As Gotham’s previous, excessively tall mayor reemerged on Friday to mark the 10th anniversary of the Groundhog Day he dropped and killed Staten Island Chuck, the news came out that the NYPD’s ridiculous K5 robot cop had quietly been rolled off of its much-hyped Times Square patrol and into an early storage-room retirement while Flaco the Owl, formerly of the Central Park Zoo, marked a full year of peripatetic meandering across Manhattan since blowing the joint by alighting on Fifth Ave. before taking off when the fuzz showed up to try and cage him.
Replacement rodents, runaway raptors and retired robots! Could all that on one day really be a coincidence?
Well, yes.
But in a city where it turns out that “Chuck,” full name Charles G. Hogg, lived on — having been secretly replaced five years earlier by a series of impersonators after he bit through the glove of Mike Bloomberg, with the mayor deflecting questions about the attack by saying terrorists could have been involved in what a tabloid headline memorably called a case of Shock and Gnaw — you can’t take anything for granted.
It’s too late to tell that to Charlotte, the Chuck stand-in who died two weeks after her six-foot plunge of acute internal injuries the Staten Island Zoo insisted were unrelated to her drop-in with Big Bill.
But New Yorkers should take nothing for granted as Mayor Eric “Where There’s Smoke, There’s Not Always Fire” Adams tries to explain away the latest reporting from my colleagues at The City along with Documented NY and the Guardian about more phony donors to his campaigns. Three people told reporters that people had paid them and some of their spouses back for the big bucks they’d supposedly chosen to donate to his reelection bid.
Each time yet another story about “straw donors” comes out, Adams and his team talk about how they do everything by the book, for what that’s worth, in their needle-strewn haystack of a campaign-cash operation.
(That’s not to mention the weird bit in this new story about Winnie Greco, Adams’ honorary “sister” and the City Hall director of Asian affairs, living for months in a hotel in Fresh Meadows, Queens owned by one of the guys who allegedly repaid several donors. City Hall says she paid market rate for her room, but didn’t explain what that means given that the site had been operating under a city government subcontract as a shelter for people released from Rikers during COVID.)
To be clear, Adams hasn’t been charged with anything since feds raided his young chief fundraiser’s family house in November and then publicly seized the mayor’s phones a week later — both moves that required sign off from Joe Biden’s Justice Department and then a federal judge.
It remains to be seen if prosecutors move forward, especially given how tough the Supreme Court has made it to convict elected officials of corruption who don’t flat-out state that “I am doing this government action in exchange for your bribe,” or if voters care.
Adams used his State of the City speech last month to try and pivot out of the near-apocalyptic tone that helped him win office in the first place but has soured New Yorkers on him since, into a sunnier register.
No more talk about how migrants or the migrant issue will “destroy New York City.” In fact, almost no talk about migrants at all.
Instead, he had his audience chant “jobs up, crime down” as he touted how well everything is going on his watch, contrary to what New Yorkers are telling pollsters.
Adams repeated what he said has always been his administration’s motto: “stay focused, don’t get distracted, grind.”
After two years of picking losing and sometimes senseless fights with Democrats in Washington, Albany and City Hall while blustering about how God chose him to be mayor, the mayor who’s down to a record-low 28% approval rating should actually heed his own advice going forward.
Grinding might be enough, absent charges or a conviction, for a Democratic incumbent whose aggressive fundraising operation has given him a big war chest to help deter the campaign challengers who are already circling.
For people who recall the last mayor blustering through his own fundraising probes before cruising to reelection after prosecutors publicly scolded him while reluctantly letting him off of the legal hook, it can feel like every day is Groundhog Day in New York City.
It can feel like every day is Groundhog Day in New York City.
Siegel (harry@thecity.nyc) is an editor at The City, a host of the FAQ NYC podcast and a columnist for the Daily News.
Harry Siegel: Raptors, rodents and robots in Hizzoner’s NYC
7
1
04.02.2024
As Gotham’s previous, excessively tall mayor reemerged on Friday to mark the 10th anniversary of the Groundhog Day he dropped and killed Staten Island Chuck, the news came out that the NYPD’s ridiculous K5 robot cop had quietly been rolled off of its much-hyped Times Square patrol and into an early storage-room retirement while Flaco the Owl, formerly of the Central Park Zoo, marked a full year of peripatetic meandering across Manhattan since blowing the joint by alighting on Fifth Ave. before taking off when the fuzz showed up to try and cage him.
Replacement rodents, runaway raptors and retired robots! Could all that on one day really be a coincidence?
Well, yes.
But in a city where it turns out that “Chuck,” full name Charles G. Hogg, lived on — having been secretly replaced five years earlier by a series of impersonators after he bit through the glove of Mike Bloomberg, with the mayor deflecting questions about the attack by saying terrorists could have been involved in what a tabloid headline memorably called a case of Shock and Gnaw — you can’t take anything for granted.
It’s too late to tell........
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