LOCAL INPUT: Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing fresh backlash over sidelining key stakeholders from talks about developing thousands of housing units on top of a Queens rail yard.
The Sunnyside Yard project landed back in the headlines yesterday when Mamdani and President Donald Trump emerged from a chummy meeting at Gracie Mansion to announce they’d agreed to bring conversations about the long-stalled housing plan to “a new level.” The unlikely duo first announced at a White House meeting in February they were looking into reviving the project, which would be contingent on billions of dollars in federal funding and involve constructing a platform over the rail yard, on top of which 12,000 housing units would be built.
But Council member Julie Won — who represents Sunnyside and voiced concerns in February about not being included in the talks — said today she continues to be troubled by the fact that the mayor and the president aren’t consulting her or other local community voices.
“Since the last discussion on Sunnyside Yard months ago between the mayor and president there is no funding from Congress nor any public meetings to move this project forward,” Won said in a statement. “There is no federal, state, or city bill allocating funding for this project. There is still no timeline. Congress would have to fund it, and the State and City Legislature would have to approve it. Our neighbors in Sunnyside yet again were not part of yesterday’s conversation, and there still has been no meaningful engagement with the public.”
Farah Salam, Won’s chief of staff, said City Hall’s continued lack of engagement with her office flies in the face of a commitment Mamdani’s team made in February.
Salam recounted how, in a meeting with Won’s team at the time, Mamdani aides told the Council member’s staff they would keep them in the loop on any Sunnyside Yard-related updates. Nonetheless, Salam told Playbook that Won and her team haven’t heard a peep from Mamdani’s administration since then, and she added that Won only learned of the latest twist from watching Mamdani’s post-meeting press conference with Trump yesterday.
A Mamdani spokesperson declined to respond to Salam’s comments.
Won is a member of the Council’s Progressive Caucus, which has generally been supportive of the mayor, lending more weight to her Sunnyside-related rebuke. Still, she may have some political sour grapes with the mayor, given that she campaigned unsuccessfully this summer for Congress in a race that was ultimately won by Mamdani-endorsed Assemblymember Claire Valdez.
Won isn’t the only local politician concerned by Mamdani’s Sunnyside dealings with Trump, though.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards told Playbook it would be more fruitful for Mamdani to focus on securing federal funding from Trump for housing developments where shovels can hit the ground on a short timeframe. Inevitably, Sunnyside Yard would need to go through years-long review and permitting processes before construction could begin, and Richards argued Jamaica and Long Island City are better suited for immediate, federally-backed projects, given that both areas recently underwent neighborhood-wide rezonings.
“I’m not saying give up on Sunnyside Yard, but let’s first move somewhere where we can actually get shovels in the ground now,” he said. “We are in a housing emergency.”
Richards also said he’s skeptical Trump will actually make good on his Sunnyside musings. “I have trepidations about how fast the Trump administration is going to move on this — forgive me if I have my trepidations about them,” he said. “Anything you deal with the Trump administration on has to be show and tell, and I don’t have much confidence even with the president’s remarks yesterday.”
When asked about the comments from Won and Richards at a press conference today, Mamdani avoided any direct response. Instead he simply reiterated the merits of the project, which he said would include a significant share of affordable housing.
“I will do everything in my power to build more housing in this city,” Mamdani said. “And working with the president to fulfill an idea that has existed for 50 to 60 years — that to me is clearly an example of what could be done.”
It remains to be seen how much Trump and Mamdani can actually get done on the Sunnyside project. Though they said yesterday their respective housing policy teams are initiating technical talks about the project, there are no funding commitments on the table, and local community concerns remain.
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a plan in 2015 to build housing on top of Sunnyside Yard, but that iteration of the project never went anywhere because of the COVID pandemic and local pushback. — Chris Sommerfeldt and Joe Anuta
From the Capitol
IT GUY GONE: The top official at the state’s Office of Information Technology Services was removed this week by Gov. Kathy Hochul after she lost confidence in him, her administration said today.
ITS Director Dru Rai held the job since September 2023, and his removal was effective immediately. Jenson Jacob will take over the role in an acting capacity. The office manages the state’s information technology, data centers and hardware infrastructure while providing digital services for state agencies and local governments.
“The administration has informed Dru Rai that the Governor no longer has confidence in his ability to effectively represent this administration and he was removed from his position as head of ITS,” a Hochul spokesperson said in a statement. “Jenson Jacob has been named Acting Director of ITS. Governor Hochul remains committed to holding employees to the highest leadership and ethical standards, and ITS will continue to deliver technology solutions and services for New Yorkers, our agencies and partners.”
Read more from POLITICO Pro’s Nick Reisman.
BLAKEMAN BRUSHES OFF GRACIE GATHERING: Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman is downplaying the significance of Trump’s cordial Monday meeting with the mayor.
“Not at all,” he said when asked if Trump’s visit undercut Blakeman’s focus on Mamdani’s radicalism.
“The president is a government official. He’s the highest government official in the United States. And the mayor’s a government official, so I expect that the two of them would talk.”
Blakeman has attacked the mayor he refers to as “Commie Mamdani” while campaigning in every corner of the state. Would he similarly meet with Mamdani? “Depends what he was serving for lunch,” he said.
The Nassau County executive was in Albany today to receive the NYS Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association’s endorsement. Prison guards have had an icy relationship with the state in recent years, due to Cuomo-era limits on solitary confinement and Hochul’s strict crackdown on guards who engaged in an illegal strike last year.
It’s the first time NYSCOPBA has endorsed a gubernatorial candidate.
