Check out the tusks on this guy! (Tusk Stragegies)

It's been a trying couple years for Bradley Tusk. In 2009, Mr. Tusk waged war as Bloomberg's campaign manager and, after that exhausting season of political jousting, was grilled grilled at Blago's corruption trial in Illinois. As Bloomberg's right hand man and the former deputy Governor of Illinois, Mr. Tusk has experienced all iterations of the crumbling political cookie. It seems, however, that he's come out on top. Mr. Tusk and his wife, art historian Harper Montgomery,  have just purchased a new home for $3 million, city records show. And while we might have pegged the civic upstart as an uptown kind of man, it seems he prefers the genteel environs of Gramercy Park. His new coop is located at 112 East 19th Street. More to come.

He has been described as "a brash New Yorker, in your face" it seemed Mr.Tusk demurred at the discussion table: he paid exactly the asking price for his new two-bedroom, two-bath coop.

And while his new place is no Gracie Mansion, it's certainly a whole lot better than the federal prison Blago will be calling home for the next decade. According to the listing from Corcoran broker Maria Manuche, the 1800-square-foot pad features a chef's kitchen, 10 foot ceilings, a washer/dryer and "open city vistas (that includes a view to the Chrysler Building)!" Views of skyscrapers, what could be better!

The home was sold by Thomas Taraci, who [paid $1.4 million for it back in 2004.

Here's more about Wal-Mart's newest addition, Phil Singer.

Singer's name popped up in Claire Atkinson's story today, noting he runs "a corporate consulting firm, which has worked with prominent Democrats, including Sen. Chuck Schumer."

Singer also worked on Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign and, most recently, on Andrew Cuomo's 2010 gubernatorial campaign.

The giant realtor is currently mounting a campaign-style campaign while it explores opening its first store in New York City. Other political operatives helping the Wal-Mart effort include Bloomberg's 2009 campaign manager, Bradley Tusk, and noted pollster Doug Schoen. 

As for Singer, who is 35, intense, and a marathon runner, he politely referred questions to Wal-Mart spokesman Steven Restivo.

Restivo said, Singer started "several months ago" and "is well-respected among the New York City media and he's helping us on the communication front."

I asked if Singer's connection to those notable Democrats was part of the reason he was hired.

Restivo paused briefly, and said, "He was brought on for his background and skills in the field of communications." (I sent an inquiry to Cuomo's office to see if the governor has any thoughts about Wal-Mart and will update when a response is available.)

On the broader point about the company's communication strategy in New York City, here's how Restivo described it:

"Wal-Mart has a good story to tell and so, we're putting the resources behind telling it in as many different ways as we can to as many different people as we can," he said.

One thing critics note is the company's refusal to attend City Council hearings on the matter.

Restivo said the Council hearings shouldn't be seen as platform where issues could be earnestly discussed.

"For months, we have been engaging with elected officials and community stakeholders across the city and we've been listening to concerns, answering questions and sharing information," he said. "Our decision not to attend those hearings had nothing to do with our willingness to answer questions. We do that every single day in New York City and had everything to do with hypothetical nature of the proceedings."

When asked what he would like to see different in order to attend those hearings, Restivo was not specific. 

"We don't have a store or announced project in New York City," he said. "It's no secret we're evaluating opportunities, but at the end of the day, we don't have a store or announced project here."

In an email, Tusk has more to say about the meetings those meetings:

"The specifics of what Danny was referring to was the beginning phases of meetings and outreach from the education reform community to the likely candidates. We're doing some of it one on one. Some in groups. Some formal. Some informal. But we expect and intend to be a major force in the election and want to see where each candidate stands on our issues."

Massey also added some counter-intuitive ideas about how Wal-Mart's arrival can be a boon to Quinn. "Smoothing Walmart's arrival would help her with the building trades and some black voters, who want the jobs the retailer would bring," he wrote. An unnamed Quinn aide offered a slightly different explanation of the coalition they're assembling to David Freedlander.

Over the past several months, Mr. Tusk orchestrated the abortive Harold Ford Jr. campaign against Kirsten Gillibrand, a frequent target of the mayor's ire; he ran the political operation of a group of charter school advocates, working alongside the mayor's own efforts, to lift the cap on charters throughout the state; and he has signed on as the top adviser to Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan, convincing the friend and golfing buddy of the mayor that there's a Republican path to the attorney general's office this fall.

