bloomberg, who, despite his official status as an independent moderate, is still widely perceived as the billionaire from the big city.

“I live among a bunch of farmers, and he is perceived as a big enemy of the gun culture, a powerful person with his own agenda who is not to be trusted,” said Brian Anse Patrick, a professor at the University of Toledo and the author of The National Rifle Association and The Media. “Just the way the news works: when Mike Bloomberg appears you already know what he is going to say.”

Kirsten Sheffield, a Logan, Utah, a woman who survived the Columbine shooting as a teenager, finds the mayor’s media presence distasteful.

“I tend to disagree with him on a lot of politics, so I don’t pay that much attention to him. I don’t feel like he needs to get involved. For him to think he is the expert and knows the solution makes me think he is politicizing the violence.”

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A few hours later, Howard Wolfson, Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s deputy mayor for communications and an old pal of Mr. de Blasio’s from their days on the Hillary Clinton Senate campaign, sent out a blistering response.

“When Bill de Blasio last served in the city’s executive branch there were 2,000 murders a year,” he said, referring to the public advocate’s tenure under former Mayor David Dinkins, a mayoralty that has lived on in the memory of Bloomberg’s supporters as a warning about the dangers of an unchecked bleeding heart lefty presiding over City Hall. “Today we are on track to have less than 500—a record new low. Mr. de Blasio may be nostalgic for the days when the ACLU set crime policy in this city, but most New Yorkers don’t want rampant crime to return ... Make no mistake, we will not continue to be the safest big city in America if Mr. de Blasio has his way.”

The next day, Mr. de Blasio arranged another news conference to denounce Mr. Wolfson’s denunciation of him.

And so it has gone: With the 2013 mayoral election still over a year away, stop-and-frisk has emerged as one of the most important and fraught issue in the early days of the campaign.

Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer has been out front on the topic for nearly a year, visiting 19 churches and delivering a major address on the issue alongside Newark Mayor Cory Booker. (Privately, supporters of his scoff that Mr. de Blasio only jumped in once Mr. Stringer made it an issue.)

“Scott was out there early and pushing the issue; I’m happy about that,” said City Councilman Jumaane Williams of Brooklyn, who is neutral in the 2013 mayor’s race and whose own arrest at last summer’s West Indian Day Parade by police unaware of who he was served to spark a call for reforms.

But it is not just the two of them. A week after Mr. de Blasio’s series of pressers, Council Speaker Christine Quinn—whose status as the early frontrunner has been solidified by her implicit vow to carry on the legacy of Mr. Bloomberg and by her current ability to wring concessions out of the other side of City Hall—coaxed out of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly a series of reforms that included greater training for officers. Then, John Liu, the city comptroller whose fundraising scandal threatens to derail his own mayoral ambitions, called for the practice to be outright abolished.

“This is not what a democratic society is about,” he told The Observer. “It smacks of martial law.”

Organizers are planning a massive protest on Father’s Day, hoping thousands of New Yorkers will turn out for a silent march up Fifth Avenue. George Gresham, the president of the powerful labor union 1199/SEIU, recently announced they couldn’t “ever support anyone who wants to be in the leadership of New York City if they are not speaking out against this policy of stop-and-frisk.”

For Mr. Wolfson, it is this desire that is motivating the denunciations of the administration’s police practices.

“You have a group of candidates running for office who know that they need to appeal to 40 percent plus one in a Democratic primary electorate—which is a very small percentage of people in this city—and they have positioned themselves accordingly, aided and abetted by the ACLU and The New York Times editorial board,” he said. “Anyone who is now running for mayor will have to pass the New York Times test on stop-and-frisk.”

He decried the fact that a “very small minority of people will decide who the next mayor is,” and suggested that a “credible Republican candidate” would be necessary to keep the contenders from promising to return the city to the scarred 1970s. (Remember, this is a man who used to advise Hillary Clinton.)

To Mr. de Blasio, such a response is “unbelievably off topic.”

“It was not mature, not serious,” he said. “It was name-calling, and by the way, strangely old-school. It was like something you would have heard in the 1980s national political discourse. To accuse someone of being so close to the ACLU? That is strangely out of time.”

