Winners & Losers
This week’s biggest Winners & Losers
Who’s up and who’s down this week?
This week, one former mayor was caught sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. That’s right folks, Bill de Smoochio, as he’s been dubbed by the Post, reportedly spent a whopping three hours making out with a mystery woman at the Empire Rooftop bar. News of the snog fest broke a few months after BdB and his wife Chirlane McCray announced they were consciously uncoupling in the New York Times. As the NYC-famous pair explores single life, we are still awaiting pics from Chirlane’s outings at Gingers.
Letitia James -
Notwithstanding her understated tweet somewhat underselling the win, state Attorney General Letitia James scored a huge victory this week when in a pretrial decision, a judge said that former President Donald Trump committed fraud by inflating the value of his assets. Trump has vowed to appeal, but his control of his New York properties is in jeopardy. More importantly for James, the decision means following through on her longstanding campaign promises to go after Trump.
Vito Fossella -
While Vito Fossella’s former congressional colleagues are worrying about dress codes and careening towards a shutdown, the Staten Island borough president is getting stuff done. A judge agreed with Fossella that migrants should not be housed in a former Catholic school, but Mayor Eric Adams vows an appeal. Plus, Fossella got bipartisan support to study the age-old question of Staten Island secession. Though one Democrat, Council Member Kamillah Hanks, said she supports the study but not secession, saying a study will show the benefits of the forgotten borough.
Damian Williams -
Federal prosecutors in New Jersey got a mistrial when they tried U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez on corruption charges in 2017, now New York has to show them how it’s done. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams indicted Menendez and his wife, Nadine, alleging the couple accepted gold bars, $480,000 cash, a Mercedes convertible and even an air purifier as bribes to, among other things, get weapons to Egypt. Will Williams be New Jersey’s corruption busting savior, become the new Preet Bharara and leave Bob and Nadine wishing they just went to Costco? The jury still needs to be seated.
Jaime Williams -
During questioning by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a congressional hearing this week, Assembly Member Jaime Williams was forced to admit that she had no suggestions for where to house asylum-seekers, despite suing to block a new migrant shelter in her Brooklyn district. Williams’ position on the migrant issue was so conservative that Ocasio-Cortez didn’t even recognize her as a fellow Democrat. When the progressive standard-bearer tweeted out a video of the exchange, she captioned it: “Republicans have no solutions for immigration.”
Dara Khosrowshahi, Tony Xu and Howard Migdal -
New York City can start enforcing its new minimum pay law for app-based food delivery workers, a judge ruled this week. After months of campaigning against it, major food delivery companies including Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub sued to block the law in July. In the end, they only managed to delay implementation, shell out money for litigation and show that app giants’ days of successfully fending off regulation in New York may finally be in the rearview.
Steven Nigrelli -
Serving in an acting capacity may not have stopped some state officials from sticking with their jobs, but that’s not the case for Steven Nigrelli. The acting superintendent of the State Police was forced to submit his resignation following an investigation into allegations of employee harassment and mistreatment. The allegations lost Nigrelli the support of the governor, who said she would not tap him to lead the agency permanently, so his stint as its head lasted much shorter than he likely hoped.