Campaign Consultant

 In an internet age where everything a politician thinks, takes a position on and says is decided on and written by a consultant, Joe Lhota at least before he decided to seek office, is blunt-talking, opinionated and politically incorrect in today very carefully choreographed campaign world.

You Think You Choose

Blunt-talkin’ Lhota(NYP) While serving as the top deputy to former Mayor Giuliani, Joe Lhota (inset) urged the chancellor of the City University to expel students editors of the Hunter College newspaper who published disquieting pictures of Jesus crucified on the cross and wearing a condom. Longtime government watchdog Gene Russianoff offered a similar assessment. “I’ve always liked the guy,” he said. “He might give you an earful, but you could talk to him.”  Lhota was equally blunt in a Sept. 24, 1998, letter to Lew Eisenberg, then the chairman of the Port Authority. Lhota said the city would demand full property taxes from anyone who ended up buying the World Trade Center, which the PA was peddling at the time. “It is well known to everyone in New York,” he lectured the PA boss, that the bi-state agency “favors New Jersey at the expense of New York.”