Mr. Stringer concurred. “I resent that so much,” he said. “I grew up in this city all my life. I was here in the 1970s. I was here during Son of Sam. The A Train was a rolling crime scene. Nobody wants to go back to that, including me. But there are ways to be both tough on crime and smart on crime.”

There is little doubt that the NYPD has been stopping more and more New Yorkers on the street—ostensibly in the search for illegal handguns—questioning them and in many cases searching their cars or their pockets, and that the increased number of searches has not led to a corresponding increase in arrests. Last year, police collected 780 guns after stopping over 685,000 people. In 2003—back when the city’s crime rate was dropping, rather than stabilizing—police recovered 604 guns while only stopping 160,851 people. Mr. Bloomberg defended stop-and-frisk, as if his legacy depended upon it. He counts over 5,000 fewer murders in the city due to the practice (a number arrived at comparing the murder rate over the last ten years with the ten before, a period that includes the crime-ridden early 19990's.) When an editorial in The New York Times called on the administration to be more like Philadelphia and curb the practice, Mayor Bloomberg shot back, “I just have to wonder what kind of world they are living in.”

The phrase stop and frisk has come to stand as a catchall for overzealous policing, but none of the candidates, including Mr. Liu, actually believe that the NYPD doesn’t have the right and the duty to stop someone they suspect of being a criminal. The current number, they concede, is too high, but they are unanimously reluctant to name a more appropriate figure. They call for a series of reforms that nibble around the margins instead, including greater oversight of the practice and more community policing. The City Council has proposed that police officers leave a business card with their name and rank with all suspects who are stopped but found to have nothing on them.

Politically, it is unclear how the issue will play out when voters go to the polls next summer. A recent Daily News poll found support divided, with half of the respondents finding the practice legitimate police work that keeps the city safe, and the other half calling it “racially insensitive.” Most of the opposition to the practice is centered around the poor, minority neighborhoods where the practice is most widespread, votes that seem most likely to go to Bill Thompson, the city’s former comptroller and the only African-American candidate in the race. (Mr. Thompson has been much more muted on the subject than his competitors, telling The Observer in an interview only that he thought the issue would play out in the mayor’s race as part of a broader discussion of policing issues.) All of the candidates expect that to change, as the practice grows more and more widespread, even if the notion of being pulled over by the police remains an abstract prospect for most white New Yorkers.

If there is significant oppo-sition among white voters to stop-and-frisk, it would mark a sea change in the way New Yorkers think about public safety. Since the days of Mr. Dinkins, and before, being called soft-on-crime meant a trip to political purgatory. And there hasn’t been anything like the Abner Louima incident or the Amado Diallo shooting that has galvanized popular opposition to the police.

“It is amazing. Stop and frisk has become police misconduct times 10,” said Mark Green, the former public advocate who made former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s oversight of the NYPD a central issue in his 2001 mayoral campaign.

“You have to be pretty smart to figure out exactly the political gains or costs. Are there some minority voters who are infuriated that this is happening to their neighborhood kids, and some white liberals who feel their ideology is being violated for no good purpose? Yes, yes. But whether that number is 2,500 people or 25,000 people, no one will know. And that number remains the difference between going to City Hall and going to political Palookaville—where I am,” he added.”

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Right-wing editorial boards and bloggers swooped in to defend Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin from Chuck Schumer.

Mike Bloomberg on Stop-and-Frisk: “We don’t racial profile.”

Elizabeth Crowley’s campaign, profiled.

She appears to be getting her marching orders from the PBA.

Do more isolated state capitols lead to more corruption?

Christine Quinn will be attending an anti-stop-and-frisk march next month.

Lincoln Restler will need to improve on his 2010 performance to have a shot at reelection

Dan O’Connor announced a web ad.

Kevin Parker isn’t enamored with the New York State Democratic Party.

Grace Meng picked up a local union.

A campaign finance group is targeting eight state senators.

Tom Allon defended stop-and-frisks.

“Who is Dr. Robert Mittman?”

New legislation could make it harder to add historic districts in Queens.

Mitt Romney and his wife gave their own campaign $150,000.

The Eagle Forum doesn’t think its a good thing that minority births are out-stripping white births, since “they do not share our values.”

A  look at what Mitt Romney’s Day One plan would really do.

Kathleen Sibelius spoke on the separation of the church and state.

