Associated Press: “What could be controversial about the city of Toronto congratulating Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes?”
“Ask Rob Ford. The Toronto mayor on Wednesday cast the sole “no” vote on a City Council motion to offer the athletes kudos. Minutes earlier, he also was the only council member to vote against a proposal to name a Toronto street after the late Nelson Mandela.”
“Ford asked for a re-vote on both motions a half-hour later but was denied.”
“Charlotte City Council members are poised to select a new mayor as early as Monday – and could go outside their own ranks to do it,” the Charlotte Observer reports.
“A Democratic state senator threw his name into the mix Thursday, a day after Democrat Patrick Cannon’s sudden resignation after his arrest on federal corruption charges.”
“They’ve got to find work for the horses, because the horses become depressed. I hope the mayor changes his mind about it.”
— Rudy Giuliani (R), quoted by WCBS-TV, on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s (D) proposal to ban horse-drawn carriages.
The Washington Post reports that ex-prisoners account for at least one in 10 Washington, D.C. residents and perhaps many more.
“That makes them a potentially pivotal, if uncertain, voting bloc — and a highly coveted target that no political campaign has ignored in the tightening April 1 Democratic primary for mayor. Every mayoral candidate has promised something. Any taboo that previously muted politicking with prisoners, some of whom once preyed on city residents, has fallen away in favor of winning a few thousand votes that could tip the balance in a close race.”
“In Bill de Blasio’s City Hall, it seems more and more, there is only a left wing,” the New York Times reports.
“The mayor, who advanced in politics by grass-roots organizing, has built a team filled with former activists — figures more accustomed to picketing administrations or taking potshots from the outside than working from within. His administration is heavily populated with appointees best known for the fights they have fought.”
“In any case, Mr. de Blasio’s mayor’s personnel choices are just one means by which he appears to be easing the mayoralty from the practical details of governing into a platform for the kind of social change usually achieved on the streets and in the courts. It is a far different approach from that of his predecessor, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who favored agency heads and staff members with button-down business backgrounds.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) “is proposing a traffic-safety initiative that would dramatically reduce fatal car accidents by making it nearly impossible to drive recklessly without getting caught. Among the drivers affected by the initiative would be … Bill de Blasio,” Capital New York reports.
“According to four former de Blasio staffers, all of whom would talk about their former boss only on background, he was inclined to speed or direct staffers to drive faster when he was public advocate and a mayoral candidate.”
Said one: “Dear God. Some of the worst road rage I’ve ever seen, seriously.”
Just days after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) announced an aggressive plan to prevent traffic deaths, CBS New York caught the driver of a car carrying the mayor violating a number of traffic laws — including “speeding, blowing through stop signs, and violating other traffic laws.”
When the mayor announced his 62-point safe streets initiative, he said, “We want the public to know that we are holding ourselves to this standard.”
Politicker: “Reached for comment, both the mayor’s office and the NYPD defended the conduct without addressing the particulars of the CBS allegations, which included running stop signs and going up to 15 miles per hours over the speed limit.”
Willie Brown: “The real news in the San Diego mayoral race isn’t that a Republican won, but that the candidate backed by public-employee unions lost.”
“That is a real shift in California politics. And it’s the second time it’s happened in a big-city mayoral race in less than a year.”
The Financial Times runs an excellent profile of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is gearing up for re-election next year.
“A ferociously ambitious, sharp-suited policy wonk, Emanuel’s mayoral style gels with the spirit of the age.”
“I’m dying to see those polls come in. I am. I am. I’m going to be on the edge of my seat. I’m going to be itching as soon as they close… I want to knock these guys out in the first thirty seconds.”
— Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, in an interview with Esquire, predicting he’ll win re-election in a landslide.
Kevin Faulconer (R) won a decisive victory over David Alvarez (D) in the San Diego mayor’s race, 55% to 46%, “signaling a new chapter for the city after the scandal-plagued tenure of former Mayor Bob Filner (D),” the San Diego Union Tribune reports.
“A Faulconer victory breathes new life into the local Republican Party by restoring its control of the Mayor’s Office that its candidates have occupied for much of the past four decades. Faulconer also becomes the only Republican mayor of a top 10 U.S. city, making him one of the party’s highest-profile leaders in the state.”
“But obviously I know how Peyton Manning feels at this point”
— New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), quoted by Politicker, on dropping his city’s Groundhog Day groundhog yesterday.
Shortly after he was elected as Toronto mayor, Rob Ford’s wife sought to curb her husband’s drug-use, confiding that he is “not giving up the blow,” according to National Post.
“The details are contained in Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story, written by Robyn Doolittle, one of two Toronto Star reporters to view a video apparently showing the mayor smoking a crack pipe. The book will be released Monday.”
She added: “He still thinks he’s going to party. He thinks that he, oh, you know, ‘I’ll get off the pills, but I’m not giving up the blow.'”
“A little bit, yeah.”
— Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, quoted by CBC, admitting to drinking alcohol after a video appeared showing him at a restaurant swearing, mumbling and speaking in Jamaican patois.
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford vented his anger at the city police chief “in an incoherent and apparently intoxicated rant” caught on video early this morning.
“No, I wasn’t drinking, I don’t drink.”
— Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, quoted by the Toronto Sun, on his much-publicized visit to a nightclub over the weekend.
A Forum Research poll finds Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s approval rating jumped to 47% as his city faced an ice storm — up from 42% during the last poll in early December.
Dunkirk Observer: “A unique style of headwear was present during newly-seated Pomfret Town Council member Christopher Schaeffer’s oath of office Thursday afternoon, but it wasn’t intended to keep his head warm.”
“Schaeffer wore a colander (a strainer typically used to drain water from spaghetti) while Town Clerk Allison Dispense administered the oath of office to him before the board’s reorganizational meeting. When the Observer asked afterward why he wore a colander on his head, Schaeffer said he was a minister with an even more unique organization – the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
More about Taegan Goddard →