Not Just Annoying, “Extremely Annoying”

We finally learn something useful from the Podesta Wikileaks email trove:

The hacked emails from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta call Mayor Bill de Blasio a “terrorist” for declining to endorse his former boss and refer to him as a “bit insufferable.”

[. . .]

When Clinton’s campaign was having issues with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Podesta wrote in June 2015 to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin that Garcetti should be added “to the BdB file.”

“Adding to the list! What is the deal with mayors these days,” Abedin replied.

Neera Tanden, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, advised Podesta to ignore de Blasio’s Progressive Agenda Committee.

“Politically, we are not getting any pressure to join this from our end. I leave it to you guys to judge what that means for you. But I’m not sweating it,” Tanden said.

After de Blasio reported to Tanden, Podesta and Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook that he had praised Clinton during an appearance on “Morning Joe” and would “spend the next year and a half battling conservatives at every turn,” Tanden said she found the mayor to be annoying.

“I find him a bit insufferable. Sorry if I let my extreme annoyance show,” Tanden wrote to Podesta.

De Blasio joked Wednesday that he was “crushed” to hear about the emails.

“When you are nudging your friends to go farther sometimes people push back or find that unpleasant,” de Blasio said.

The mayor said he goes “back a long way” with Clinton and her inner circle.

Maybe Point The Finger At Cuomo For Blocking A Lane On The BQE To “Build” A New Kosciuszko Bridge?

It was a simple helicopter ride:

The grass of a baseball field in Prospect Park shuddered under the blades of a New York Police Department helicopter on Friday afternoon. Dust flew in the air. Soon, Mayor Bill de Blasio clambered aboard.

In a car, it might have taken 30 minutes or longer for him to make the roughly seven-mile drive from his old Brooklyn stamping grounds to an event in Queens.

By air, the trip — a fantasy of nearly every New Yorker ever caught in traffic on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway — was considerably shorter.

But the headache it caused Mr. de Blasio on Monday might not have been worth the trip, as a photograph and a video of the copter incongruously parked in the middle of a city park ricocheted around the internet, and reporters waited outside City Hall to ask him about it.

The attention to his flight presented a no-win situation for Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat who has been criticized for arriving late to events and now finds himself justifying his attempts to arrive on time.

All of which is to say, there must be a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of it:

Hizzoner, who continues to refuse to disclose what kept him so busy that he needed to take a taxpayer-funded whirlybird to Long Island City, was hanging out in business casual and strolling around his old Park Slope neighborhood on that Friday, Oct. 14, according to locals.

He had likely been at Bar Toto, the Italian eatery that often serves as his second office.

He’s there nearly every Friday — a day when his schedule usually gives him the afternoon off — making calls on his phone and catching up with his former neighbors that stop by, according to sources familiar with his schedule.

The restaurant is just three blocks from Prospect Park, and a six minute walk from where the helicopter took off during the evening rush-hour.

“He’s comfortable there,” said one source.

[A Brooklyn resident] said she saw the mayor around 3 p.m. in a white button down shirt with no jacket in the south end of the neighborhood walking in the direction of Bar Toto.

[. . .]

That 3 p.m. sighting helps fill in the gaps from the mayor’s radio appearance at 1:25 p.m. and his chopper ride around 6:30 p.m.

Workers at Bar Toto confirmed that he is a regular presence on Fridays but suddenly got amnesia when asked if he was there that particular Friday.

When You Somehow Find A Way To Make The Times Editorial Board Incredulous . . .

. . . and also invite inevitable current Donald Trump references . . .:

If Mayor Bill de Blasio has decided that he is going to answer questions only from “real media outlets,” and not The New York Post, why doesn’t he just go all the way? Revoke The Post’s credentials, and bar its reporters from City Hall and make an example of them. Let the other reporters learn not to offend His Honor. And if they don’t learn, he can stop taking all questions.

Then the mayor will be free to do his business in peace and quiet, his message unfiltered, his administration shown only in its best light, through news releases and photo ops.

That is the absurd logic of Mr. de Blasio’s eruption at a news conference on Thursday. He snapped at reporters’ questions as unfit to be answered. And he refused to respond to Yoav Gonen, City Hall bureau chief of The Post, which he belittled as a “right-wing rag.”

[. . .]

New York has a long tradition of outspoken mayors who have used and abused the media, who have belittled and ranted at reporters, while aides smirked and fawned. But the mayors have always talked. Mr. de Blasio says he is not playing that game, at least not with The Post. But it’s not just The Post — Mr. de Blasio got petulant when pressed by a reporter from Newsday for information about an inquiry into the Administration for Children’s Services and the death of a 6-year-old boy. “Come on — try and ask a real question,” he snapped. Then came this exchange with a Wall Street Journal reporter:

Q. I’m just curious — taking questions once a week, and you know, insulting newspapers, media outlets — how do you think it’s helping you? How is it helping you?

A. It doesn’t have to help. It doesn’t have to help. It’s the — well, I’m saying what I think is the truth. And by the way, I think the people share a lot of my view.