Mr. Tusk's informal status as the mayor's go-to guy has its benefits for both sides. Mr. Tusk provides the outsource-able political muscle--capable of acting as a cudgel to supplement the administration's efforts from the outside--and at the same time reaps the returns of a particular, and potentially lucrative, niche on the flank of Team Bloomberg.

"The mayor cares about one thing, and that's who can get the job done. If you can get the job done, he wants you on his team," said Ed Skyler, a former deputy mayor and Mr. Tusk's best friend.

A source close to the mayor puts it more bluntly: "Not only does he want Bradley on his team, he wants him to be a quarterback."

It was Mr. Skyler who brought his friend into the Bloomberg orbit in 2002 for a one-year stint in the mayor's office. The two had met at Henry Stern's Parks Department in the mid-1990s; they had both graduated from Penn the same year, but hadn't known each other. Mr. Tusk had met Ed Rendell, then the mayor of Philadelphia, in 1992 and had become an intern in Mr. Rendell's office, which allowed him to forgo the poli-sci department and major in creative writing instead.

"His parks name was Ivory," said Mr. Stern, who thought Mr. Tusk's ability stood out even among the young talent in his department.

Mr. Tusk went off to law school at the University of Chicago, studied under Cass Sunstein, and brought back some of the scholar's social norms theory-including the use of shame to affect social behavior-to Mr. Stern and the Parks Department.

"Ivory thought up a slogan we put on signs: 'If you don't clean up after your dog, you don't deserve to own one,'" Mr. Stern recalled.

He left for Mr. Schumer's office, and later decamped for a career-making job as the deputy governor of Illinois to Rod Blagojevich.

Mr. Tusk came back to New York to work at Lehman Brothers. When Lehman collapsed, his friends in the mayor's office recruited him back with the promise they would keep him busy. He ended up wrangling support for the term-limits extension, and then, for the reelection effort, as campaign manager--his first job on a campaign.

It was a strange one.

The idea was to project the inevitability of Mr. Bloomberg's reelection, even though internal polls showed it to be a close race. The strategy stood to make Mr. Tusk's $100 million campaign look underwhelming when the numbers rolled in.

"Bradley knew what the margin would mean for him professionally and he could have easily put out stories sort of lowering expectations," Mr. Skyler said. "Bradley basically put the mayor first and him last. And I think long term, people recognize that."

But for Mr. Tusk, who is now hanging a shingle as Tusk Strategies, being on Team Bloomberg makes for a unique niche, one that could prove difficult to navigate.

Mr. Tusk's lusty embrace of the Bloomberg operative-for-hire role has paid dividends for him, but it also irrevocably altered his relationship with the New York Democratic Party, and in particular with the man who may well be the next leader of the U.S. Senate.

"Clearly, there were people who I like and respect, who define the party's position, who didn't want me to do that," said Mr. Tusk of his work for Mr. Ford. "At the end of the day, if I think candidate X is better than candidate Y, and X calls me to help them, I'm going to take it. That's just the way I am."

"I think in New York City it has now become fairly common for Democratic consultants to work for an independent candidate, and I think that's a reflection that a lot of New York voters have voted for an independent candidate," said Howard Wolfson, the longtime Democratic operative, who now works for Mr. Bloomberg.

But Mr. Tusk's decision to handle a Republican candidate for attorney general--even a relatively moderate one like Mr. Donovan--is a step across the aisle that many of his fellow Democratic consultants have been unwilling to take.

Mr. Tusk scoffs at the possibility that such blatant party-crossing could cost him the top candidates in both parties.

"Would I love to run a presidential campaign someday? Sure, theoretically, it would be fun. ... If some Republican or Democrat who I like and want to work for believes I'm the best person, they're going to hire me. I firmly believe that."

"It's something you can do," said Hank Sheinkopf, the longtime Democratic consultant who worked with Mr. Tusk on the mayor's most recent reelection and said the young operative would be in his top-five people to have in a foxhole with him. "When the mayor's not in office, it will be a little more difficult. We don't know yet what the Bloomberg legacy will be."

Mr. Tusk sees his role broader than the Bloomberg orbit. He has unrelated corporate clients and is currently working pro bono on Ed Koch's New York Uprising campaign for nonpartisan redistricting (it also employs two former Bloomberg aides), and sees his success on charter schools as the first of what could become a model for battling entrenched special interests in Albany.

