(Photo: 92Y.org)

With less than six months to go until the primaries, the New York Observer and the 92nd Street Y have teamed up to host an evening of discussion with all of the major mayoral candidates.  The event starts in one hour and, if you can't make it to the 92nd Street Y to see it in person, you can watch live online right here. 

The evening will include two separate debates. First up will be the Republican candidates; John Catsimatidis, Joseph Lhota and George McDonald. Next will be the Democrats; Sal Albanese, Bill de Blasio, John Liu, Christine Quinn and Bill Thompson. Both debates will be moderated by New York Observer editor-in-chief Ken Kurson and Cozen O'Connor member Kenneth K. Fisher.

Tune in below to watch the action at 7:30.

Kimberly Guilfoyle and Deborah Norvillee.

“It's the charity with longest, most difficult name to say” host Deborah Norville justified as she failed to get the name right at the first, second and third time of asking. The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children hosted its annual gala in the Grand Ballroom of The Plaza on Tuesday testing all invitees' verbal dexterity and generosity. “But it also does the most difficult work.” Good save Ms. Norville.

Founded in 1875, a time when there laws protecting animals but not children from cruelty, the NYSPCC is the oldest children’s charity in the world. It is perhaps surprising that this was honorees John and Margo Catsimatidis first appearance at the gala as they are prolific benefactors of children’s charities across New York. Sitting with them at a well positioned table from which they rarely left, we asked how they got involved.

“We have always been supporters of children’s charities and when we saw the great work that this charity was doing and we wanted to be a part of it.”

Why children’s charities we asked?

“They are our future and need to be nurtured.” Margo was, near verbatim, repeating the brief speech she made earlier in the evening.

Are you having fun tonight?

“Yes.”

Anything in particular?

“The company.”

Brilliant.

Mr. Catsimatidis continued to confirm himself as a potential GOP candidate for mayor.“I’m setting up a exploratory committee in the coming weeks to decide on that.” We queried if the hurricane had crystallized his intentions but he feels that his motives and the needs remain the same.

“He was young,” we overhear Mrs. Catsimatidis say to her husband as we moved to the over-sized dance floor. "It’s a baby face, but we are accepting donations."

Fox News’ Kimberley Guilfoyle was attending and it was clear that this was a cause close to her heart. “I was prosecutor for the district attorney’s office and my specialty was child abuse cases. Investigating, prosecuting but also helping to rehabilitate.” She was delighted to be able to bring her own son Ronan. “I thought it would be good for him to see how a big group like this can come together to help children. We need to keep this group going. He also loves dancing.” As we moved to leave we glimpsed tux wearing toddler Ronan dancing ferociously. The grin plastered to his face was a poignant image of what the charity and the night set out achieve.

V is for vegetables, not victory, in 2013. (TRD)

John Catsimatidis sat down with The Real Deal to talk about just how great Downtown Brooklyn is (who knew?!) and while that topic dominates the discussion, the real estate rag couldn't help but bring up next year's mayoral elections. After all, the grocery store magnate and billionaire developer has been bandied about as a possible Republican candidate in the race to replace Mayor Michael Bloomberg. While he may no longer be interested in that job, he's not sure the woman widely considered the most-pro-business candidate in the pack of potential Bloomberg successors is ready for it either.

You announced your candidacy for Mayor in 2009, but eventually endorsed Mayor Bloomberg. Do you have any interest in the position this time around?
They’re trying to get me to do it again, but I don’t need it. I don’t have an ego. I just want to do the right thing for the city. I said I’d rather find somebody qualified to run. In the last 12 years, [Mayor Bloomberg’s] leadership has led to billions and billions of dollars of investment by Europeans and by the international community. We need somebody that’s going to provide confidence to the international business community to keep supporting New York City. We are looking at people; we are talking to people, but we haven’t made any decisions.

What do you make of Christine Quinn as a candidate?
I’ve met with Christine. She’s a very lovely lady, but she has to prove that she’s capable of being tough enough to be mayor.