Did Mitt Romney kill Americans Elect?

It’s hard to find a Democrat in North Carolina who thinks that Obama will win there.

Joe Biden doesn’t blame people in West Virginia for voting for a convicted felon over Barack Obama.

And Biden on same-sex marriage: “We didn’t make it an issue”

If Ms. Quinn seemed a bit anxious, perhaps it was the City Council was today voting to override a veto by her erstwhile ally, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on legislation that would require the tenants in city-owned buildings to pay service workers a prevailing wage, and voting on another bill that would set up examine how financial institutions where the city does its banking serve local communities.

Asked by a reporter about comments by the mayor which suggested that the City Council was telling private enterprise what to pay employees, Ms, Quinn, said that her bill was merely engaging in the free enterprise system in the same way that Mayor Bloomberg's economic development strategy was.

"The mayor has also said this is kind of mixing in the marketplace, but if you think about it the entire economic development package of the City of New York, hundreds of millions of dollars, is mixing in the marketplace to try to cause positive things to happen for the public interest," she said. "This is just building on that same theory. Beyond that, in 2002, Mayor Bloomberg signed into law the most far-reaching wage requirement laws I think the city has ever seen.  A bill that covered many more workers than this law."

Asked then about administration claims that the city's Department of Finance simply lacks the resources to regulate the banking industry in the way that the Council bill requires, Ms. Quinn said she disagreed with them.

"I just disagree with that. I believe that out Department of Finance is well staffed and has smart people in it and I certainly think we all hope and expect that our city Department of Finance has banking experts in it. But lets say then they didn’t, that they needed to bring in another person or two to help analyze this data," she said, adding, "If we needed to hire a few people to do bank data oversight analysis, this is not hard to find in the market nowadays."

Ms. Quinn was then asked if there was something deeper going on here--if it wasn't so much that she and the mayor find themselves on the opposite sides of a couple of bills that happen to come on the floor at the same time, but if there is a philosophical division over say, what to do about growing inequality or the role of government in the marketplace.

The speaker said there was not.

"I think there is a disagreement on three pieces of legislation. Two of which deal with the wage issues and I think very clearly the vast majority of us in the City Council decided that when businesses decide on their own free will to take city subsidies or to take a high level of city tenants, that it is appropriate for us to put fair additional wage requirements on them because they are getting a lot of money from the taxpayer," she said.

Ms. Quinn then tried to find areas of common ground with the mayor.

"The city of New York has an enormous economic development program. If you think the city shouldn’t involve itself at all in the market place then why do we have this multi, multi million dollar program? Of course we involve ourselves in the market space, to a responsible degree, to try to cause positive things to happen for the public and this is just a continuation of  that philosophy and the same philosophy of the legislation that the mayor signed into law into 2002 or 2003 and we disagree on these wage pieces of legislation."

But perhaps if the speaker was off today, it wasn't so much due to her disagreements with the administration as her upcoming nuptials. She hadn't written her vows yet, she told reporters.

"You are all a pain in the neck. You are going to get me in a lot of trouble," she said, adding that she had stressed out about them a great deal.

And then asked if she was nervous about the big day, Ms. Quinn said simply, "extremely."

All can't be bad between her and the mayor, however. He is donating to a fund on her registry dedicated to finding a cure for breast cancer.

Andrew Cuomo downplayed the federal government’s rejection of a loan to rebuild the Tappan Zee bridge.

Cuomo was asked if he would like to comment on today’s Daily News poll that shows him trailing,  badly, to Hillary Clinton in a 2016 New York primary: “Nope,” was his answer.

Alec Baldwin on Christine Quinn: This is a woman who stormed out of an event yesterday after lecturing a group of students who were jeering Bloomberg on the merits of democracy. Yet she single handedly worked with Bloomberg to overturn the term limits for her own personal gain. Everyone in this town knows what Bloomberg said. He said, "If you do this for me I’m going to give you my rolodex. I’m going to raise a shit bag of money for you."

Log Cabin Republicans are raising for Dean Skelos and the GOP.

Are Bloomberg’s cuts to children’s services contributing to “a national crisis?”

Joe Bruno was indicted for a second time.

Charlie Rangel is using a walker.

