A Challenger, The Contender, A Fight To The Finish . . .

and one “glorious flute”:

The challengers aiming to unseat the Assembly speaker in next month’s Democratic primary are going up against the good name Sheldon Silver’s earned in Chinatown — literally.

When Chinese-language newspapers write about Mr. Silver, they use Chinese characters that approximate the sound of his name as “siu-hwa.” In Chinese, siu-hwa can be interpreted as “glorious flute.”

For the first time in 22 years, Mr. Silver is running opposed in a primary for his district, which encompasses much of Lower Manhattan. Although leaders of large community organizations in Chinatown are pronouncing his victory a foregone conclusion, the neighborhood is becoming a political battlefield in the race.

Mr. Silver’s two opponents, Luke Henry and Paul Newell, are courting residents dissatisfied with his economic policies. Meanwhile, the speaker is reaching out to community members in unprecedented ways.

Office-Related Expenses Expected To Balloon Under Possible Weiner Administration

Apparently Rep. Weiner can be kind of a dick:

It started as a routine conference call. But at some point during the call, Representative Anthony D. Weiner became furious, convinced that his scheduler had not given him a crucial piece of information.

His scheduler, John J. Graff, who was in the next room, suddenly heard the congressman yelling at him through the wall.

Then, Mr. Graff recalled, Mr. Weiner started pounding his fists on his desk, kicked a chair and unleashed a string of expletives.

Two weeks later, Mr. Graff, a Navy veteran, became the latest of a sizable number of staff members who have resigned after an abbreviated stint with Mr. Weiner, a Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn and Queens.

“I push people pretty hard,” said Mr. Weiner, who acknowledged getting upset at Mr. Graff. “And there are, from time to time, staffers who don’t take to it or just don’t like being pushed that hard. But I really regretted him leaving. He was a marine. I’m like, ‘How bad is this?’ It’s even worse than boot camp.”

It is rarely easy working for any member of Congress, with the low pay, long hours and endless politics. But Mr. Weiner, who is running for New York City mayor next year, is without question one of the most intense and demanding, according to interviews with more than two dozen former employees, Congressional colleagues and lobbyists.

Mr. Weiner, a technology fiend who requires little sleep and rarely takes a day off, routinely instant messages his employees on weekends, often just one-word missives: “Teeth” (as in, your answer reminds me of pulling teeth) or “weeds” (as in, you are too much in the weeds). Never shy about belting out R-rated language, he enjoys challenging staff members on issues, even at parties.

And, in a city saturated with transient career hoppers, Mr. Weiner has presided over more turnover than any other member of the New York House delegation in the last six years, according to an analysis of Congressional data. Roughly half of Mr. Weiner’s current staff has been on board for less than a year. Since early 2007, he has had three chiefs of staff.

Mr. Weiner’s actions as a boss of 20 or so employees, representing almost 700,000 people, offer clues about how he might handle perhaps 300,000 city workers, with eight million constituents.

. . .

The congressman says that his ferocity is simply reflective of his New York roots, and that he speaks at a high decibel level most of the time, so it may sound to others as if he is shouting. His district staff — perhaps more accustomed to an aggressive style — tends to be more steady than his Washington office.

“When you grow up in Brooklyn, you know, sometimes arguing is the sport,” he said.

Still, he admitted that he could occasionally be rough on office furniture, and said: “Very often people say things to me on the phone that frustrate me. I sometimes hang up phones with an excess amount of enthusiasm after a call hasn’t gone my way.”

Some former employees suggest that if he were elected to City Hall, the congressman might face a difficult transition to a job requiring executive aplomb and delegation. Do not be surprised, these former employees say, if a Weiner administration experiences a high degree of turnover.

Finally, A Seasoned Politician Emerges

Mayor Bloomberg figures out the art of promising big, untenable proposals and quietly dumping them when it’s obvious that they are unaffordable:

Mayor Bloomberg dropped a financial bombshell yesterday by saying he’s “not sure” the city can still afford the 7 percent property-tax cut that he had included just six weeks ago in his 2009 executive budget.