Hey, at least he called her lovely. Then again, maybe an ambivalent endorsement from Mr. Catsimatidis is just what the City Council speaker needs. Snide remarks from a conservative supermarket mogul could help her in her quest to shore up her business support without seeming too pro-business and losing points with her liberal base.

Over the past few years, everyone's attention was focused on the sideshow that was Joe Sitt's epic fight with Mayor Bloomberg over the fate of Astroland and the Coney Island amusement parks. All the while grocery store kingpin John Catsimatidis has been quietly pitching a big top of his own, three to be exact, for a big condo complex along the boardwalk, The Architect's Newspaper revealed yesterday.

Rezoned in 2005 for a different developer, the site would have held two buildings of seven stories with 300 apartments. Now Mr. Catsimatidis' Red Apple Real Estate wants to tweak the zoning to create towers ranging from 14 to 22 stories, with 400 units, designed by Dattner Architects. These would be set along Surf Avenue, rising from a two- to three-story base that extends to the Boardwalk and is lined with retail--Jane Jacobs on the beach. 

"For sure there's a potential for retail on the boardwalk,"  Nick Hockens, an attorney for Greenberg Taurig consulting with Red Apple, told The Architect's Newspaper. "One of the things from a planning perspective is it provides another anchor, but at the other end" of Coney Island.

Mr. Catsimatidis' approach could make winning approvals for the project more merry-go-round than bumper cars, at least compared to Mr. Sitt's difficult and drawn-out fight with the city and the community. Where Thor Equities was seen as trying to take over the heart of Coney Island, Red Apple is creating something new from two vacant lots, long parking for school buses, at a location almost 20 blocks from the amusement hub. The the project is surrounded by rent-regulated apartment towers already, providing a strong argument that the towers are not out of place, even if it does all look a bit like Miami. 

The bigger fight, as the project wends its way through the public review process over the next six months, could be over the fact that Red Apple wants to make all 400 units market rate. 

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

After wondering what exactly was on Obama's birth certificate, Trump sympathizer John Catsimatidis emailed me his reaction to this morning's events:

I am Glad he released it

and that Trump forced the Issue

It reminds me when Reagan got elected

and the Iranians Freed the Hostages

 

Two weeks after Ms. Rice lost the Democratic primary, Mr. Trump bet $5,000 on the Republican candidate for attorney general, Dan Donovan, a social conservative who was being advanced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Two weeks after that donation, Mr. Trump hedged the bet and gave $12,500 to Mr. Donovan's opponent, Eric Schneiderman, who had positioned himself as the most-left-leaning candidate in a field of progressive Democrats, running on a platform of staunch support for gun control, organized labor, and a woman's right to choose. (Last week, Mr. Trump said he became pro-life "years ago.")

Mr. Schneiderman turned out to be the jackpot, winning with 55 percent of the vote.

Mr. Trump's habit of making high-roller bets in a given race isn't new, and his New York donations seem to favor gambling on the candidate with the best odds at the expense of any deep-seated political convictions. Since 1999, Mr. Trump has given nearly $400,000 to New York Democrats and a little less than $200,000 to New York Republicans--a contradiction that Mr. Trump will have to address if he actually hopes to convince Republican primary voters that he's one of them.

But in New York, some are defending Mr. Trump's pragmatic donor philosophy. "There's nothing wrong with that," said Carl Paladino, the Buffalo real estate developer and last year's Republican gubernatorial nominee, who like Mr. Trump was criticized for contributing to Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, who are generally considered anathema to most die-hard Republicans. "I have to agree with him on that. You give money to people who are going to go out there and do that job," said Mr. Paladino. "Republican, Democrat--it doesn't matter. I had them throwing that at me, too; same crap." Mr. Paladino easily won the G.O.P. nomination despite these and other controversies.

"You can accuse me of the same thing. I'm a New York businessman," said John Catsimatidis, the billionaire supermarket magnate who donated heavily to Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as to Republicans. "I support both sides, too. So, am I a Democrat? Am I a Republican? I'm the same businessman Donald Trump is."

