When Campaign Consultants Svengali the Pols and the Press

The Pols

New York Campaigns have become all about political consultants making money and developing a dependency relationship with the city and state's elected officials to make millions as lobbyists.  Even the press who uses the consultants as news sources encourages the dependency relationship by never writing about the conflict of interests of the political consultant who also operates as a lobbyists.  Not that they have to do any research to do that kind of story.  Most of the corruption stories in the city have involved political consultants, from the pension scandal to the Senator Kurger investigation.

The Press

Today Story By the Daily News's reporter Celeste Katz if it was not giving to her by political consultants it was written in their mindset.  Her story was about Thompson not having enough money to run again for mayor.  Consultants who are most concerned about how much they will earn always ask a candidate how much can you raise. A reporter job should be to ask the mayoral candidates how they are going to turn New York's shrinking economy to save the job of 6000 teachers or stop the closing of 20 fire houses.  A report job is not to report that a pol is against teacher cuts but to explain how the pol will raise the money or grow the economy to stop them.

From the Daily News: Thompson Behind in Fund Rasing

"Weiner - who famously took a pass on a 2009 run against Bloomberg - now has about $4.8million in the bank. Quinn has more than $3 million. Stringer has more than $1 million. Liu started fund-raising late, but was able to rake in more than half a million in a matter of weeks. De Blasio has less, but that's because he's done some spending. . .   In 2009, Thompson was the controller. Nearly half his money was raised outside the city. Now that he's out of politics, he may be less interesting to donors. . .  he can raise that kind of money that quickly," said one campaign expert. "Thompson may have cost himself a shot by waiting."

In 2009 Thompson was outspent 10 to 1 and came within 5% of winning. The question not asked in Katz's article is how much of Thompson money was due to the pay to play pension funds that he controlled as City Comptroller.  That is why he got so much outside the city money.  All Katz would have to do was read former Daily News reporter ADAM LISBERG story in 2009  Pension middlemen gave $158K to Bill Thompson's campaigns and got $2.2B in city business.  The other question not asked was why did De Blasio spend money now.  Was it connected to his legal problems with the WFP?

Press Allows Pols to Spin Themselves Instead of Asking Them What They Will Cut or How They Will Bring More Jobs into the City for the 9% Unemployed

From the Daily News: Candidates Spin Image
"Grossly oversimplified: You could have Weiner, the left-leaning political YouTube hero; de Blasio, the community organizer; Liu, the fresh face who might make history as head of an updated rainbow coalition; Quinn, the pragmatic, centrist lawmaker who knows how City Hall works, and Stringer, who spent years in Albany and highlights how city government's failings hurt citizens." Bill Thompson may have tough time in 2013 mayoral race after admirable loss to Mayor Bloomberg (NYDN) *  Park Slope tenants, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio team up to force building repairs (NYDN) *  City Controller John Liu's big exposé on mammogram delays turns out to be years out of date (NYDN) * Liu casts eye on exploding co-op assessments (NYP) * Comptroller report rips city's Downtown Brooklyn development corp.