| | | | |  | | By Jeff Coltin, Emily Ngo and Nick Reisman | | Presented by |  | | | With Timmy Facciola
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Public Advocate Jumaane Williams is a Democratic Socialist-allied insurgent who rails against anyone in power. | Alex Voetsch | As Public Advocate Jumaane Williams sat down for an interview with Playbook Friday outside a hotel conference room at the Somos political conference in San Juan, an older woman walked past. “Are you ready,” she said, “should stuff fall off?” “I’m ready for every eventuality that may happen,” Williams responded. “I just want the city to be alright.” If Mayor Eric Adams were to resign or be removed, the public advocate would step in as acting mayor until a special election. So with Adams fighting federal charges, a superseding indictment possible and more City Hall investigations swirling, Williams found it essential to come to the annual conclave for the very first time, Playbook first reported — facing his fear of flying. (Anti-anxiety drug Ativan helped, he explained.) Forget planes. New Yorkers are “even more afraid than they were before” after President-elect Donald Trump’s win, he said. Williams’ message, should he have to become mayor, is “the people involved are taking it seriously to make sure 911 gets picked up, 311 gets picked up and the trash gets picked up,” he said. “I’m gonna do whatever I can to try to make sure that confidence is still good. I’m pretty sure it’s been shaken.” Adams has given the same message as to why he can and should stay in office after getting indicted — that he’s staying focused and 300,000 city employees are still working. Key power players’ support for Adams hasn’t shown signs of wavering since the election, and a Trump victory could prove helpful to the indicted mayor, as POLITICO reported last week. But Williams sure isn’t begging him to stay. Adams should defend himself in court, but he showed “very poor judgment” and it’s “a real question” if he can “continue to do the job that is needed for the city,” Williams said. “I certainly don’t think a second term is something that the city would want.” Adams has been a leading voice on the issues that many Democrats say cost the party the election, like crime and immigration, a political adviser to the mayor said to Playbook, adding, “Jumaane’s politics is exactly what was just rejected.” Williams is an activist, known more for civil disobedience arrests than managing a crisis or a big staff. He’s a Democratic Socialist-allied insurgent who rails against anyone in power. Now, he’s trying to convince political power players — including fellow progressives, who have a handful of candidates to choose from — that he could be trusted as acting mayor. Knowing his support of the “defund the police” movement is a likely liability if crime continues to rank as voters’ top concern, Williams told Playbook he cares about law enforcement but thinks “the public safety infrastructure” should be more than just cops. Williams isn’t planning to run for mayor in the June primary, rather only if Adams vacates his office spurring a nonpartisan special election. So he’s not yet making a hard pitch to influential politicos like Carlo Scissura of the New York Building Congress, who met with him Somos. Like many at Somos, their talk was more about dissecting Trump’s win, Scissura said, adding of Williams: “He’s left and progressive, but he’s also a guy from Brooklyn who understands his community better than most.” — Jeff Coltin HAPPY MONDAY: Got news? Send it our way: Jeff Coltin, Emily Ngo and Nick Reisman.
| | | | A message from Uber: Study Reveals Uber Drivers Make More than EMTs: NYC Uber drivers now earn an average of $52,900 annually after expenses, outpacing the salaries of many essential city employees, including EMTs and sanitation workers. Despite delivering vital services, these workers struggle with stagnant wages while Uber drivers have benefited from five TLC-mandated pay hikes since 2020. Read more on the wage disparity impacting NYC’s workforce. Learn More. | | | WHERE’S KATHY? In Albany. WHERE’S ERIC? Marching in New York City’s Annual Veterans Day Parade. QUOTE OF THE DAY: “I want Penn Station to be something that we’re all proud of. I said it can be beautiful. And he agreed.” — Gov. Kathy Hochul, on her “cordial” and “very productive” call with Trump Thursday .