“Kathy Hochul, I want you to think about that: 95 percent of your employees voted to endorse me, a democratic vote,” Blakeman said. “What does that say about your leadership? You should be embarrassed that 95 percent of your workers didn’t think highly enough of you to endorse you.” — Bill Mahoney
FROM CITY HALL
LEFT ON READ: City Council members — including the mayor’s allies — laced into Mamdani’s administration today at a Council hearing on the use of influencers in city government communications.
The central focus of their displeasure? Team Mamdani declined to send any representatives from the appropriate agencies to testify.
The oversight hearing comes on the heels of news that programs run by city agencies paid influencers to promote city policies. The hearing’s stated purpose: to begin to establish guidelines for how city officials communicate with influencers and disclose such communications.
Emilia Rowland, the mayor’s director of new media, skipped the hearing, despite being invited to testify. Earlier this month, a working paper from the Columbia University Initiative for Policy Dialogue reported that Rowland oversees a Signal group chat with more than 200 hand-picked influencers. In her place, the mayor’s office sent Tascha Van Auken, commissioner of the mayor’s Office of Mass Engagement, and Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz, commissioner for the Department of Records and Information Services — neither of whom had much to offer on the administration’s use of influencers.
While pressing the two during their testimony, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams expressed disappointment that the communications officials who “should be here are not.”
“I don’t know that anything was done wrong, but there were questions that were raised by this article that I believe the public should hear answers to, so that they can feel sure that nothing wrong occurred,” Williams said. “The fact that the correct folks aren’t here doesn’t really help that story.”
Williams, a progressive Democrat, found himself in agreement with Council Minority Leader David Carr, the Republican who sponsored legislation that would require explicit disclosures on city-funded or directed influencer communications.
Carr pressed Van Auken and Smith-Cruz on specifics about the relationship between City Hall and third-party influencers — such as the number of influencers the administration has worked with, how much has been spent on the social media campaigns, how budgets are determined and how influencers are selected.
Van Auken and Smith-Cruz acknowledged they didn’t have fulsome answers to any of Carr’s questions, in stark contrast with the mayor’s characterization of the situation earlier today.
“I am confident in the testimony that our administration is providing today, that it will be sufficient in answering the council’s questions,” Mamdani told reporters this morning.
Taiwan Green, a Queens-based influencer with more than 50,000 followers, testified he was contacted a year ago by then-candidate Mamdani’s social media team. He said he’s never been offered pay for any content about the administration, though, and that he was never directed as to how to message his videos.
“I believe it’s my responsibility to sacrifice my time and my resources to educate myself and my followers on the political process,” said Green, who goes by the handle @mrfingaz. “Traditional press may not have the time to ask questions that are related to southeast Queens, but I will use this opportunity to do just that.”
Green left abruptly after about 90 seconds of testimony and didn’t take questions from council members.
It wasn’t the first time relevant officials from the mayor’s office skipped a Council oversight meeting. Last month, lawmakers slammed Mamdani’s administration for opting out of a hearing on the city’s controversial pied-à-terre tax rollout. At that hearing, Council Members Gale Brewer and Linda Lee read out 11 pages of questions to a row of empty chairs. — Molly Reinmann
SO MANY GAVELS: The city’s Conflicts of Interest Board fined Council member Mercedes Narcisse $2,500 for filming a reelection campaign video inside City Hall.
In one portion of the video, Narcisse is sitting in the Council chambers at the speaker’s chair, where she strikes a gavel. In another, she sits behind her nameplate in a separate committee room and … also strikes a gavel.
Narcisse is then filmed speaking (though not striking a gavel) at an official Council podium.
Because these areas of City Hall are off limits to the public, the board found Narcisee was using her government perch for personal gain. In a settlement agreement, the Brooklyn lawmaker said she did not intend to break the rules, but admitted wrongdoing. — Joe Anuta
FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
AOC IN BUF: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is planning to hit Buffalo Thursday to meet with Mayor Sean Ryan and host an organizing training aimed at inactive voters.
The trip comes amid speculation about whether she’ll run for the White House or Senate in 2028. In comments to The New York Times published on Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez said she’s thinking about how her identity will factor into the campaign she chooses to mount.
“There’s an argument that some make that this is a very unique political window and, oftentimes in politics, you do only get one shot,” she told the Times. “And you don’t — and just in life in general — life doesn’t wait for you to be ready for things. Sometimes life just makes things ready for you.”
The Buffalo trip is part of an upstate swing that is also set to include Syracuse and Ithaca, the Times reported last week.
Ocasio-Cortez has been leaning into the curiosity surrounding her next political endeavor — but said she’s keeping her focus on the midterms as she stumps across the country boosting candidates. — Madison Fernandez
TAKING THE STAGE: Candidates for governor, state attorney general and comptroller will debate next month.
Spectrum News NY1 announced Tuesday that Hochul and Blakeman will debate on Oct. 13. Attorney General Letitia James will face off against GOP challenger Saritha Komatireddy on Oct. 8, and Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and Republican Joseph Hernandez will debate on Oct. 1.
Each of the debates will air live at 7 p.m.
Playbook previously reported that Hochul intended to debate Blakeman, even though she is not required to do so since her campaign declined to participate in the new public campaign finance system. — Madison Fernandez
IN OTHER NEWS
— ZO + BIBI: Mamdani doubled down on his criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of his speech at the U.N. this week. (CNN)
— SCHUMER ON AI: Sen. Chuck Schumer demanded Trump completely block China’s access to U.S. artificial intelligence technology ahead of the president’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping tomorrow. (Punchbowl)
— MENIN + THE MET: City Council Speaker Julie Menin expanded on her condemnation of the Met Gala’s now-walked back decision to honor John Galliano, who has a history of racism and antisemitism. (New York Magazine)
Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.