If you're rich enough to be in the Hamptons for the month of August, then you missed the healing rain grace the city's beleaguered fire escape plants this morning—and you also missed all the primary candidates running around town this past weekend, scrambling for votes.
SuperPACs chock full of outside money have shoveled a record $9 million into Tuesday's weird, end-of-summer, judicially induced primary election, a good chunk of it being spent by the reactionary forces of real estate and law enforcement attempting to steer voters away from the more "progressive" candidates with scary flyers and commercials. This only benefits moderates and frontrunners like Sean Patrick Maloney and Dan Goldman, who were recently endorsed by the New York Times, along with Jerry Nadler. (Of course, if you already hold elected office, you can just print your own taxpayer-funded flyers as election literature and there's not much anyone can do about it!)
Goldman, who has dumped at least $4 million of his own vast fortune to become the frontrunner-on-paper in NY-10, is apparently friendly with the publishers of the paper of record, but not at all friendly with Donald Trump, whose "endorsements" of Goldman and Carolyn Maloney was perhaps his least effective attempt at trolling to date. Lest you think Goldman is just another rich person angling to join a legislative body of other rich people, here he is wearing a plain old T-shirt:
Goldman's opponents have recently employed a diversity of tactics against him. Councilmember Carlina Rivera and former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman held a somewhat awkward "please do not vote for Dan Goldman but also we aren't really going to endorse each other" press conference late last week. Rep. Mondaire Jones is attacking Goldman's portfolio.
The polling in these races is not super reliable, and the early voting turnout so far is not great. This is Democracy in the Dog Days!
Here's what else we're reading:
- The Post has a fantastic look at Andrew Cuomo's life right now, which seems to be 80 percent plotting revenge from various couches in the Hamptons, and 20 percent dating a "50-ish woman who lives in the Southampton area." Come for the bachelor anecdotes, stay for the absolutely unhinged accusations made by the former governor's loyal spokesperson.
- Also in the tab: A DOI investigator says he was fired for pointing out cases of sexual abuse and corruption in the City's lifeguard program.
- NYC Schools spent $90 million on air purifiers after a "high-powered lobbying firm" courted members of the de Blasio administration, Gothamist/WNYC reports.
- Streetsblog has completed an official survey of placard abuse downtown. Tag yourself! We're a crumpled note that says "please don't ticket me" next to a reflective vest we bought at Big Lots.
- Speaking of the streets: Four people were killed in traffic crashes over the weekend, including a four-year-old boy and two men who were riding ATVs over the Queensboro Bridge as the NYPD was chasing them.
- The Department of Correction joins the twenty-first century today and releases some publicly accessible data.
- OH GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK: "Catherine Bonner, 22, a Temple University student in Philadelphia, shares her lanternfly sympathies — how the red spots on their faces look like they are wearing blush — only with close friends."
- The Times followed Eric Adams around for a month after dark and…he really likes eating fish at a Midtown restaurant. No trips to Fort Lee?