|  | ABOVE THE FOLD | | | | 
President-elect Donald Trump held a rally in the South Bronx in May. | Yuki Iwamura/AP | TRUMP’S BRONX APPEAL: The Bronx has emerged as a top focus in the post-election dissection of how Donald Trump’s winning coalition came to include working-class Latinos. The majority-minority borough has stubborn rates of poverty spanning generations and has long been governed by Democrats. Kamala Harris defeated Trump in the Bronx last week, with 73 percent of the vote, but Trump improved his margin Tuesday to 27 percent, from 15 percent in 2020 and 9 percent in 2016. It was the best result for a GOP presidential candidate in the borough in four decades. His supporters said it was due to his message on the economy and immigration. “I definitely want the economy to get better. With migrants here causing havoc, they should not be here,” said Javiel Rodriguez Jr. told NBC New York. Rodriguez owns the Bronx barbershop where Trump filmed a “Fox & Friends” segment in October to discuss the economic challenges facing the community. “A lot of the points that he made about securing the border, that’s kind of No. 1,” Amit Balladin, a firefighter who lives near the barbershop, told CBS New York. In the days since the election, Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres has been a leading voice in explaining why Harris and Dems lost some support among non-white, working-class voters. “When you are college educated and higher income, you can be concerned with issues like democracy and culture. But when you are struggling to put food on the table, the cost of living is existential,” he told POLITICO. Torres added on X , “Inflation and immigration are not ‘messaging problems.’ These are realities that produced discontent widespread enough to hand Donald Trump the presidency.” Trump held a massive campaign rally in the South Bronx in May, which critics write off as an ego boost. But it appears to have served to boost both his ego and his standing among Bronxites. Trump did relatively well citywide, helped by low voter turnout. — Emily Ngo
| | | CITY HALL: THE LATEST | | | | 
REBNY says the bill would make it harder to find quality apartment listings since landlords operating with smaller budgets won’t hire brokers to market their apartments. | Courtesy of REBNY | FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: The Real Estate Board of New York is launching a last-minute ad campaign against a City Council bill taking aim at hefty broker fees. The bill, pushed by Council Member Chi Ossé, is up for a committee vote this week and is expected to pass the legislative body given its veto-proof majority of sponsors. It would prevent renters from having to pay broker fees to agents hired by landlords, in an effort to reduce upfront leasing costs. The campaign from REBNY and some of its largest residential brokerage members, including Corcoran and Douglas Elliman, will include social media and taxi cab ads. REBNY says the bill would make it harder to find quality apartment listings since landlords operating with smaller budgets won’t hire brokers to market their apartments — making the housing market more difficult for renters to navigate. And if owners still hire brokers, they’ll simply bake the one-time fee into higher monthly rents, REBNY says. One ad shared with Playbook shows a mock StreetEasy listing that's missing key information, including any images, the rental price, or the number of bedrooms. The description on the “listing” reads, “Due to [Ossé’s bill], I am no longer able to share information on listings. I promise this apartment exists.” The taxi ad, meanwhile, charges, “Our City Council wants to make it even harder to find an apartment in NYC.” The real estate industry “had unlimited financial resources to fight against us. But this is it, we’re about to win,” Ossé said in a social media video last month. “This is some of the largest New York City renters’ legislation in decades. It’ll save you thousands of dollars.” — Janaki Chadha THEY’RE RUNNING: Former City Council Member Robert Cornegy towered among the crowd at Somos as he considers a rematch for Brooklyn borough president against Antonio Reynoso. “I don’t want to get in a fight just for the sake of getting in a fight. But if there’s a need…” he told Playbook. Other would-be 2025 candidates flocked to the tropical conference, including state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who was telling people he’ll run for Manhattan borough president again. Assemblymember Eddie Gibbs is planning to run for term-limited Council Member Diana Ayala’s seat, and was reception-hopping with a potential opponent, Bronx Community Board 1 Chair Clarisa Alayeto. Kayla Santosuosso, a top aide to Council Member Justin Brannan, is his pick to succeed him in increasingly Republican southern Brooklyn. Assemblymember John Zaccaro could try to flip Council Member Kristy Marmorato’s East Bronx seat back to the Democratic Party. But 32BJ Executive Vice President Shirley Aldebol wants the seat too, and will run on building housing in a district that often opposes development. “It takes work and a little bit of grit to push back on people,” she told Playbook. “You’ve got to educate people on why this is important.” — Jeff Coltin More from the city: — New Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos is the city’s highest-paid employee — far exceeding the mayor’s salary. (New York Post) — Former Rep. Anthony Weiner for New York City Council?!? (City & State) — The city has stopped using two hotels sheltering migrants as border crossings fall — with many other locations to be phased out in the coming months. ( New York Post)
| | | | A message from Uber:   | | | | | NEW FROM PLANET ALBANY | | | 
Gov. Kathy Hochul in June paused the implementation of the tolls out of concern Democrats in battleground House seats would be punished by voters. | Ted Shaffrey/AP | POLITICAL TRAFFIC: Centrist Democrats in the state Legislature are putting up a yellow light for the congestion pricing toll plan. As POLITICO exclusively reported last week, Hochul has reached out to federal officials to determine whether a revived program with a lower toll would require a lengthy environmental impact review. But even with a lower toll for drivers entering parts of Manhattan, some Democratic state legislators are worried the move would send the wrong signal after Republicans handed their party an electoral drubbing in the presidential election. “When you’re in a hole, the first step is to stop digging,” Hudson Valley state Sen. James Skoufis told Playbook. “If the governor reverses course mere days after the election, it will validate the skepticism many voters expressed that the pause was a strictly political move. We need to rebuild trust with the voters who turned their back on the Democratic Party; this further erodes it.” Democratic Staten Island Sen. Jessica Scarcella-Spanton also warned of the tolls’ potential to adversely impact the party.