(Mr. Catsimatidis is also embracing Mr. Trump's other policies, including expressing skepticism over President Obama's citizenship. "I probably believe that he is a citizen," Mr. Catsimatidis said, but he speculated there is "probably something on the birth certificate he doesn't want people to know about ... Maybe the birth certificate says he's a Muslim and he doesn't want people to know about it.")

In the 2006 AG's race, Mr. Trump donated $20,000 to the coffers of Republican Jeanine Pirro, a few months before he started giving to Andrew Cuomo, who went on to win, with a little more than $20,000 in Mr. Trump's cash.

In March of 2008, with control of the State Senate suddenly up for grabs, Mr. Trump gave $50,000 to the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, which was trying desperately to retain a thin majority. But, a few months later, he also gave $55,000 to the State Democratic Committee, whose party still controlled the Assembly and the governor's mansion.

Throughout 2009, even after officially registering as a Republican, Mr. Trump kept giving to Mr. Cuomo's ostensible reelection bid, while also sprinkling money on David Paterson's gubernatorial campaign--with a $5,000 donation in January of 2010, just before the governor's prospects finally imploded. (After that, it was all Cuomo.)

A top adviser to Mr. Trump, Michael Cohen, referred questions to Mr. Trump's main office. A message left there was not returned.

One Democrat who received a donation from Mr. Trump--Democratic Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz--said he recalled facing off against the young real estate tycoon when he was managing his father's property's in southern Brooklyn.

"His father wouldn't meet with us," said Mr. Markowitz--then an organizer with the Flatbush Tenants Council. He said he met the younger Trump only a handful of times, but recalled, "He was charming and tough-assed."

But even those who share common ground with Mr. Trump question his electability, particularly when much of his public persona consists of relieving people of their employment on national television in the midst of a recession. "Anyone who has that smirk on their face when they fire people on TV," said Mr. Paladino of his fellow real estate developer-turned-Tea Party stalwart, "I think that leaves a lasting impression on people."

apaybarah@observer.com

Even the politicians don't like it, at least not the Tea Partiers, and while that has Henry Elghanayan worried about what D.C. might do to New York, most of his colleagues argued today that Washington is a great place to invest, now and for the foreseeable future.

Fried Frank's Jonathan Mechanic: "I don't think people are afraid of the Washington market just because of the change in Congress. We still have big government and a split government, and there's a lot of problems to be worked out still, so there will be plenty going on."

John Catsimatidis: "Washington will not stop growing, no matter who's in control. It's a disease they have there. If there will be cuts, it will be in different parts of the country."

David Levinson, who said his L&L Holdings just got outbid for a project on Connecticut Avenue:  "The government has a tendency, they fire 500 people and then go hire 500 consultants, so there is always high demand. ... The average price is in the mid-40s gross, but it's 58 net on new buildings, almost double the rent on new buildings there."

Richard LeFrak: "The thing I worry about the most are that the GSEs [Government-sponsored enterprises] are natural targets, both for the Republicans and the Democrats. Freddie Mac? Who is it? Most people just know it as something bad that happened to their mortgage. That makes for an easy target. ... That could change the rezzies [residential developers] quite a bit. We're benefiting from rates that are very low."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

It was bad. There are only two things that can happen after a hugely baroque Manhattan scandal: survival or ruin. But sometimes a New Yorker gets trapped in between, in the gooey limbo of semi-disgrace, which you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. Important chief executives ask aloud if the United States attorney general’s office, never mind New York’s, might be interested in having a chat with you. Over iced teas at midtown hotel bars, important publicists nudge reporters about around-the-corner indictments. Friends speak about you gently, and foes, voices even gentler, purr about your fate.

Almost one year ago to the day, Mr. Rattner triumphantly left Wall Street to become car czar in the Obama administration, then equally triumphant. Six months later, he was gone, and under the cloud of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s investigation into the putrid world of state-pension-fund money.

And there Mr. Rattner has sat since the summer, simmering in purgatory. When the news broke two weeks ago that Mayor Bloomberg was moving $5 billion away from Quadrangle, the enormous firm Mr. Rattner co-founded, tongues again clucked and mouths watered. Was the mayor, an old friend, quietly shuffling away from an oncoming train wreck? “I’ve heard from a zillion people, ‘Did you hear?’” a longtime friend who asked for anonymity said. “And everyone’s reaction is, ‘Oh, that’s a bad thing.’”