Cuomo said that he is not exceptionally optimistic over a raise in the minimum wage this year.

Bill Clinton said that Hillary “never said a word” to him about last year raid on Osama bin Laden.

Poet Bob Perelman on a young Barack Obama’s critique of “The Wasteland”: He’s quite a smart guy, and that’s the impression I really get. It’s not bullshit...But basically it just makes him to me about four times smarter than most politicians."

The GOP rolled  out a new anti-Obama theme: “hype and blame.”

Mitt Romney as George Constanza.

Newt Gingrich apologized to South Carolina for winning the state primary but not winning the nomination.

"We’re able to make all of those commitments as a result of years of fiscal care, foresight and a constructive partnership with the City Council, as we began setting aside savings and reducing spending well before most other city and state governments heeded the economic storm warnings," said Mayor Bloomberg. "But they’re also the result of our efforts to diversify the City’s economy. In the not-so-distant past, a drop like the one we saw this year in Wall Street profits would have been a debilitating blow, but the hard work we’ve done to diversify our economy has done a lot to offset its effects. Our efforts in the tech, TV and film, tourism and higher education sectors are producing results, with private employment now at its highest level ever in the city, exceeding the record set back in 1969, and we expect this growth in private sector jobs to continue.”

And even before Mr. Bloomberg had laid out his budget to reporters today, those you want his job starting in 2014 went on the decry it for harsh cuts to social services.

Every budget is about choices, and behind every line item are real New Yorkers with real needs. The proposed cuts in daycare and after-school programs just underscore how out of touch this budget proposal is with the daily struggles of middle class and working families. These are dollars that allow parents to go to work and pay taxes; cutting them will only force more families to seek public assistance and add to taxpayer costs.

"We should stop this phony budget dance and stop treating working families as pawns in this annual charade," said Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer. "We should continue to root out waste, fraud and abuse on outsourced contracts, and we must stop balancing the ledger on the backs of New York City's working families."

John Liu, who had his own private briefing with Mayor Bloomberg this morning, called attention to the agreements with outside contractors and suggested Mayor Bloomberg seek to cut waste from the government.

"In this challenging economic environment one of the best ways to maintain critical services for New Yorkers like daycare, fire protection, and libraries is to strengthen our fight against the waste of taxpayer funds and wasted subsidies to large corporations.”

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio says that the budget will  backfire in the longrun.

"New York will pay the price for shortsighted budget decisions long after the Mayor leaves office," he said. "The disinvestment in childcare and after-school programs proposed by Mayor Bloomberg will hurt thousands of working families. For 47,000 vulnerable children, these cuts mean lost opportunities and a longer, harder road to the middle class. We know these programs work, and we know the social and economic costs of cutting them. Every dollar we invest in early education saves $13 in the long-run. The Mayor is handing down a hefty bill that will come due in future budgets and future generations. After four years of deep cuts, we simply cannot allow any further eroding of our City’s early childhood education system.”

And Council Speaker Christine Quinn too says she has concerns about the budget, but she mixes in high praise for the mayor's approach.

I am pleased to see that despite the halting economic recovery, the Executive Budget addresses several important Council priorities raised in our response to the Preliminary Budget. Specifically, we saved nearly 2,600 classroom teachers, and I am thrilled that the Department of Education has been funded at a level that avoids any further reduction in teachers. This response to our call keeps school budgets whole and prevents classroom sizes from rising further, which  is a critical priority that we are happy to see is shared by the Administration and reflected in the Executive Budget.

 

“However, I am deeply concerned about cuts to childcare programs. Two major programs, EarlyLearn and Out-of-School Time (OST), have suffered unacceptable cuts and are being implemented in ways that create tremendous disruptions for families, communities, and providers. The EarlyLearn program, as presently funded in this Executive Budget, reduces overall childcare capacity by 8,200 seats and cuts funding to areas of the City with significant high-needs populations. Many working families will no longer have access to low-cost, quality childcare.

 

The Executive Budget also leaves 20 fire companies on the chopping block, needlessly endangering our city’s public safety.

 

“Let me be clear – although I am grateful for the progress we’ve seen in the Mayor’s Executive Budget, I still have deep concerns about how the remaining cuts will impact the lives of working New Yorkers and their families.