“We need to send a message that Democrats are paying attention to the plight of our working people and take action to address their concerns in a meaningful way,” she said. Hochul in June paused the implementation of the tolls out of concern Democrats in battleground House seats would be punished by voters. The party managed to flip three House seats on Tuesday, though they are unlikely to win back control of the chamber. Hochul told reporters last week she wants to shore up the city’s shaky mass transit infrastructure, a sentiment she said the outgoing Biden White House shares. Toll revenue would be leveraged to get $15 billion in bonds and pay for long-proposed improvement projects. Still, there’s a relief from some Democrats that the plan may be finally moving forward. “Let’s prove we’re serious about investing in the infrastructure that working New Yorkers rely on and turn the cameras on,” Brooklyn Sen. Andrew Gounardes said. — Nick Reisman UPSTATE AMERICA: The metro area is catching up with upstate’s politics, and Republicans say it’s proof they can chip away at their rivals’ longstanding advantage in New York. Communities outside of the New York City region have struggled for years with population loss and economic privation. Voters in the rural and exurban regions have been frustrated with downstate residents, believing they don’t understand or care about their problems. Now, after two election cycles in which Republican candidates — Lee Zeldin in 2022 and Trump last week — made strides downstate, upstate political leaders and strategists are optimistic they can win statewide. “Rome wasn’t built in a day, so you’re seeing a trend that’s moving across multiple cycles,” Livingston County Conservative Chair Jason McGuire told Playbook. Republicans from outside of the New York City region were ahead of the Trump curve. In 2010, businessperson Carl Paladino was propelled to the top of the Republican ticket in the race for governor in large part by disaffected primary voters in western New York. Paladino went on to be crushed that year by Democrat Andrew Cuomo. But he’s been viewed since then as a proto - Trump — a norm-shattering and controversial figure. Trump’s initial run for president in 2016 was fueled early on by endorsements from figures like then-Rep. Chris Collins of western New York, the first Republican House member to support his White House bid. “The reality is western New York, Erie County, has always been a working-class conservative area populated by working-class Democrats who feel the party has left them,” Erie County Republican Chair Michael Kracker said. Still, turning deep blue New York into a purple state, much less a red one, will be a challenge. Democrats control all statewide offices and levers of power in Albany. Hochul leans moderate — a stance honed from starting her career in Erie County politics. And the potential Republican candidates for governor — Zeldin, Rep. Mike Lawler and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman — all hail from downstate suburbs. Still, Republicans believe they can make in-roads. “After two consecutive elections, we know the lay of the land where we have to go to compete,” Kracker told Playbook. “We see where these shifts are happening, we’ve got to recruit candidates who can carry that message.” — Nick Reisman More from Albany: — Hochul is quietly calling lawmakers as she mulls a decision to bring back congestion pricing. (NY1) — The governor finds herself in the position of having to work with a second Trump administration. (New York Times) — The Department of Environmental Conservation is investigating the raid that led to a popular internet squirrel’s death. (Times Union)
| | KEEPING UP WITH THE DELEGATION | | |  Last week, Laura Gillen flipped a western Long Island House seat held by Rep. Anthony D’Esposito. | Heather Khalifa/AP | TOLL ACROSS THE AISLE: Wariness over the revival of congestion pricing is bipartisan in the suburbs and exurbs where commuters would be impacted, including in House battlegrounds. “We need a permanent end to congestion pricing efforts, full stop. Long Island commuters cannot afford another tax,” posted Laura Gillen, the Democrat who last week flipped the western Long Island seat held by Rep. Anthony D’Esposito. “This program should be killed and I will fight tooth and nail in Congress and work with (Trump) to stop it by revoking the federal approval,” posted Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican elected to a second term in the lower Hudson Valley, defeating Democrat Mondaire Jones in a heavily blue district. Lawler made his opposition to congestion pricing a theme of his campaign. — Emily Ngo SWING-DISTRICT DEM’S TAKE: Hudson Valley Rep. Pat Ryan outperformed other down-ballot Democrats, as well as Harris, on Election Day. “I just think it’s not ideological,” he told our colleagues at POLITICO Playbook. “It’s about who fights for the people and who is empowering elites. Trump inherently understands that, by the way.” Ryan extrapolated on his theory in a thread on X in which he wrote: “First and foremost if you're using the words ‘moderate’ or ‘progressive,’ you're missing the whole f***ing point.” — Emily Ngo More from Congress: — Boosted by a strong rebound in New York, Democrats are holding their own in the House of Representatives with a surprisingly resilient performance. (Daily News) — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries appears to be largely evading internal backlash in a party-wide blame game over Dems’ calamitous election performance. (Axios) — Former Rep. Michael Grimm was paralyzed from the chest down following a polo accident. (New York Post) … (His GoFundMe)
| | NEW YORK STATE OF MIND | | — Smoke from Hudson Valley wildfires has seeped into upstate communities. (Times Union) — New York lost nine billionaires in the past year — and their absence could have major consequences. (New York Post) — More of the city’s water is coming from the driest parts of the state. (Gothamist)
| | | | A message from Uber: Study Shows Uber Drivers making over $52k while NYC Heroes Get Left Behind
A new study reveals a growing wage divide in New York City: Uber drivers are making an average of $52,900 a year after expenses, while city employees like EMTs and sanitation workers starting salaries are below $44,000. Since 2020, rideshare drivers have received five pay increases through TLC mandates while many frontline city workers face stagnant wages amid rising living costs. This gap underscores an evolving dynamic in NYC’s workforce, where gig workers see consistent earnings growth while essential city roles lag behind. This pay disparity is raising questions about the city’s priorities and the need for equitable wages in public service amidst the affordability crisis.