“Like any good businessman,” the billionaire politician John Catsimatidis said recently, “Bloomberg is limiting his exposure.”

But like with all great Manhattan stories, especially the ones involving billions of dollars, first reactions are often exceptionally wrong. Interviews with sources close to Mr. Rattner and the mayor, and with their peers at the top of the city’s political and finance circles, paint a much more interesting picture, one in which the financier might make it out of the long winter alive, maybe even with some dignity.

THE FIRST THING anyone says about Steve Rattner is that he is simply the most coolly focused and ambitious and intelligent man on the Upper East Side, which is why it is incredibly hard to fathom how he got tangled in such a vulgar mess. The S.E.C. has said that at the New York State pension fund, one of the most immense masses of assets anywhere in the world, more than half of the $9.5 billion put in alternative investments from 2003 to 2007 was stained by kickbacks.

Hank Morris and David Loglisci, middlemen between the fund and the investors who wanted its business, were charged last March on 123 counts of larceny, corruption, fraud, bribery and money laundering. According to reports published a month later, not only did Mr. Rattner have his firm quietly pay Mr. Morris more than $1 million in exchange for a $100 million investment from the fund, but a Quadrangle affiliate paid $88,841 to acquire the DVD distribution rights to a slapstick comedy produced by Mr. Loglisci and his brothers. The film, Chooch, is about goofballs from Queens who get in trouble on a Mexican adventure.

Last year, New York banned middlemen, called placement agents, from helping private-equity firms directly connect with the pension money. “It is unacceptable that a placement agent have any influence in the investments of the state pension fund,” the governor said then. (David Paterson, of course, has his own dealings with Mr. Cuomo at the moment, but that’s another story.) Instead of leaving D.C. as a heroic savant who managed to entirely rebuild Chrysler and GM in mere months, even though he hadn’t been to Detroit in decades, Mr. Rattner slouched back home in July as the subject of an escalating investigation. “I think he had a sense that the whole thing was something foolish that had been blown up way out of proportion. In other words, he certainly didn’t feel that what had been done was right,” said New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger, a longtime friend, “but it was a mistake that was being exploited.”

Still, even after the news broke about Mr. Bloomberg’s reshuffled $5 billion, Mr. Rattner has not been seen skulking around with furrowed brows. His demeanor is unimpeachable. “Steve is irrepressible, Steve is disciplined, Steve doesn’t run around and say he’s depressed, quite the opposite,” the friend who spoke anonymously said. “But it’s pretty clear that what he hoped would be a trajectory into even greater prominence in public affairs has hit a wall.”

“All I can say is, Steve told me everything’s going to work out O.K.,” said another friend, Steven R. Weisman, The Times’ former chief international economics correspondent. “He seems as untroubled as can be about it.”

In August, New York magazine profiled his comedown from Washington, although by October, he was publishing a first-person piece in Fortune, one that ends with a tourist who is snapping photos of Alexander Hamilton’s statue stopping to thank him and his team.

Late last year, he got a contract to write a book called Overhaul, essentially an expansion of that piece. Working on the book is taking longer than he’d assumed it would. Actually, he’s found it unbelievably hard. “He’s just holed up on a book deadline,” said Mark Green, the former New York City public advocate, who has exchanged emails about business and writing with the financier recently. “Unless you’re Stephen King, writing books is a bear. It’s just really hard work. And he hasn’t done it before.”

Only a quarter of the book, or maybe a bit more, has been written. It is due to be released this fall.

Mr. Rattner has shuttled between a midtown office, the horse farm and an apartment he and his wife have in the Fifth Avenue co-op building that McKim, Mead & White designed for Jacqueline Onassis’ grandfather. It was delivered back then with 6-foot-wide refrigerators and nine fresh coats of paint.