"What I'd like to do is take that general set of policies and figure out, how do we corral all these different people and resources, who agree on all these different principles, to have one effort to get things done?" Mr. Tusk said.

"The era of the union special interests may be over as we know it--for the time being," said Mr. Sheinkopf. "So Bradley Tusk may be the right guy at the right time. This may be his moment."

rpillifant@observer.com

Both shoveled money at the state party in the past seven months. Mr. Bloomberg gave a record-high $1.2 million donation, in two $600,000 payments, and a set of landlords together put more than $700,000 toward the party as part of an effort to create their own well-funded, autonomous political force within the broader Independence Party. (The Daily News and Post reported on Tuesday, Feb. 9 that the Manhattan DA is investigating issues with the mayor's donations.)

Now the two are looking to the same adviser.

Bradley Tusk, the former campaign manager for Mr. Bloomberg, has been interviewing for a job to help lead REBNY's effort, according to multiple people familiar with the talks. And as part of a set of recent meetings on the initiative, Mr. Tusk gave a presentation to REBNY members outlining a possible path forward for the effort.

Both the Bloomberg administration and REBNY say there is no coordination between the two camps—"There have been no links to the mayor or his campaign. Tusk is a talented person who we are talking to because of his talents," REBNY president Steven Spinola wrote in an email—but it's easy to see an aligned if separate interest.

The agendas of both are challenged by the recent rise of the labor-backed Working Families Party, and with Republicans currently out of control in Albany, the business interests of the state are looking for another vehicle to influence policy. The Independence Party, meanwhile, has proven willing to extend its brand to those with deep pockets who generally share the party's goals.

ebrown@observer.com

That figure includes $6.2 million spent in this latest filing, which covered from November 27, 2009, to January 11, 2010, and includes the six-figure bonuses given to key staffers.

Patti Harrison, Bradley Tusk and Howard Wolfson each received $400,000 bonuses.

I and a few other reporters are combing through the filing now in midtown. There may be another report filed after this, Mr. Wolfson, the campaign spokesman, said.

Not bad, considering the election results and the general unpopularity of large bonuses these days.

Bloomberg's campaign spokesman declined to get into specifics, but emailed me to say, "We'll file with the CFB on Jan 15 and will gladly provide copies of our filing to the media, as we have done throughout the year."

The first is Cas Holloway, who will lead the Department of Environmental Protection. Bloomberg noted Cas worked a few desks away from him inside the City Hall bullpen, where Holloway was chief of staff to Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler. (Skyler and Holloway [and Bradley Tusk too!] worked together at the Parks Department under Henry Stern.)

At a press conference in the Blue Room this morning, Bloomberg was asked why it took 13 months to fill the vacancy with the person a few feet away from him.

"Because we really do take this seriously," said Bloomberg. "We do nationwide searches" and "we had some candidates I thought could have done an excellent job but didn't quite have the array of skill sets I think this department needs."

The other commissioner announced today is Vinny Schiraldi, who will lead the Department of Probations. Bloomberg hired Schiraldi away from the Washington D.C. Department of Youth and Rehabilitation Services.

Schiraldi said he wanted to focus on juveniles in the criminal justice system, and noted that New York is one of only two states, along with North Carolina, where children as young as 16 years old are considered adults when it comes to probation.

Later, I asked Schiraldi if he'd seek to change that. He said he hadn't discussed the issue with the mayor, and said Albany, where the law would need to be changed, is an "interesting" place, so it was unclear if he'd tackle that issue first.

16- and 17-year-olds can actually get "less supervision" when they're treated as adults on probation, which often does not serve to help rehabilitate them, said Schiraldi.

“We need to set the record straight,” said Thompson campaign manager Eddie Castell, who checked off the number of ways that Bloomberg controls the schools now that were not available to Thompson earlier.

“You cannot say that all that happened at the Board of Education is Bill Thompson’s fault because as Michael Bloomberg himself has said, no one was in charge.”

When asked if Pedro Espada had been a better majority leader than his predecessor, Joe Bruno, a Republican, Bloomberg said no.

Asked whether Barack Obama had done enough on LBGT issues while president, Bloomberg again said no.

To both questions, Bill Thompson, said yes.

In the spin room, Bloomberg campaign manager Bradley Tusk made the most of it, saying, “This is what is so great about being an independent.” You can pick and choose when to agree with people rather than defend them even when they're wrong.

Later, Tusk said Thompson “presumably would be modeling his administration on Espada’s record and actions.”