From the Bronx to Queens, Deals Defined Quinn's Council Leadership
By Wayne Barrett
It was December 2005 and 39-year-old Christine Quinn, an obscure one-term Chelsea councilwoman, was on her way to the Westchester Square headquarters of the Bronx Democratic County Committee to close the deal that would make her speaker, second only to the mayor in the power she would wield in City Hall. Her path to the Council leadership—positioning her to shape the city’s fiscal and development policies for the next four, and ultimately eight years—was, by city charter design, an inside game. Twenty-six members of the 51-member legislature would soon pick a winner.
Queens was the linchpin, with 16 votes on the Council. But Quinn needed 10 more votes and, like her two predecessors, she turned to the eight-member Bronx delegation. Her campaign committee had donated $3,300 to the Queens and Bronx Democratic parties since 2004, a bright hello. The longtime Queens Democratic boss, Tom Manton, was dying of cancer, and Quinn would be his last hurrah. U.S. Rep Joe Crowley would soon be the new Queens leader and, shortly before this meeting, Quinn hosted a fundraiser for Crowley, who’d been handpicked by Manton to succeed him, first in the Assembly and then in Congress.
The meeting was in the office of Jose Rivera, the Bronx party leader. Bill DeBlasio, who is running against Quinn for mayor now, was then her closest competitor for speaker, and he’d wooed Rivera to the end. But Rivera had made his choice, aligning himself with Queens behind Quinn. The purpose of the meeting was to work out the details of the deal.
Joining Rivera at the meeting were his son, City Councilman Joel Rivera, Councilwoman Maria Baez, and Stanley Schlein, a lobbyist whose machinations in Bronx politics have made headlines for years. Manton brought his three law partners—Jerry Sweeney, Mike Reich and Frank Bolz—each of whom held top posts in the party hierarchy. While no one involved in the meeting would discuss it on the record, a Bronx participant and a Queens participant did offer details. A third source who helped arrange the meeting and met with Rivera to discuss it the day after says that Rivera spelled out to him precisely what happened during these discussions.
Read more at http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2013/aug/30/bronx-queens-deals-defined-quinns-council-leadership/