{"id":7458,"date":"2014-04-11T21:14:51","date_gmt":"2014-04-12T02:14:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=7458"},"modified":"2014-04-11T21:26:24","modified_gmt":"2014-04-12T02:26:24","slug":"from_the_bullpen_to_the_war_room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2014\/04\/from_the_bullpen_to_the_war_room.html","title":{"rendered":"From The Bullpen To The War Room"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The people are almost always ahead of their leaders,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/04\/09\/nyregion\/pre-k-victory-ad-with-mayor-de-blasios-family-aims-to-help-him-regain-his-footing.html\">emphasis on &#8220;almost always&#8221;<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>UPKNYC, which is run by many of Mr. de Blasio&#8217;s former campaign aides, was founded as a grass-roots-style effort to help the mayor secure state money for his prekindergarten and after-school proposals.<\/p>\n<p>But its shift into television advertising suggests its resources can be used for more expressly political purposes, such as maintaining Mr. de Blasio&#8217;s image with New Yorkers, rather than for simply promoting an education policy plan.<\/p>\n<p>The cost for the new commercial, for example, is at least four times what UPKNYC &#8212; which refers to universal prekindergarten &#8212; spent on its lobbying efforts during the first two months of the budget negotiating process in Albany.<\/p>\n<p>Because it was incorporated as a nonprofit, the group has not yet been required to disclose its donors, and its organizers have been unwilling to provide a list of contributors. Officials at one of Mr. de Blasio&#8217;s closest labor allies, 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East, confirmed on Tuesday that the union had contributed $200,000.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesman for UPKNYC, Dan Levitan, declined on Tuesday to discuss the sources of the group&#8217;s money.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Levitan, who served as a campaign spokesman during Mr. de Blasio&#8217;s mayoral bid, said in a statement that the ad was meant to show that the mayor was delivering on a campaign pledge to introduce a full-day prekindergarten network in the city.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We want to make sure everyone knows about the program,&#8221; he said.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The people are almost always ahead of their leaders,&#8221; emphasis on &#8220;almost always&#8221;: UPKNYC, which is run by many of Mr. de Blasio&#8217;s former campaign aides, was founded as a grass-roots-style effort to help the mayor secure state money for his prekindergarten and after-school proposals. But its shift into television advertising suggests its resources can [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-things_that_make_you_go_oy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7458"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7461,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7458\/revisions\/7461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}