The mayor’s startling assessment came as he and the City Council were within days of wrapping up negotiations on the new $60 billion budget for fiscal 2009, which starts July 1.

Officials said a repeal of the tax cut — which would sap $1.2 billion from property owners — had never come up in those talks.

“This is the first I’m hearing of that,” said surprised Councilman David Weprin (D-Queens), chairman of the Finance Committee.

Sounding gloomier than ever, Bloomberg warned that Wall Street profits are falling off the cliff with $20 billion in losses recorded in the first three months of this year.

And he must be enjoying watching the City Council twist in the wind about it:

Judging from the initial reaction of legislators, the mayor faces an uphill fight.

“It’s a nonstarter,” said Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Queens).

“The Wall Street numbers are definitely problematic,” said Weprin. “At this point, I don’t think there’s any need to panic. We can always do a mod [budget modification] later.”

Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) said retaining the property-tax cut remains a “priority” for the council, as does restoration of budget cuts that impact classrooms.

Gioia, Weprin and Quinn: all term limited.

Annotation: For Queens in ’09, Candidates in Spades (City Hall News, June 11, 2007)

With Term Limits Comes . . .

. . . a bad case of senioritis:

They grumble behind closed doors, sick of stewing inside, dreaming of freedom. They want to stop working, throw parties, cause trouble. And waiting for the days to end is killing them.

They are the 35 term-limited members of the City Council, and they’re as restive as high school seniors.

For now, they shuffle in and out of City Hall budget meetings, trying to play nice as they divvy up the city’s money. But when July 1 rolls around and the new budget takes effect, they can stop kissing up to the people who control the purse strings — and start raising money and raising hell to promote their own careers.

“It’ll get worse,” said one of the 35, who himself is trying to figure out his future. “With each day, with each event, with each budget, there’s less and less leverage that the leadership of the Council can use to hold it together.”

To hear some of them tell it, the Council is already falling apart. Ambitious pols who know what they want to run for in November 2009 need to get noticed now — which may be why some of them have been using dry budget hearings to attack the Bloomberg administration.

“I’ve never seen grandstanding like I’ve seen in the last few weeks,” said Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., who is mulling a run for Queens Borough President. “The Council will resemble a herd of cats after July.”

No New Tammany Hall

The new political machine, begat by term limits, relies on nepotism:

For New Yorkers who voted to impose term limits on the City Council, the promise was to sweep clean a moldering institution and fill it with “citizen legislators” who would bring energy and fresh ideas from the private sector, where they would return after their eight-year allotments.

But as the first class of councilors elected under the term limits law in 2001 prepares to leave office next year, the very opposite is becoming reality: With lawmakers seeking new elective offices and career politicians looking to join, or rejoin, the body, the Council may well become a political revolving door.

Already, 20 of the 35 Council members who are being forced from office have filed with the city’s Campaign Finance Board to run for another position. And at least a dozen of those planning to compete for open Council seats have budding or established political careers, including state officials, relatives of Council members and even a few former councilors who collectively have decades of service under their belts.

. . .

Paul Vallone, whose father, Peter F. Vallone, represented a district in Astoria, Queens, for 27 years until his brother Peter F. Vallone Jr. took it over in 2002, is running to represent the Bayside area. Paul Washington, a former chief of staff for Councilman Charles Barron, is running for the councilor’s East New York, Brooklyn, slot, while Evan Thies, a former spokesman for Councilman David Yassky, is competing to represent Mr. Yassky’s Brooklyn district, which stretches from Park Slope to Williamsburg.

And then there is Thomas V. Ognibene, who represented Middle Village, Queens, for 10 years before leaving office in 2001 because of term limits. He recently lost a bid to replace Dennis P. Gallagher, his former chief of staff, who resigned from the Council this year after admitting to a sexual assault.

“The person who runs for the office is a relative, a chief of staff, a protégé of the person that was in there in the first place,” Mr. Ognibene said. “Insurgency is virtually impossible. You cannot generate the money or the support,” he said, adding, “So you don’t get the people in there that had been contemplated, the people with the fresh start, the new view.”