Joe Lhota is so very right about Bill de Blasio taking us back to the bad old days of the David Dinkins era.
He is just wrong about why we should worry.
The biggest threat to the city in potential slippage is not a spike in crime or renewed riots that leave police cars spinning upside down like tops on the street, as Lhota’s ads suggest. No, the threat comes from the return of lobbyists like Sid Davidoff, who, with the rise of de Blasio, are returning like Freddy Krueger on Halloween.
If you do not recall the dalliance between Davidoff and the Dinkins administration, count yourself lucky. It went something like this:
Dinkins was a tennis fanatic. He played many mornings and had a good backhand. Naturally, there were many people looking to bounce a ball back and forth with the mayor.
Among them was Davidoff, another fine tennis player whose deep interest in city government began with his days in the John Lindsay administration and continued as head of a prosperous firm of lobbyists and lawyers.
Davidoff made an excellent living making sure that contracts, leases and variances for his clients won approvals. In those years, he was a regular fixture in the west wing of City Hall, where he was also close with the first deputy mayor, Norman Steisel, and closer still with Steisel’s chief of staff.
These ties served Davidoff well. With clients ranging from Donald Trump to water meter suppliers, his firm was the league champion among city lobbyists throughout the Dinkins years . It helped that every time the press reported that one of Davidoff’s clients had scored an unseemly gain from the public coffers, more clients appeared at his door.
Davidoff is now an honored senior citizen in the lobbying ranks. And he is also among the excited army of advocates-for-hire who, thanks to de Blasio’s rise, are already beating on the doors of City Hall, somewhat like those ravenous tribes of the undead that populate all the best television shows.
Earlier this month, the lobbyists-for-de Blasio crew turned out in strength at the Roosevelt Hotel to celebrate the presumptive mayor-elect and his friend, Hillary Rodham Clinton, helping to raise about $1 million for the populist candidate’s mayoral campaign.
Among those listed as hosts of the event were two top executives of the city’s current ranking lobbying champ, Kasirer Consulting, which took in $6 million in fees last year.
Among the event’s chairs was James Capalino, a lobbying veteran whose company made $3.3 million in 2012, good enough for a second place finish in the year’s lobbying season. Also hosting was Alan Sclar, a transportation lawyer who gathered contributions for de Blasio from some of the city’s biggest school-bus contractors, one of whom pulled out a loaded pistol in the middle of city contract talks in 2010. He meant no harm, his lawyers insisted .
Part of the cause for renewed frenzy among the lobbying classes is that during the Bloomberg years, they were forced to ply their trade mainly among City Council leaders. Mayor Bloomberg was not immune to their charms, but as a billionaire who self-funded his own campaigns, he did not need their names atop any dinner invitations. He preferred the company of finance and real estate titans who did just fine under his reign.
It may be that one reason Joe Lhota is not raising the alarm about this disturbing aspect of the Dinkins era and the throngs of lobbyists now clustering around his Democratic rival like moths to a flame is that lobbying was a sensitive topic in City Hall during his day as well.
Back in the Rudy Giuliani administration, where Lhota was a key deputy, the most successful lobbyists were from the law firm of a man named Raymond Harding. This was something of an embarrassment since Harding had practically invented Giuliani as a political candidate, and he guided his electoral campaigns .
As soon as Giuliani took office, clients began pouring through Harding’s door and his firm soon displaced Davidoff as the city’s top ranked lobbyist. Things got so out of hand, that eventually Giuliani threatened to ban lobbying altogether.
But like those Freddy Krueger-style Halloween characters, lobbying survives all attacks. Today, one of Harding’s sons — a lobbyist in Albany — serves as one of Lhota’s biggest fundraisers. Yet you will hear no complaints about this from Bill de Blasio. He is too busy with his own lobbying fan club.
Robbins is a former columnist and staff writer at The Daily News and the Village Voice. Follow him on Twitter @tommy_robb.
