Bloomberg's Approval Rating: New ads haven't helped; 40 percent say his performance is excellent or good. [NY1]

Bloomberg's Approval Rating: "Falling fast." [Erin Einhorn]

Carl Kruger: Former Jamaica Hospital executive David Rosen was indicted. [Robert Gearty]

State Budget: "The state's cuts will be devastating," says Micah Lasher, a top Bloomberg aide. [Thomas Kaplan]

Teacher Layoffs: Silver says Bloomberg sought teacher layoffs before the state budget was adopted; says it doesn't need to happen. [Ken Lovett and Glenn Blain]

School Funding: Poor district hurt. [John Hilderbrand]

LIFO: Skelos makes it a priority. [Brendan Scott and Carl Campanile]

Protecting Children: 10 abused children overlooked by ACS. [Mosi Secret]

Electric Bills: Hike coming. [Bill Sanderson]

White Plains: Acting Mayor Roach wins mayor's race. [Ben Rubin and Richard Liebson]

Chuck Schumer: On the phone, a lot. [Page Six]

State Budget: "[H]istoric and transformational" says Cuomo. [AP]

State Budget: "[P]andemonium." "At times, legislators did not seem entirely sure about what they were voting on." [Thomas Kaplan]

State Budget: "[T]he most secretive part -- individual school district aid levels -- was not made public until just before 9 p.m." [Tom Precious]

State Budget: "New York's Legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo restored $51 million to New York City schools, $45 million to Long Island schools and $134 million to upstate schools." [AP]

State Budget: "The restorations in general represent a small fraction of what is going to be an extremely painful cut" said Bloomberg spokesman Micah Lasher.

State Budget: Editors say "the 'cuts' Bloomberg complains about involve trivial sums relative to the city's overall budget." [New York Post]

INYMI: The mayor complains the budget doesn't relieve the city of financial burdens. [Michael Bloomberg]

State Budget: Limited debate. [Yancey Roy]

State Budget: In 1982, the budget was $25,9 billion. In 2011, its $132.5 billion. [AP]

Albany Protests: Pizza for protesters blocked by police; Perkins and Sampsons negotiate a solution. [Stephanie Lee]

2013: Vallone eyes "Queens-wide run." Celebrates 50th birthday today. [Lisa Colangelo]

Economic Development: "[O]ne of the most important economic development goals for the city right now" is Hunts Point Terminal Produce Cooperative, which is eyeing a move. [Sumathi Reddy]

Pedro Espada: Still in charge of Soundview. [Jacob Gershman]

Party Fights: Rochester WFP spokesman says "(Democratic) Party continues to cater to privilege, the rich and the corporations." [Brian Sharp]

Redistricting: Editors call Skelos "sleazy." [Daily News]

9/11: Medical examiner probes whether former cop died of 9/11-related problems. [Anemona Hartocollis]

9/11: "Bloomberg should have attended fallen 9/11 officer's funeral," is the headline. [Michael Daly]

Deutsche Bank: Opening arguments start Monday. [John Eligon]

Census: Lower than expected growth in NYC. "For many New Yorkers, what seems to be at stake is nothing less than the city’s supersize reputation." [Javier Hernandez]

In the Assembly hearing today, state and city lawmakers seemed intent on dilluting the mayor's power.

With respect to having only the mayor appoint commission members, Lasher argued that sharing such power with other elected officials would lead to less bold ideas from the commission.

"Such commissions would be unlikely to support even the most meritorious solutions to the City's problems if those solutions might weaken the non-mayoral nominating officials," he said.

Lasher disagreed with the notion that more time is needed--as Scott Stringer argued --for the commission to research issues, and meaningfully engage the public before putting items on the ballot later this year.

"There is no evidence to suggest that voters need as many as twenty months to contemplate municipal charter revisions," said Lasher.

As for the commission's power to "bump" other initiatives off the ballot, Lasher said it's logical.

"There is real value in enabling mayoral charter commissions," he said, "to place their proposals before the voters without a cacophony of conflicting or competing proposals. It is, therefore, reasonable that the proposals of charter commissions take precedence over proposals originating through other mechanisms."

And giving the City Council the ability to veto proposals by the commission would simply dilute the mayor's power, Lasher argued.

"If enacted, it is likely that voters will never have the opportunity to consider a proposal opposed by the City Council, no matter how meritorious."

Lasher's written testimony was submitted to the host of the Assembly's hearing today, and not delivered in person, so, no chance to see what I'm sure would have been one of the few exciting moments on this issue.

He was troubled.

“People said you couldn’t do anything about it in the last seven years,” he said, sweating in a monogrammed white shirt. “And I think in the next four years, assuming we get mayoral control back, which I still think we will—but don’t hold your breath—we can get rid of that gap or certainly reduce it dramatically.”

The thing that was bothering the mayor was the fact that the Democratic-run State Senate has allowed a law granting the mayor control of city schools—his signature legislative achievement—to expire, and has refused to consider renewal until a number of demands involving greater control by parent groups are met.

At the event in Riverdale, the mayor merely groused about it. At other points over the preceding few days, though, he fully lost it, denouncing the idea of appeasing the Democratic conference and publicly initiating a lusty exchange of insults with other officials, during which he was called a “yenta” and a plantation owner.

For Mr. Bloomberg, who had deliberately, steadfastly kept his distance from the toxic mess in Albany last month, this was something different.

“The mayor is now more personally embroiled in this issue than he has ever been before,” said State Senator Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat from the Upper West Side.

That’s not an entirely bad thing for Mr. Bloomberg. As David Paterson can attest, it’s simply impossible to lose a public-relations war with the deeply unpopular, nationally mocked State Senate. And to the extent that the brawl draws attention to the mayor’s position on education—an issue his campaign is trying to put front and center—it’s a bonus.

One danger for the mayor is that his outbursts make him look like a petulant billionaire—not his best side, in the context of his reelection campaign against nice-guy Democrat Bill Thompson—and that his direct exchanges with angry, say-any-old-thing senators will leave him covered in mud, too. Another is that his attacks on individual senators serve to stiffen institutional resistance to him, guaranteeing that it will take that much longer to regain mayoral control—a potential addition to the list of Bloomberg projects that have gone to the Capitol to die.

After the hostile exchanges, the Bloomberg campaign moved to put some of its endless resources toward a targeted response, releasing three television ads and a radio spot about the mayor’s education agenda on July 20, and planning a further TV ad on the same topic later in the week featuring Geoffrey Canada, the respected CEO of the Harlem’s Children Zone.

THINGS BEGAN looking down, from the mayor’s perspective, when a bungled Republican coup in the State Senate produced Brooklyn’s John Sampson, a committed opponent of mayoral control, as Democratic conference leader.

On July 7, Mr. Sampson tweaked the mayor on The Brian Lehrer Show for predicting that chaos would overtake the school system with the expiration of the mayoral-control law on June 30, despite the fact that the mayor had staffed the new emergency Board of Education with like-minded deputies and borough presidents to keep the school system running as it had been.

Mr. Bloomberg responded later in the day by telling reporters, “I have no idea what he’s talking about. I think that’s the nicest way to phrase it.”

It still wasn’t clear at the time that things were going to unravel.

Mr. Bloomberg’s deputy mayor for education, Dennis Walcott, and his Department of Education lobbyist, Micah Lasher, worked furiously in the Capitol to negotiate a deal that would bring a mayoral-control bill, which had already passed in the Democratic-controlled Assembly, to the Senate floor for a vote.

They had the support of all 30 Republicans in the 62-member body. They had many of the Democrats. They had the votes. They thought.

On July 9, two leaders of the Democratic conference, Mr. Sampson and the Senate’s nominal majority leader, Malcolm Smith—a supporter of mayoral control who had effectively been stripped of power by the Senate coup—went so far as to write a letter to a colleague who favored mayoral control, Daniel Squadron, assuring him that he could leave town for his honeymoon with a clean conscience.

“Regardless of other factors,” they wrote, the bill “will receive a full vote on the floor of the State Senate by July 17, 2009.”

Negotiations over the details between the Senate and City Hall continued, but went badly.

On July 14, when the State Senate returned to session, Senator Carl Kruger of Brooklyn, a longtime opponent of mayoral control, called the bill “D.O.A.”

Then he skipped town.

On July 15, Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser called on the governor to enact an extraordinary session for the senators and "keep them in Albany."

On July 16, Senator Kevin Parker, who has been indicted on assault charges and recently referred to Mr. Paterson as a “coke-sniffing, staff-banging” governor, introduced an education bill that effectively proposed to strip the mayor of all control of the city schools. The measure was defeated.

That night, Mr. Sampson scuttled the negotiations, saying that the compromises offered by the mayor’s office, according to the education blog Gotham Schools, amounted to “not one-tenth of what I need.”

On July 17, during his weekly radio show on WOR, Mr. Bloomberg started naming names.

Of Mr. Sampson, he said he had always, and apparently mistakenly, thought he “was a smart guy.”

“He voted for mayoral control the last time,” Mr. Bloomberg added. “And in his district, test scores have gone up dramatically. Now he is against it.”

The mayor questioned the intelligence of other senators—Tom Duane, Toby Stavisky, Joe Addabbo—and said that when it came to Senator Hiram Monserrate, “I don’t know what the heck he wants.”

He called on Mr. Paterson to send state troopers to “drag them back” to session, and said, “Giving them the summer off is, as we say in Gaelic, meshuggeneh.”

And, talking about negotiations, he said, “If you remember Neville Chamberlain, no matter how many times you said yes, that’s the starting point for the next round. There’s always more, more, more.”

TWO DAYS LATER, on July 19, nine of the senators most critical of Mr. Bloomberg marched on City Hall. 

“We believe it would be meshuggeneh not to include parents in the education of our children,” said Mr. Monserrate, a Queens Democrat who was indicted for cutting his girlfriend’s face with a broken glass. “As opposed to loosely using the word ‘meshuggeneh,’ we would also say we don’t need a yenta on the other side of this argument and this debate.”   

Senator Bill Perkins of Harlem accused the mayor of “treating us like we’re some people on his plantation.”

At a press conference in Sunset Park on July 20, Mr. Bloomberg added fuel, perhaps unintentionally, to the war of words. Asked by New York 1 reporter Rita Nissan whether he actually meant to compare the senators to Nazis, the mayor said, “I certainly did,” and, “What part of that did they not understand? This is ridiculous.”

Mr. Loeser, the Bloomberg spokesman, quickly released a statement saying that the mayor had misheard the question and that the “Chamberlain” comments referred generally to the dangers of appeasement.

On July 21, Mr. Bloomberg himself successfully convinced Councilman Bill de Blasio and Assemblyman Dov Hikind to cancel press conferences they had scheduled to criticize his Munich analogy, arguing that he had sincerely misheard the question.

But Mr. Bloomberg’s enemies show no intention of relenting.

“I stand by what I said,” said Mr. Perkins, adding, “I think he needs to back up and stop calling people names and trying to denigrate the Senate.”

“It raises the question as to whether or not he can handle this sort of democratic process, with a little ‘d,’” said Mr. Perkins.

Mr. Schneiderman, who is often supportive of the mayor and who thinks that there will eventually be a resolution on the education bill, said of Mr. Bloomberg, “I don’t think those comments helped.” (He declined to comment on the remarks of Mr. Monserrate and Mr. Perkins.)

Assemblyman Michael Benjamin of the Bronx, a Democrat who supports mayoral control and who, like Mr. Perkins, is African-American, called the suggestion that Mr. Bloomberg was a racist risible.

