Dan Cantor, executive director of the labor-backed Working Families Party, makes the case in an email to supporters:

Sometimes the candidate who'll fight for working families is a challenger, sometimes it's an incumbent who's been doing it for years. Think about Teddy Kennedy if you want the best example of such a person at the national level.

Time after time, on the crucial fights of the day - Silver has been the most important leader standing up to right-wing corporate power. He beat back Republican attempts to end rent regulation, slash public schools, and reduce access to healthcare coverage. He actually believes that the government has a role to play in making sure everyone has a decent shot in life.

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The McCain campaign will take what it can get in New York.

A release just sent out--"McCain Manhattan Volunteers 'March for McCain'"--about a demonstration planned for Sunday ("Supporters Take Third Avenue By Storm"), includes this:

"It was an amazing experience," said Andrew Eristoff, the Manhattan Coordinator for McCain-Palin 2008. "We had dozens of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents all walking and working together for McCain-Palin. We couldn't have asked for a better reception: even in this bastion of blue, we found lots of enthusiastic support for Senator McCain's experience, character, and maverick brand of leadership, especially when people saw proof-positive that plenty of their neighbors feel the same way!"

Dozens?

The grounds, at about 11:30 this morning. Not a soul in sight here, other than a few scattered security people.

In six hours, there will be more than 23,000 fans here.

Today, Esquire presented its 75th anniversary cover. You know, the futuristic digital doohickey created by E Ink that they've been teasing since July.

The Boston Globe's Erich P. Schwartzel reports that "Copies featuring the E Ink technology will cost $2 more than the regular newsstand price of $3.99."

Hearst is shipping just 100,000 copies of the digital cover. Better get one quick since, according to The New York Times' Tim Arango in July "the magazine will run out of juice after 90 days."

In the Manhattan office market, the storyline since last summer has been one of decline measured by greater vacancy amounts and static rents. The narrative held coming out of this summer.

A new report from Colliers ABR shows a Manhattan office vacancy rate of 8.7 percent in August, essentially unchanged from July and 2 percentage points higher than in August 2007. The average asking rent was also basically the same in August as in July (and August 2007) at $65.89 a square foot.

There was no roaring out of the summertime into an especially active fall.  read more »

Hillary Clinton just sent out this email in which she says of her "friend" Sheldon Silver that "New York is lucky to have Shelly Silver fighting for us in Albany."

Paul Newell, if nothing else, continues to attract the heavy artillery.

Here’s the Ed Towns campaign t-shirt I described in my story.

It's one way to fuse Towns' longevity (he's been in Congress since 1983) with Barack Obama's--and other relative newcomers'--theme of "change."

Might be a bit premature to get in line for a Related Companies-built condo on the western rail yard. The state released an early document in the rezoning process for the site just south of the Javits Center that lays out a tentative schedule for the eight towers slated to rise on the property, with the earliest completion date set for September 2015, and the latest being December 2018. (The document is for the western half of the 26-acre West Side rail yards, as the eastern half was rezoned in 2005, mostly for commercial buildings.)

Related won the rail yards back in May, when it pledged to give the M.  read more »

Expect June 30, 2009, to be a big day for the national housing market, assuming that people still listen to James J. Cramer and his manic economic musings. In his column for New York, Mr. Cramer lists not one, but 10 (10!) reasons why the sales market worm will finally turn, citing, among other favorable developments, the slow down in building development, the stabilization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the bottoming out of troubled markets in places like California and Florida.

But can this man be trusted? After all, this is the same James J. Cramer who told his viewers on Tuesday, March 11, “Bear Stearns is fine! Do not take your money out.” Three days later and the rest is history. (Classic YouTube clip above.)

So, home buyers, beware: June 30, 2009 may (or may not) be the day to buy that dream house.

Here’s a piece of literature I picked up from one of the many Sheldon Silver volunteers on Grand Street yesterday. The slogan—“always there for us”—cuts against the grain of “change,” which many people are latching onto these days.

If nothing else, the experience message is one that Silver supporters like Jose Rivera would approve.