I Feel Like There Are Leeches On My Business

The Big DeBlaski:

Still, there were flashes of Mr. de Blasio’s controlling side, which tends to pop up during his more formal news conferences. Three of the mayor’s press handlers carefully watched over the conversation; when a reporter from The Wall Street Journal tried to ask a question out of turn, Mr. de Blasio quickly turned to him.

“Dude, that’s really inappropriate,” the mayor said, to uneasy laughter. “You’ll get your chance.”

Now You Can Have Your Lousy Fire Commissioner

Sometime in September they’ll hold a press conference surrounded a bunch of union members — SEIU, 32 BJ, any union, it doesn’t matter — and call it a resounding success:

Now the onus falls on City Hall to deliver in five months a program that has taken other cities years to develop, and on which the mayor has placed an increasingly large wager that his early missteps will be forgotten, so long as his centerpiece plan proves a success.

The Mandate

“More than twice as many voters, 34 percent, now disapprove of Mr. de Blasio’s job performance than did in mid-January, when 13 percent disapproved, according to the survey, by Quinnipiac University.”

After All, He’s Only Had Since September To Remember That There’s An Irish Constituency

That said, thank goodness we finally have someone in office brave enough to tackle this “abhorrent” co-location issue:

And when Mr. de Blasio’s team failed to send out invitations for the yearly St. Patrick’s Day breakfast at Gracie Mansion, a cherished tradition for the city’s Irish elite, widespread alarm set in, leaving Irish leaders anxious at the prospect that Mr. de Blasio might cancel the annual event.

City Hall officials, caught off-guard by the brewing frustration among Irish groups, are now scrambling to make amends. After repeated inquiries from Irish leaders and, eventually, a reporter from The New York Times, the mayor’s office announced that it would hold the breakfast, on Monday, albeit with fewer attendees than in recent years. “I know he’s new, and you have to accept that,” said Niall O’Dowd, whose paper, the Irish Voice, has run scathing editorials about Mr. de Blasio. “But I can’t remember a mayor starting off on such a bad foot.”

Irish leaders say they do not believe Mr. de Blasio has deliberately set out to provoke them, and they are quick to applaud the mayor’s liberal stance on immigrants’ rights, which they say is directly in line with their own.

Many interviewed for this article said they believed the tension stems from staff errors and poor communication with community leaders, symptoms of a new administration still adjusting to the job.

“The missteps do not come from malice, but basically from total inexperience,” said Brian O’Dwyer [. . .]

The Permanent Campaign

“Mr. Restler’s portfolio is not immediately clear”:

Lincoln Restler, the former Brooklyn district leader who ran two high-profile races against his borough’s Democratic machine, has joined the de Blasio administration as a senior policy adviser, sources say.

Mr. Restler’s portfolio is not immediately clear [. . .]

“While her exact role is not immediately clear”:

Mayor Bill de Blasio has tapped a Queens district leader and organized labor insider to join his administration, sources say.

Rebecca Lynch, a district leader in eastern Queens and a registered lobbyist for the teamsters union, recently joined Mr. de Blasio’s community affairs unit. While her exact role is not immediately clear [. . .]