 

“As we always have, the Council will work in the coming weeks to ensure the adoption of a budget for fiscal year 2013 that protects the most vulnerable, ensures public safety, and provides all of our citizens with the kind of City in which they can flourish.”

But Kathy Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, approves of the budget and wants Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew Cuomo to continue to push for mandate relief.

"Continued fiscal restraint by the City has allowed for expanded investment in our public school system, without raising taxes, but more can be done if mandate reform is made a top priority,” she said. “State and federal mandates continue to eat up resources that the City needs to maintain essential services. Reducing some of the City’s non-discretionary costs would make additional expansions of public services possible. Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg’s efforts to pursue mandate relief are vital to relieving some of the fiscal burden on the City and allow for further investment in vital City services like education.”

The budget reduces city controllable expenditures by $110 million while adding $300 million in education spending, money  that will only be realized in the City and the United Federation of Teachers agree on a teacher evaluation system that meets State and federal requirements.  The budget also increases the five year capital plan by $800 million.

Ms. Quinn--who, you will recall, walked out of a press conference this week when a participant insulted Mr. Bloomberg--declined to mention her erstwhile ally, simply saying, "I think Mitt Romney would be a bad president-- not just for women but in a lot of areas. And I think Governor Romney has demonstrated a very clear change in position, one that is extremely hostile to women’s reproductive health and women’s health care in general."

She went on to list the how the GOP's attacks on Planned Parenthood have undermined women's overall health, regardless of anyone's feelings about abortion.

Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer--who has frequently clashed with the mayor--took a more direct approach.

" For every time the mayor has lunch with Mitt Romney, he should take five council members to lunch," Mr. Stringer said.

City Councilmember Tish James--also a frequent Bloomberg critic--was standing next to him, and muttered under her breath something to effect of  "Skip me."

"Aww, you would go in a second," Mr. Stringer replied.

He went on to say, "I think the issue is that one of the great bully pulpits the mayor has is a tradition of being involved in the national debate. The truth is the mayor has been one of the great allies of reproductive rights and women’s rights," at which point Ms. Quinn chimed in, "Absolutely."

"So I would urge him to understand that he has a real impact on this issue," Mr. Stringer continued. "And when you sit in the same room with somebody who is totally opposite what you believe it hurts the overall national movement. With great respect I would say to him you do it once it is a courtesy but don’t go there again."

Pressed on whether or not he was urging the mayor to not endorse Mr. Romney, Mr. Stringer made a joke about his own strained relationship--in contrast with Ms. Quinn's--with the mayor

"When I get to have lunch with him in ten years I would urge him to do that."

In it, they reveal a dinner they shared last night, and  they sound intrigued by the possibility of longshot Democratic candidate Tom Allon running on their line, calling him "without question the most moderate, pro-business candidate in the Democratic field" but don't sound as keen on Ray Kelly, who the city's tabloids have been pumping to run for the office.

Recent news accounts have reported on efforts by some in the Republican Party, including former state GOP Chairman William Powers, to recruit Kelly. Meeting with the five chairmen will be a critical step for Kelly or any prospective candidate if he or she is serious about the possibility of running

Their heart however seems set on supermarket mogul on John Catsimatidis, who has told me that he is "in the bullpen" and will only run if the GOP fails to field another candidate.

Throughout this process the Chairmen have been encouraging billionaire John Catsimatidis, who was prepared to run in 2009 before Bloomberg extended term limits, to again step forward as the preferred candidate of the Party leadership. Catsimatidis has developed a strong relationship with the Chairs based not only on his consistent support for party building efforts and for local GOP candidates, but also for his friendship, advice and counsel to all the chairmen. Catsimatidis has indicated time and again that he believes having a vibrant two party system is integral to New York's future.

Although Mr. Catsimatidis has been supportive of Republicans, it is a relatively recent development, and he has supported Democrats in the past, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

In the statement, the chairs also list a bunch of names that they would consider supporting, including Diana Taylor, Dick Grasso, State Sen. Marty Golden, Eva Moskowitz and Adolfo Carrion.

"The chairmen hope to settle on their candidate before the fall, giving whoever the candidate is plenty of time to prepare a campaign against the eventual Democrat nominee, who is certain to be to the left of the average city voter," they write.

Finally, they note that after their success on the mayoral level, they are ready to make inroads into the office of comptroller,  "Another topic of discussion centered on whether there would be a special election for NYC Comptroller in the near future and the importance of restoring integrity and competence to that office. "

Their full statement is below:

Last night, the NYC Republican Party Chairmen met over dinner in a midtown restaurant to discuss upcoming races, including potential candidates for Mayor in 2013. The Chairmen, Craig Eaton of Brooklyn, Dan Isaacs of Manhattan, Phil Ragusa of Queens and Jay Savino of the Bronx, were joined at this meeting by publisher Tom Allon, one of many candidates already declared to run for Mayor. Allon is without question the most moderate, pro-business candidate in the Democratic field and is weighing changing to the Republican Party. Staten Island Chairman Robert Scamardella was unable to attend.The Chairmen have met on an almost monthly basis to discuss prospects for upcoming races and ensure that New York voters will have an opportunity to vote to continue the Giuliani-Bloomberg legacy of good government in City Hall. New Yorkers have recognized now for the better part of two decades that having a GOP endorsed Mayor is a necessary check and balance over the excesses of the special interest controlled City Council. Any candidate wanting to run on the Republican line for a Mayor or other citywide posts will ultimately need the support of the five chairmen, whose organizations will be critical when it comes to getting on the ballot and other grassroots functions of the campaign.

The Chairmen have met routinely with leading New York businessman and philanthropist John Catsimatidis and have also indicated an interest in talking with Ray Kelly, who, like Allon, is not currently a registered Republican. They discussed a wide variety of issues to make certain there is a synergy between their hopeful candidate and the Party base, and to make sure there will be a strong working relationship between the candidate and the Party leadership.

Recent news accounts have reported on efforts by some in the Republican Party, including former state GOP Chairman William Powers, to recruit Kelly. Meeting with the five chairmen will be a critical step for Kelly or any prospective candidate if he or she is serious about the possibility of running. Likewise, the Chairman have discussed the pros and cons of others who's names have been bandied about in the press as potential candidates from time to time including Diana Taylor, Dick Grasso, State Sen. Marty Golden, Eva Moskowitz and Adolfo Carrion.Throughout this process the Chairmen have been encouraging billionaire John Catsimatidis, who was prepared to run in 2009 before Bloomberg extended term limits, to again step forward as the preferred candidate of the Party leadership. Catsimatidis has developed a strong relationship with the Chairs based not only on his consistent support for party building efforts and for local GOP candidates, but also for his friendship, advice and counsel to all the chairmen.Catsimatidis has indicated time and again that he believes having a vibrant two party system is integral to New York's future.The chairmen hope to settle on their candidate before the fall, giving whoever the candidate is plenty of time to prepare a campaign against the eventual Democrat nominee, who is certain to be to the left of the average city voter. Another topic of discussion centered on whether there would be a special election for NYC Comptroller in the near future and the importance of restoring integrity and competence to that office.

Bill Thompson "flip-flopped" and now supports the Living Wage bill that passed the City Council this week.

The State Assembly passed a New York version of the DREAM ACT with a a privately financed scholarship fund to help the children of immigrants pay college tuitions.

State Senate Republicans voted to steer $10 million in leftover education money to GOP districts. 

The Daily News gives a "hearty huzzah" to Christine Quinn for walking out of the living wage press conference.

Ed Towns' wife may miss his life in politics--she currently drives around in a new Infinity paid for by his campaign fund.

John Liu's campaign treasurer plead not guilty to charges that she helped funnel illegal campaign contribution to Liu's comptroller campaign.

She may want a separate fraud trial from Oliver Pan, who is also accused in the scheme.

Dominic Recchia, Erik Dilan and Lew Fidler were the City Council's biggest purveyors of pork. 

Indicted Bronx councilman Larry Seabrook got nothing, however. 

The head of New York Anti-Defamation League didn't approve of Ruben Diaz comparing abortion laws to Hitler.

City lawmakers want to regulate the car wash industry the same way that the tow trucks, garages, and other industries are regulated.

The hospital executive who bribed Carl Kruger got four months in jail. 

Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman announced that New York will become the first state to require pro bono work for lawyers to be admitted to the bar.

About 1,000 people participated in May Day protests in New York yesterday, culminating in the arrest of 30 or so.

The Department of Consumer Affairs found that one in three funeral homes are violating consumer rights.

Colin Meyer, the editor of the Daily News became a prime target of a British parliamentary panel’s report on the phone-hacking scandal.

Antoine Thompson appears to be contemplating a comeback. 

After a relatively easy trip through the primaries, Mitt Romney is now facing the task of running against an incumbent president who can largely set the agenda. 

Obama vowed to finish the job in Afghanistan. 

Chris Christie said that Mitt Romney would need to convince him to be his running mate. 

The American people want the war in Afghanistan over already. 

That campaign, like most Democratic primaries in New York City and State, had been staked on getting the paper’s backing, and a few days after he got it, Mr. Schneiderman eked out a 2-point victory over Nassau County district attorney Kathleen Rice, even though Ms. Rice was tacitly backed by Andrew Cuomo and much of the Democratic Party establishment.

“Eric Schneiderman became the attorney general because of that endorsement. Period,” said one political operative involved in the campaign.

The Times’ coverage of local politics has shrunk in recent years with the closing of the Metro section, but the paper’s ability to make or break candidates has grown. In conversations with nearly two dozen political operatives, office holders and candidates, the consensus was that The Times remains the biggest single factor in deciding who gets elected in this town. The paper’s imprimatur carries more weight than even the biggest unions. Pollsters estimate that a Times endorsement can boost a candidate anywhere between 5 and 20 points. Politicos say that it is worth the equivalent of out-raising your opponent by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“In Manhattan, I have colleagues who obsess over it,” said one City Councilman. “There are people here who, everything they do in public life, they gauge how The New York Times will react.”

There are, to be sure, local races in African-American or immigrant neighborhoods where getting The Times’ nod doesn’t much matter. But because of its sway in the whiter and more affluent parts of the city, which have the highest concentration of voters, the paper’s backing ends up being the primary factor in who gets elected to citywide and most boroughwide offices. And because Democratic primaries in New York State are so dominated by those voters—plus those in the affluent suburbs where the signature blue plastic bag is the must-have driveway accessory, the endorsement is the biggest prize for statewide races, too. (The other dailies, it should be said, have their audiences too, but The Times is still seen as an unbiased arbiter, and one whose editorial page most matches the sensibility of its readership.)

But even among those whose job it is to get politicians elected, very little is known about what it actually takes to get the paper’s backing. The point person for such an endorsement is editorial board member Eleanor Randolph. A lifelong newspaper woman who grew up in northwest Florida, Ms. Randolph studied history at Emory University, then quickly worked her way up the newspaper hierarchy with jobs at the Pensacola News, The St. Petersburg Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. There, she did a stint in Russia just after the fall of communism—her husband was the Moscow bureau chief for the London Independent—which led to Waking the Tempests, a book about “ordinary life in New Russia.” The family eventually found its way back to New York, and Ms. Randolph joined the editorial board in 1998. In time her purview has come to focus more and more on city and state politics (she was the author of the “Fixing Albany” series of editorials several years back.)

Ms. Randolph declined to be interviewed for this story—“I haven’t given interviews on this, ever,” she said. “It’s a matter of policy”—and she suggested The Observer contact editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal. He, too, declined an interview.

The seas part when Ms. Randolph makes an appearance in Albany or in the corridors of City Hall, but she is, by most accounts, an unassuming presence in New York political circles.

“There were people on that board who could come in and bloviate, big personalities, but that is not her—she was low key and to the point and informed,” said a former member of the editorial board. “She was really smart, and lived the minutiae of New York politics.”

“A very smart, down-to-earth person who can smell bullshit 10 miles away,” is how one lobbyist described her.

A cottage industry has grown up among political consultancies in town about how best to sway Ms. Randolph and her colleagues to your client’s cause.

“You want to help candidates maximize their relationships with key decisionmakers at the paper,” said one so-called “Times-whisperer,” who, like others in the trade, requested anonymity so as not to damage his own relationships. “So if you are running for dog-catcher on the East Side, and over the course of the planning stages of the campaign you find out that the candidate has a relationship with the former dog catcher on the West Side who has happens to play Frisbee with Eleanor Randolph, you ask him to put in a good word for you when they are tossing the Frisbee around.”