Early last decade, back when Mr. Rattner’s wife was the finance chair of the Democratic National Committee, Michael Wolff based a piece around the stratospheric oomph of a book party there. It was illustrated with Mr. Rattner as Superman, bursting fist first through a page of The New York Times, which is where he worked as a journalist in the 1970s. He left for Lehman and Morgan Stanley in the early ’80s, before anyone did that sort of thing; became a deputy CEO at Lazard Frères in the ’90s; and started Quadrangle at the turn of the century.

WHEN THE NEWS BROKE on Feb. 20 that the mayor would be moving billions away from Quadrangle, the Daily News put Mr. Rattner’s pension-fund investigation in its lead. The Post called it “a humiliating blow” to the firm he co-founded. “People were speculating,” said someone who knows the investor from New York City political circles, describing guests at a recent Upper East Side dinner. “Was the mayor distancing himself from Rattner? Was it a put-down?”

“It’s actually the opposite,” a source close to the investor said. “He’s moving towards Steve.”

Here’s how the thinking goes: The mayor had brought his billions to Quadrangle in the first place only because of his relationship with Mr. Rattner, an old friend and fund-raiser. (The private-equity firm does no other asset management work.) And not only has Mr. Rattner been gone from the firm for a full year now, but there doesn’t seem to be any love lost between the man and the firm he left during a very fraught era.

“Steve was not going to have a formal role with the company,” said a source familiar with Quadrangle. “It was not going to happen. One of the outcomes of this arrangement is, it does make it possible for the mayor to get Steve involved in a more direct way.”

Indeed, a person familiar with the mayor’s thinking confirmed that Mr. Rattner is working on the upcoming transition, moving the team that he helped put together for Mr. Bloomberg into an independent firm that works only on managing his money and his foundation’s. Anything beyond that hasn’t been settled yet, the source said, but that “it’s certainly true he’s not moving away from Steve.”

What if, at long last, there are real stirrings from investigators? “I don’t see that anything that’s happening is going to come between them, in my personal opinion,” said Thomas H. Lee, the private-equity pioneer. Spokespeople for the New York State attorney general’s office and the S.E.C. wouldn’t comment, and a call to the U.S. attorney general’s office wasn’t returned. Neither Mr. Rattner nor his old firm has been charged with wrongdoing.

Friends of his like to point out that the giant private-equity firm Carlyle Group, which was essentially accused of paying a much bigger fee to Mr. Morris, about $10 million, was allowed to settle with Mr. Cuomo last May for $20 million. And that firm’s decorated chief, David M. Rubenstein, still gets to speak at Davos and sit on the boards of the Kennedy Center and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Then again, Mr. Rattner was said to be personally involved with Mr. Morris and the pension-fund money.

For now, he wafts in limbo. “His greatest strength always has been a rock-hard realism. He knows that a lot of stuff happens and you deal with it,” Mr. Goldberger said. “He’s not one to say, ‘I’m taking my ball and going home! Fuck you all.’”

“Do I know how bad it is inside his head? No, I don’t,” the anonymous friend said, “Am I convinced personally that it’s bad? Yes.”

mabelson@observer.com

Flipping through the New York Post, I came across this busy and colorful ad for Gristedes, which features the photo of a certain billionaire who eyed a run for mayor.

Coming across these kinds of ads are, I think, one of the perks of paying to read the physical paper.

"Hopefully we're going to mobilize some constructive responses to the budget crisis," said Kathy Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City. "We want to be constructively anti-tax."

The Partnership and Citizens Budget Commission organized the forum, which will be held in the offices J.P. Morgan Chase. David Paterson will address the convention, Wylde said, and Lt. Governor Richard Ravitch will stay for panel discussions and break-out sessions.

Paterson will be introduced by Jamie Dimon, the CEO of J.P. Morgan. Others expected to attend the confab are Steve Spinola of REBNY, developer Doug Durst, Kenneth Adams of the Business Council, Brian Sampson from Unshackle Upstate, Carol Kellerman of the CBC and Gristedes owner John Catsimatidis.

The point, Wylde said, is for the business community to present a "strong voice" in the coming budget negotiations.