Menin Rekindles Mayoral Rumors With Cost-of-Living Moves and a Mamdani Copycat Bagel Video

Few people get excited over the cost of liability insurance, but City Council Speaker Julie Menin put her back into jazzing it up — literally — with a deli counter video promoting her latest bill, set to a score straight out of ‘Birdman.’ Her proposal to create a city Office of Insurance Affordability easily passed in a City Council vote last week. It aims to provide New York residents and businesses real-time price information on premiums to help them secure lower rates. But the speaker’s effort to insert herself in both the affordability push and the aesthetics of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s winning campaign immediately rekindled the prospect of a showdown between the two in 2029.While the speaker has previously denied any interest in running for mayor, a spokesperson for her office did not directly address the issue in response to questions from The New York Sun on Friday. But whether she plans to announce closer to 2029, which also marks the end of her term-limited tenure as speaker, it’s clear that she is the primary opponent Mr. Mamdani’s circle is gearing up to face.In the video, a staffer asks Ms. Menin to explain the insurance affordability proposal in the time it takes a deli worker to prepare scallion cream cheese on a sesame bagel. The promo is transparent in its effort to recreate the playfulness and aesthetics of Mr. Mamdani’s digital missives, down to the viral challenge-coded premise and groovy font dubbing her insurance monitoring proposal the “Bodega Bill.”Commentators immediately took Ms. Menin to task online for the copycat approach to ginning up public interest in public policy. While some X users thanked her for bringing attention to the issue and drawing the connection between businesses’ rising premiums and soaring consumer prices, more aligned with the comment: “she wants to be zohran so bad.”But her new comms strategy is just one of the tells signaling her interest in Gracie Mansion, according to political analyst Asad Dandia, a friend of the mayor who was appointed Brooklyn borough historian earlier this year. ”The other side of it is the actual policies and moves that she’s making,” said Mr. Dandia.Mr. Dandia cast doubt on the effectiveness of the insurance affordability measure, which he deemed a “reporting bill” that will collect complaints within the Department of Consumer and Worker Protections and escalate them to the state attorney general, increasing paperwork without necessarily delivering results. However, “on the surface of it, it is an attempt to ameliorate rising costs for New Yorkers,” he said.Ms. Menin’s spokesperson dismissed the idea that the speaker was hopping on a cost-of-living bandwagon in a statement to The Sun, saying she has been focused on insurance costs since losing her restaurant in the September 11 terrorist attacks, which also led her to create the lower Manhattan business coalition Wall Street Rising to support other companies facing similar challenges.But the affordability bill vote also comes on the heels of Ms. Menin’s public support last month for a teachers union-backed bill to grant New York Public Schools’ low-paid paraprofessionals a one-time $10,000 bonus, a stance that put her directly opposite the mayor.Mr. Mamdani did not endorse and has yet to sign the legislation, which he said side-stepped collective bargaining obligations, offering a one-off payout but undermining city unions going forward.“ The optics of it, at least on the surface again, make her look like the pro-union person and make the socialist mayor look like the anti-union person,” Mr. Dandia said. “What’s the point in undermining the mayor if you are intending to collaborate with him to make costs more affordable for New Yorkers?”Both Mr. Dandia and political analyst Michael Lange, a Democratic Socialist who has also known the mayor for several years, dismissed the idea that Ms. Menin, if she runs, could beat the mayor, a question both had evidently considered before.In Mr. Lange’s view, such a matchup would be ideal for the mayor.“You couldn’t make an opponent better than Julie Menin if you made them in a lab,” Mr. Lange told the Sun, citing the speaker’s enormous personal wealth and insider approach to politics. He compared Ms. Menin to Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election, whom Barack Obama successfully cast as a Washington insider, out of touch with everyday Americans. To Mr. Lange, the bagel video was a feeble attempt to beat the mayor at his own game. “That’s another problem with the Democratic establishment. Whatever is en vogue, they do,” he said. But Ms. Menin is not one to fall victim to a trend, according to Democratic strategist Nick Smith, who worked with Ms. Menin in when she oversaw the 2020 Census count in the city and donated to her 2013 campaign for Manhattan borough president.“She didn’t wake up after Mamdani won and suddenly discover affordability — she ran Consumer Affairs and the city’s Census effort,” Mr. Smith told the Sun. But Mr. Mamdani managed to build a strong coalition “around the basic reality that New York has become too expensive,” a victory that he says “changed the politics of the city,” and one the speaker is savvy enough to recognize. “If Julie is thinking about 2029, the interesting question is whether she can build her own version of a broad affordability coalition while still being Julie Menin,” he added.

Menin Rekindles Mayoral Rumors With Cost-of-Living Moves and a Mamdani Copycat Bagel Video

Menin Rekindles Mayoral Rumors With Cost-of-Living Moves and a Mamdani Copycat Bagel Video

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