Congressman Jerry Nadler is thought to be a prime recommender, as are U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, former public advocate Mark Green, State Senator Liz Krueger, and others who have never been on a ballot, such as Kevin Finnegan, the political director of 1199 SEIU, and Victor Kovner, a prominent First Amendment lawyer.

But campaigns know that they have to be careful not to overwhelm members of the board.

“Occasionally, some electeds [who endorsed your candidate] will insist on making calls for you that you don’t want,” said one operative. “They don’t know what the talking points are, don’t know who else has called. You want people who have relationships, and who are enthusiastic. Sometimes your supporters are just doing their duty, and they make a perfunctory call, and it’s not helpful.”

Carolyn Curiel, a journalism professor at Purdue University who oversaw the local endorsements before Ms. Randolph, recalled being lobbied “all the time.

“But there is a risk that the candidate takes. If the person is an individual I know and trust, they can shed light, but why would that person be calling unless there was a feeling on the campaign that there were doubts about the candidate? It can come across as heavy-handed.”

It is one of the oddities of The Times that although its coverage rarely extends to the far reaches of the outer boroughs, the paper still regularly makes endorsements in local races in those areas. Ms. Curiel said she kept a network of on-the-ground sources and read small newspapers to keep abreast of neighborhood issues.

Ultimately, though, candidacies hinge on the endorsement interview. There, aspiring pols are often questioned by Ms. Randolph, with typically only one or two other board members present for local races—mayoral and gubernatorial races will often draw a much bigger crowd, but are ultimately said to be the prerogative of publisher Arthur Sulzberger (the page, for example, endorsed Mike Bloomberg twice for mayor, even though he withdrew from the city’s public financing system, a favorite hobbyhorse of the board and one of the exceptionally rare candidates to be afforded both advantages.)

Until recently, campaign aides and consultants were allowed to come in on the meeting, but that practice ended a few years ago when board members tired of consultants kicking their clients under the table for a gaffe—and after word got out that some consultants were bragging about their familiarity with the board.

Now, candidates go in alone for 45 minutes or so, and presentation counts for a lot.

“Superficial considerations count almost as much as any other kind of consideration—any one who denies that isn’t telling the truth,” said Michael Oliva, who is known as something of an expert at getting judicial candidates The Times’ nod. “People think of The New York Times as the old gray lady and a citadel of education and learning, but they are still human beings, and the humanity does factor in. You have to consider if the candidate is a Times kind of candidate—somebody who comes off as educated, well-spoken, physically put together, has a sense of humor.”

He has some other advice too: be a policy wonk, but don’t just regurgitate the paper’s own editorials back to them. Explain how you’re a good fit for the district. They will ask you about your opponent, he said, “But don’t let them draw you into that conversation.”

There are playbooks for this too. Consultants will drill their clients for weeks on how to handle the interview. Politicos say that Mr. Stringer is widely regarded as an expert on acing a Times interview after he scored their endorsement, now framed on his office wall, in his 2005 run for Manhattan borough president.

Invariably, the board will ask not just about your record and your ideas, but your campaign. Thus campaigns devote so much energy to rolling out policy papers, though few media outlets or voters bother to read them. Currying favor with the county machines is seen as a negative, and challenging your opponents’ signatures will almost certainly lose you the nod. Be in favor of good government and the environment, but anti-development absolutists should run for community board president. Ideas for closing the income gap are encouraged, but so is responsible budgeting. Going wobbly on abortion rights or gay rights is a disqualifier.

“You get the sense that for the single mother who makes $29,000 a year, they care a lot more about her right to an abortion than her right to a decent health care from her union,” said one political operative.

Back in the day, campaign staffers used to camp out at a newsstand across from the Times Building, or at another on Christopher Street where the first editions were plopped down at midnight. Today, the news comes via Google News alert on campaign blackberries, leading to virtual midnight celebrations.

But even still, the endorsement remains a vestige of an earlier era.

“When I was going to elementary school I was taught that if you don’t know who is running, you bring The New York Times into the voting booth with you and you vote that way,” said George Arzt, a local consultant also thought to carry great sway with the board. “There are a lot less publications than there were then, but they are still dominant.”

dfreedlander@observer.com