A lot of people do share his view. We call them Donald Trump supporters.

How Did We Blow A Golden Opportunity?

Elections certainly do have consequences:

After the meetings and before visits to several receptions, de Blasio spoke to a string of reporters in the lobby of the downtown Marriott, his 6 foot, 5 inch frame folded in a booth just feet away from a bar and fountain that burbled around a dull chrome sculpture.

“We as a party have moved to a more progressive place, we’ve certainly moved leftward,” he said. “We need to win the election and be organized to actually then implement those changes, so one of the things I’m focused on is connecting with my fellow progressives and urging them to be ready to hit the ground running after the November election.”

“That could come from a party structure, that could come from external progressive forces, that could come from a rich combination of the two,” he continued. “But what I fear from historical perspective is, if it doesn’t come from somewhere, we’re going to look back and say, ‘how did we blow a golden opportunity.'”

This is decidedly a side track at the convention, with both Cuomo and the Clintons keeping de Blasio away from the main stage. It was unclear late Tuesday whether the mayor would be afforded a time to speak at one of his own delegation’s daily breakfasts, or whether Cuomo and de Blasio would ever occupy the same spotlight at the same time.

Cuomo told reporters Tuesday that he was still angling for a speaking slot on the convention’s final day. De Blasio’s aides announced he would speak at 4:30 on Wednesday, a subdued spot that almost ensured a small audience, as his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, offers an endorsement in prime time.

Thus, No Congestion Pricing

It’s good to be the mayor:

On most mornings, Mayor Bill de Blasio departs Gracie Mansion, the mayoral residence of New York City, in a black sport utility vehicle, accompanied by a police escort.

The caravan then makes the drive down the East Side of Manhattan, a ride familiar to his predecessors, before embarking on a detour: past City Hall, across the East River to his final destination, a Y.M.C.A. on Ninth Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

There, for an hour — and sometimes more — Mr. de Blasio runs the nation’s largest city from a gym mat. Or a stationary bicycle. Or the weight room.

For the entirety of his 30 months as mayor, the Y.M.C.A. gym has served as the center of a kind of Camp David for Mr. de Blasio, an archipelago of neighborhood haunts in a roughly three-block radius that was part of his pre-mayoral life and where he now routinely returns.

There is the Colson Patisserie, the mayor’s favorite morning stop; the S & S Cleaners; the nearby Brooklyn Public Library branch where Mr. de Blasio votes; the Little Purity Diner; and Bar Toto, where he has held meetings and made fund-raising calls.

The uniqueness of the mayor’s routine has been noted since his early days in office, before he and his family moved to Gracie Mansion from their Park Slope home. But close observation by a reporter for The New York Times, who is a fellow member of the Y.M.C.A., reveals it to be more rigid, lengthy and leisurely than previously known.

During a recent week, Mr. de Blasio did not miss a single workout — hitting the gym each and every weekday, usually leaving the mansion around 8 a.m. or a bit later.

[. . .]

No one begrudges the mayor’s right to exercise, even though some may take issue with his choice of venue to do so. But his sojourn in Park Slope is hardly a solitary affair.

There is a security detail, as well as a rotating cast of staff members from his press office who stay either outside or across the street at the patisserie before accompanying him to City Hall or other events. One is assigned per day, said Eric F. Phillips, the mayor’s top spokesman, to help Mr. de Blasio “stay connected and efficient while he’s working out.”

[. . .]

Last Tuesday, for example, Mr. de Blasio traveled from the Upper East Side to Brooklyn, before reversing direction to head 15 miles north — straight past Gracie Mansion — to an event in the Bronx at 10:30 a.m.

The routine has also survived a raft of continuing investigations into the mayor’s fund-raising activities by state and federal prosecutors.

As recent observations showed, it is, in many respects, a routine that most busy people can only dream of.

In one week in late June, the mayor emerged on that Monday into the gym’s stretching area in a T-shirt, running shoes and khaki cargo shorts with pockets.

After 15 minutes of stretching and BlackBerry multitasking, he moved to the weight room. By 9:24 a.m., he was wearing headphones on a stationary bicycle, pedaling at a gentle pace while watching CNN. In the first-floor lobby, a communications adviser, Wiley Norvell, sat waiting for the mayor.

At 10:23 a.m., Mr. de Blasio exited the gym wearing a suit and got into a waiting car. Mr. Norvell got in the back seat next to him. Sixteen minutes later, the mayor’s office sent reporters a statement on the Supreme Court’s ruling on Texas abortion laws.

New Yorkers sometimes hear directly from their mayor while he is at the gym, as in one case when a prerecorded interview earlier that Tuesday aired at 9:30 a.m. on NY1. As his voice sounded on the television, Mr. de Blasio was working out.

The mayor also conducts his weekly radio appearances with Brian Lehrer, the WNYC host, from nearby — occasionally in his gym clothes. That Wednesday, he hustled from the stationary bicycle and out of the gym, still in his workout cargo shorts.

Minutes later, he was live on the air taking questions and calls from listeners. At the time, he was seated with his press secretary in a room at the library around the corner.