Tom DiNapoli

Here’s a ticket that intern Em Whitney and I scored as a souvenir from last night’s State Democratic Party fund-raiser at 41 Broad Street. Since the event was closed to the press, we didn’t actually make it inside, but we did get to chat with a few people outside about Hillary Clinton‘s presidential campaign and other topics of interest.  read more »

Dan Squadron is trying to unseat fellow Democrat Marty Connor for state Senate, in the district that represents lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.

But more interesting than the people on the ballot are how Demoratic power brokers are lining up in that fight. Schumer is supporting Squardon, his former aide, against Connor, who didn’t support Schumer in his 1998 primary for Senate.

But as the invitation for Connor’s May 8th fund-raiser at the Ritz Carlton shows, he's got a good chunk of the rest of the party establishment.  read more »

Here’s a shot from the breakfast hosted Sunday morning by the Council of Orthodox Jewish Organizations on the West Side, which, as Grace Rauh noted, attracted nearly every 2009 candidate for citywide office.  read more »

Twenty percent of state revenue comes from Wall Street, Comptroller Tom DiNapoli told Brian Lehrer during an appearance on WNYC this morning.

“That’s corporate profits and that’s personal income taxes from the people who work there—and much of that is paid out from the personal bonuses,” he said. Budget projections until recently “follow[ed] a couple of years of really record bonuses."  read more »

The city and state comptrollers want America’s 10 largest companies to disclose who they make political contributions to.

“Shareholders need full and complete disclosure of companies’ political expenditures to fully evaluate the political uses of the corporate assets,” Bill Thompson said in a public statement.

The companies targeted include Halliburton, Wal-Mart, Entergy and Charles Schwab.

More info over here.

Tom DiNapoli, the Long Island Assemblyman who was installed as state comptroller last year did “a leisurely breakfast interview” with the Great Neck Record that's out today.

The article doesn’t reveal much that we don’t already know, but a hint of one of Eliot Spitzer's first political battles caught my eye. From the profile:  read more »

Tom DiNapoli just released a report saying that the New York Racing Association, which Eliot Spitzer recommended be allowed to continue running three of the state's horse-racing facilities, “continually misinterpreted the mathematical formula for calculating the franchise fee and shortchanged taxpayers.”

Joe Bruno has been pressuring lawmakers to make a decision on the issue before the end of the month.

More on the story here.

OK, this will be the last video from the state Democratic Party's conference yesterday.

In it Tom Suozzi puts up with my questions about kissing one-time rival Tom DiNapoli, on the forehead. And watch what he says he'll do to Eliot Spitzer, another one-time rival.

The key message being pushed today at the state Democratic Party meeting in Garden City--onetime home of Rudy Giuliani and home to the last Republican state convention--is party unity.

Here, above, is State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, who organized a lunch for convention goers, sharing a moment up on the podium with Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi.

DiNapoli lost a primary to Suozzi in the 2001 county executive’s race, but he said that the two have since mended fences, going so far as to reveal to the crowd that he had kissed his former opponent at a dinner the night before.

The crowd laughed. To prove that the story wasn't a joke, Suozzi stepped up and planted one on DiNapoli’s forehead.

Afterwards, I asked Suozzi what political significance that kiss might have for Eliot Spitzer. All he would say was, "I'm going to give him a kiss too, later."

In other news: Chuck Schumer said he still hasn't studied Eliot Spitzer's plan to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses, while Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Joe Crowley said they support the effort.

State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli stopped by a while ago to talk to the folks on "bloggers row" (which is actually full of recognizable print bylines like Liz Benjamin, Dan Janison and Nicholas Confessore), and said, among other things, that when he was in the Assembly, he did not support a bill to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses, which Eliot Spitzer has made a major priority.

DiNapoli added that he'd like to "give the governor a chance" and that "it's his call."

(Separately, DiNapoli also let drop the bit of news that he hired former Assemblyman Dan Feldman of Brooklyn, who used to work for Eliot Spitzer in the Attorney General's office and ran unsuccessfully for congress against Anthony Weiner.) Shortly afterwards, newly elected Democratic state Senator Craig Johnson of Long Island was asked for his position on the driver's license issue, and said that he "no comment" and that he hadn't "reviewed it." But he did vote for a Republican bill in the state Senate that basically ran counter to Spitzer's proposals.