Is Mayor DeBlasio corrupt or just a serial campaign finance rule abuser?
That was the question that dominated Brooklyn Paper Radio’s official kick off to the 2017 election season. The jam-packed episode featured mayoral candidate Sal Albanese, Daily News investigative reporter Greg B. Smith, and our own columnist Lenore Skenazy (yes, it rhymes with “crazy”) discussing such diverse topics as the mayor’s competence, the mayor’s Brooklyn trolley fund-raising scam and, of course, co-host Gersh Kuntzman’s ongoing anxiety about parenting and prodigious sexual appetites.
Albanese, a former long-serving Bay Ridge councilman, started it all off by announcing his candidacy for the Democratic mayoral nomination, saying that he found DeBlasio “corrupt,” citing coverage this week in the Daily News. Albanese also called for more public housing and non-partisan elections.
“So finish this sentence, Sal,” Kuntzman asked. “A vote for Albanese is a vote for *blank*.”
“Reform,” he said.
Albanese was followed by Smith, a Daily News legend, who did not go as far as the candidate.
“I would not say that DeBlasio is ‘corrupt,’ because I do not believe he is lining his own pockets,” said Smith, who has published several stories about DeBlasio’s fund-raising efforts, including this week’s front-page story about the manner in which the mayor’s fund-raisers simultaneously raise money for the mayor’s re-election and for a charity controlled by Hizzoner.
“But there are coincidences and there are amazing coincidences,” Smith said, saying it was no mere coincidence that real-estate developers along the proposed waterfront trolley line were rushing to donate to DeBlasio’s Campaign for One New York charity in cash amounts far exceeding what contributors can legally give to a normal political campaign.
The show climaxed with an appearance by Skenazy, who has been a New York City columnist for years, most recently with The Brooklyn Paper. Skenazy is also the author of “Free Range Kids,” a book, website and movement that began after she famously let her 9-year-old ride the subway alone.
Skenazy agreed with pretty much every guest in the history of Brooklyn Paper Radio that Kuntzman is less a parent and more a helicopter pilot.
“You don’t trust your kids,” she joked.
She did confirm that Kuntzman’s co-host Vince DiMiceli is handsome, a fact reiterated on almost every show.
Brooklyn Paper Radio is recorded and podcast live every Thursday at around 4:45 pm (but sometimes, like today, a little later) — for your convenience — from our studio in America’s Downtown and can be found, as always, right here on Brook