Catsimatidis Readies For 2009 Mayoral Run
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Democrat-turned-Republican businessman John Catsimatidis is laying the groundwork for a 2009 run for mayor by forming an exploratory committee and pulling together a team of political aides to run his likely campaign.
A veteran of Republican politics who ran Governor Pataki’s 1994 campaign, Robert Ryan, will be the committee’s executive director. A retired deputy CEO of Deloitte & Touche, Alan Bernikow, will serve as its treasurer, and an election lawyer who worked on the mayoral campaigns of mayors Koch, Giuliani, and Bloomberg, Lawrence Mandelker, will serve as the committee’s lawyer.
The team will use the same polling company employed by Governor Schwarzenegger during his two gubernatorial campaigns in California, McLaughlin & Associates.
A former Pataki administration official who also held positions in the office of the president of the Bronx, Jose Ithier, will be the committee’s “director of ethnic coalitions” and focus on the city’s Hispanic voters. Mr. Ithier helped organize a campaign called Amigos de Pataki during the 2002 gubernatorial campaign.