Read the full story to see how gig work earnings are reshaping NYC’s labor landscape. Learn More. | | | | | SOCIAL DATA | | Edited by Daniel Lippman MEDIAWATCH: Justin Baragona is joining The Independent as a senior reporter. He previously was a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. … Henry Blodget announced he’s leaving Business Insider , which he founded. – WSJ DEPARTURE LOUNGE: Phred Dvorak has left the Wall Street Journal where she spent 25 years, most recently covering the energy transition and climate. In her career at the paper, she spent much of her time reporting out of Asia, especially Japan, and ran corporate and finance coverage out of Hong Kong. … Doug Cameron has left the WSJ where he most recently was an aerospace and defense reporter. He spent more than 16 years at the paper and is also a Financial Times alum. … … Anne Marie Chaker, a 27-year veteran WSJ reporter turned pro bodybuilder, has left the paper to prepare for the launch of her upcoming book “LIFT: How Women Can Reclaim Their Physical Power and Transform Their Lives.” The book, published by Penguin Random House, is slated to hit shelves in June. She writes a newsletter on strength and empowerment on Substack. WEDDING: Ben Taub, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and Sophie Spiegelberger, a journalist at the Financial Times, married on Oct. 30 at City Hall in New York City. The couple met in early June at one of Susan MacTavish Best’s salons in NYC. Three months later, they were reunited in Europe and one night in Vienna, as they shared a small bowl of goulash, they decided to get married and bought rings the next day. Their witness and photographer was Tyler Foggatt, a senior editor at The New Yorker, who had persuaded him to come to Susan’s party with a prophetic line: “You might meet your wife!” Pic ... Another pic HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) … City Hall’s Reggie Thomas … Diana Ostroff … POLITICO’s Matt Kaminski … Sludge’s David Moore … Rev. Jacques Andre DeGraff … ConEd’s Richard David … Hochul aide Melissa Bochenski … NYT’s Ruth Igielnik … Burson’s Jenna Sauber … Norm Eisen of Brookings … Eric Ezzy Rappaport … Anya Firestone … (WAS SUNDAY): Parkside’s Harry Giannoulis … Jackie Crossan … Howard Marks (8-0) … Reuters’ Nandita Bose … Amanda Ashley Keating of FGS Global … CBS’ Alan He … ABC’s Josh Margolin … Jim Kuhnhenn of WaVe Communications … POLITICO’s Declan Harty … Jean B. Weinberg ... Benjamin Pauker ... Linda Cohn ... Aaron Brown ... Barry D. Kramer … Kristin Stiles … Jared Miller … Nate Treffeisen … (WAS SATURDAY): POLITICO’s John Harris … Carlo Scissura … Everton Smith … Daniel Squadron … Sarah Isgur … AP’s Matt Brown … HuffPost’s Arthur Delaney … The Economist’s Idrees Kahloon … David Levine of BerlinRosen … Glenn Gerstell … Sunshine Sachs’ Claire Tonneson … Nancy Jacobson of No Labels … Joel Seidman ... Mike Bloomberg of Groundwork Data … Guy Raz ... Peter Lichtenbaum ... Amy Beth Aronson … Elise Norris … Kendra Kostek … MIT PhD candidate MacKenzie Scott … Will Dowling Missed Friday’s New York Playbook PM? We forgive you. Read it here. | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Ottawa Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | | |
