Nov 21, 2024

By Jeff Coltin, Nick Reisman and Emily Ngo

Presented by

With Timmy Facciola

A man and a woman face the camera and hold hands as a sign of unity.

Mayor Eric Adams’ pick for his fourth police commissioner is not unprecedented, but that doesn’t make it any less unconventional. | Courtesy of the NYC Mayor's Office

‘A REAL RULE FOLLOWER’: The scion of a wealthy family from Manhattan’s east side never served as a cop but just got appointed police commissioner at a relatively young age after reforming another government agency.

Teddy Roosevelt went on to become president. Jessica Tisch’s future has yet to be written.

Mayor Eric Adams’ pick for his fourth police commissioner is not unprecedented, but that doesn’t make it any less unconventional.

She’s a woman who’s never carried a badge — a different kind of blueblood than the outer borough cops who the mayor has seen himself reflected in.

But Tisch did serve 12 years in the NYPD as a civilian, rising to lead technology in the department, before getting tapped to lead the city’s I.T. agency and then the Department of Sanitation.

In retrospect, Adams’ pick feels obvious. He’s obsessed with new technology in the NYPD, and since the K5 robocop can’t legally be commissioner, he went with the well-regarded policing technology expert who was already loyally serving in his admin.

In Tisch, Adams is getting somebody who knows the department’s culture and is beloved in City Hall as someone who can “Get Stuff Done” — like trash containerization and citywide composting.

He’s getting “a real rule follower” who is “committed to applying standards uniformly,” someone close to Tisch told Playbook.

Perhaps most importantly, after ex-Commissioner Edward Caban and Adams’ top two public safety advisers got sacked amid corruption investigations, Tisch is viewed as incorruptible. Her family’s $10.1 billion net worth (in hotels, commercial insurance, gas pipelines, etc.) is larger than the NYPD’s massive operating budget of $6.2 billion.

“She’s not beholden to anybody. She’s a Tisch,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a consultant and close watcher of law enforcement. “She doesn’t have to worry. She can just do her work. That’s an extraordinary position to be in.”

Tisch, however, isn’t expected to break up the camera-hungry cabal of upper-echelon cops that includes Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry, who has earned the mayor’s trust. “No one was going to become police commissioner who didn't fit into that core structure, who wasn’t respected by them,” an Adams adviser told Playbook.

The guys at the top understand that “she’s going to be the boss,” said former NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan, who praised her as a “great choice.

“How often did you see Caban doing a press conference? How often was he front and center on decision making?” Monahan said. “I think you’re going to see her front and center.”

The abrupt announcement Wednesday was a surprise to many City Hall staffers. But Tisch was a favorite of Adams’ closest advisers.

Former Chief of Staff Frank Carone was “100 percent behind” Tisch, a person familiar with the matter told Playbook. And Chief Adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin is a big fan — and only missed the announcement Wednesday for the funeral of a close friend.

“I have full confidence in the new commissioner of the NYPD, Jessica Tisch, to make the department even more stellar, if possible, than it already is,” Lewis-Martin told Playbook. “And I thank Acting Commissioner Donlon for holding the fort. God bless the NYPD.”

Well-liked in City Hall, Tisch’s biggest challenge may be winning over the rank-and-file cops.

“A lot of people felt that she was put in by Daddy, so to speak,” a city Sanitation worker said about her reputation in the department she’s led for three years.

“Everybody assumed we were the stepping stone to where she wanted to be next.” — Jeff Coltin

HAPPY THURSDAY: Got news? Send it our way: Jeff Coltin, Emily Ngo and Nick Reisman.

A message from Uber:

Study Reveals Uber Drivers Make More than EMTs: NYC Uber drivers now earn an average of $52,900 annually after expenses, outpacing the salaries of many essential city employees, including EMTs and sanitation workers. Despite delivering vital services, these workers struggle with stagnant wages while Uber drivers have benefited from five TLC-mandated pay hikes since 2020. Read more on the wage disparity impacting NYC’s workforce. Learn More.

WHERE’S KATHY? In New York City.

WHERE’S ERIC? Making an infrastructure- and jobs-related announcement, delivering remarks at The Broadway Association’s monthly lunch, and hosting a roundtable discussion with Trinidad and Tobago community leaders.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “We have a leadership crisis in America, and nowhere is it more profound than in New York.” — Rep. Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, telling NY1 he is not ruling out a challenge to Gov. Kathy Hochul.

ABOVE THE FOLD

A man wearing a plaid shirt and a hat stands with his back against another man wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and red tie.

Revelers feted President-elect Donald Trump's reelection at a victory party hosted by the New York Young Republicans Club. | Michael Cravotta

VICTORY LAP: After waging war with New York GOP Chair Ed Cox for his moderate sensibilities, the New York Young Republican Club has emerged victorious with the election of President-elect Donald Trump.

What seemed dead — namely, any hope that New Yorkers might vote Republican — now seems quite viable.

Under the leadership of club President Gavin Wax and through coordination with the Trump campaign, the NYYRC has established itself as a MAGA outpost on the blue isle of Manhattan, and its members gathered last night in the East Village for a victory party – where they discussed with eager anticipation the mass deportations and increased tariffs that Trump, their past keynote speaker, has promised them.

Trump’s win is trickling down — club member and gala speaker Elise Stefanik was recently nominated to serve as Ambassador to the United Nations and former club member Karoline Leavitt will serve as Trump’s White House press secretary.

It was the brainchild of NYYRC campaign chair Mario Nicoletto to dispatch 80 club members to Pennsylvania to canvas for Trump.

“We knocked on north of 10,000 doors in Bucks County, a bellwether county, one of the most important for the state in the election,” Nicoletto told Playbook. “We made over 50,000 calls in Pennsylvania exclusively coordinating with the Trump team. It was amazing.”

The NYYRC rallied for Trump when others in his party were less comfortable doing so. On the day of Donald Trump’s first Manhattan court appearance in April 2023, the club organized a rally across the street from the courthouse and brought in MAGA loyalists like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and political operative Jack Posobiec.

“Obviously, President Trump was stuck in New York for various reasons, and we were able to present opportunities like the bodega visit, like the Bronx rally, which played off the time that he spent here,” NYYRC Vice President Nathan Berger said.

Last December, Wax’s loyalty was rewarded when Trump agreed to headline the club’s annual winter gala at Cipriani Wall St.

They sat next to each other at dinner. Wax ribbed him on social media later for putting ketchup on his steak. Trump in turn praised Wax’s leadership from the dais and urged him to marry his then-girlfriend and former club communications chair Chelsea Hall.

Wax was home last night with Hall and their new baby, while his staff celebrated.

The club coordinated with the Trump campaign to provide volunteers for Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden last month as well. And they’re poised to whisper in his ear once he gets back in the White House next year.

“The New York GOP could learn a few things from us, or they can continue to be a glorified welfare office for has-been political consultants,” Wax told Playbook in a statement. “We need a party that understands the movement, understands the times we are living in, and understands how to win elections and grow the party. Instead we have almost two decades of failed party leadership that is incapable of winning a statewide election.” —Timmy Facciola

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CITY HALL: THE LATEST

The New York City Hall building is seen.

The potential for carve outs to the City of Yes plan is prompting concerns from multiple mayoral candidates, advocates and some council members. | Chase Sutton/POLITICO

DECISION DAY: The mayor’s citywide housing blueprint is up for a key City Council committee vote today – with possible compromises limiting the scope of some of its most contentious provisions.

The potential for carve-outs to the City of Yes plan is prompting concerns from multiple mayoral candidates, advocates and some council members.

Four candidates looking to unseat Adams next year — city Comptroller Brad Lander, state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, former comptroller Scott Stringer and Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani — all released statements Wednesday pledging support for the plan. Myrie urged the council to “not water down solutions,” Lander said the city must not “prioritize parking spaces over housing in transit-rich neighborhoods,” and Mamdani said he “oppose[s] changes that would create less housing,” particularly to the parking provision.

The initial plan would nix parking mandates citywide, as is already the case in much of Manhattan. Changes floated in negotiations — with the geographic boundaries and other details still in flux Wednesday — would instead create three different sets of rules.

The mandates would be eliminated in neighborhoods including Williamsburg, Astoria and Harlem, reduced in places like the south Bronx and central Brooklyn, and left almost as is in the far reaches of the outer boroughs, according to multiple people familiar with the talks. A provision to allow apartments on single-family lots would also be subject to geographic restrictions, with areas prone to flooding potentially carved out.

Any agreement on the land use changes is contingent on a funding deal for affordable housing and infrastructure, which the legislative body has demanded alongside “City of Yes.”

Tweaks to the zoning proposal will almost certainly change the estimated number of homes the plan will create — which is an already-modest sum of up to 109,000 over 15 years.

“There are certain districts in the city that are infamous for being against new housing being built, but the whole intent was to build housing equitably, so if you roll back those measures, what’s the point of doing this in the first place?” Council Member Julie Won, who represents dense Long Island City, said Wednesday. — Janaki Chadha

VE-GONE: Rachel Atcheson, a longtime Adams aide who was by his side every single day as his “body person” in 2022, is leaving the administration next month.

Atcheson, a deputy director in the Mayor’s Office of Food Policy, told Playbook she’s leaving next month to launch a nonprofit called Food Policy Pathways, which will focus on mentoring “the next generation of food policy professionals into city, state and federal government.”

“I am an ardent supporter of the mayor,” said Atcheson, who started at Brooklyn Borough Hall in 2018 and worked on the 2021 campaign. She’ll be “cheering them on the outside” and said she isn’t leaving because of the tumult. “I genuinely think that food policy nationally is trailing New York City, and there’s a lot of progress to be made.”

City hospitals offering vegan meals and a Lifestyle Medicine program counseling patients on healthy eating are a couple of examples.

Atcheson is getting married next year to Sean McElwee, a founder of the progressive think tank Data for Progress. A committed plant-based eater, she worked closely on Adams’ memoir/cookbook, which was published ahead of his campaign. — Jeff Coltin

ADAMS COURT DATE: The judge overseeing Adams’ case ordered federal prosecutors and the mayor’s lawyers to meet privately to discuss the feasibility of starting the trial on April 1, 2025.

The two sides have been dueling over discovery, as the mayor’s team tries to move up the start of the trial, which Judge Dale Ho scheduled for April 21, 2025 — two months before the Democratic primary where Adams plans to stand for reelection. — Jeff Coltin