“Senator Perkins does seem to talk off the top of his head sometimes,” he said. “I guess part of that is frustration that they’re not getting their way—they’re not getting the mayor to bend to their demands.”

Speaking as a supporter of Mr. Thompson, though, Mr. Benjamin said he thought the argument with Albany could harm Mr. Bloomberg politically.

“Because the mayor’s personality will come out,” he said. “Those are things that can pile up and show what his record is and be used to not reelect him.”

jhorowitz@observer.com

Sheekey was spotted ducking into the conference, but was typically tight-lipped about what he was up to.

The schools bill picked up a Democratic co-sponsor--State Senator Daniel Squadron--who told me he signed on because the Assembly bill met his concerns with increasing transparency and oversight.

I asked if this meant he might join Republicans to pass just the schools bill.

"No," he said. "I continue to believe that a fair, bi-partisan agreement is the way that we're able to get back into the chamber. The answer is now."

Meanwhile, after meeting privately with their fellow Democrats, State Senators John Sampson and Malcolm Smith went to the second floor to meet with representatives from the governor's office. They were joined by leaders of the Republican-dominated coalition, Dean Skelos and Pedro Espada Jr.

All left without taking questions. Peter Kauffmann, Paterson's top spokesman, said the governor would hold a press conference at 3:30.

They emerged from a closed-door strategy session to announce that they were seeking to postpone the special session David Paterson has called for tomorrow.

Senator Jeff Klein said that conversations were ongoing toward some kind of a bipartisan operating agreement for the chamber. "Well, if one day we have John Sampson, the other day we have Pedro Espada, I think that's an agreement we could live with," Klein told reporters. "The Senate Democrats have been proposing this power-sharing for a week."

He said he was unaware of reported discussions to bring Espada back into the Democratic fold. "The only thing I say is: Pedro Espada plays by Pedro Espada's rules. The rest of us are here to represent the people of the state of New York and do a job."

Senator Liz Krueger, who has raised concerns about whether Espada, in a position that would let him ascend to the governorship if David Paterson were to leave the state or become incapacitated, could pre-pardon himself or other compatriots. ("Gerald Ford pre-pardoned Richard Nixon," she said.)

Leaving the session, she was asked whether she could support Espada's return.

"I said I couldn't support him as president pro tem," Liz Krueger said. She said she'd conference with him as long as he's a senator.

For New York’s most prominent Democratic consultants and operatives, it’s been nothing less—an acquisition project so far-reaching that it actually threatens to dry up the market in experienced local campaign staff.

Yes, the mayor spent tens of millions of dollars in his past two campaigns, much of it on high-priced political talent. But there were still plenty of New York Democrats who simply wouldn’t go there. He was a Republican, and, well, they weren’t.

But the mayor has since registered as an independent (the better to market the idea of a possible bid for president last year). And now, with the inconvenient party label removed from around his neck—and with the ability, as always, to deliver a massive payday to anyone who comes along for the ride—there’s no longer anything stopping even the most pure-pedigreed Democratic consultants from signing up.

Take Howard Wolfson, whose former bosses include Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, New York’s Democratic Party and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He’s on board. Hank Sheinkopf, the bare-knuckled Democratic consultant who helped elect New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson to citywide office in 2001 and was expected to rejoin him again this year, has just been acquired by Mr. Bloomberg too.

“He could just about put every consultant in the country on retainer,” said consultant Jerry Skurnik.

Scott Levenson, a Democratic consultant not currently dependent on Mr. Bloomberg for any portion of his income, said, “I guess he’s trying to assemble the best team money can buy.”

And it’s not just the people who will actually end up working for Mr. Bloomberg. It’s also the people who, because of the mayor’s stockpiling of talent, won’t end up working for any Democrat.
(One Democratic contender, Representative Anthony Weiner, is expected to rely on many of the same out-of-town consultants he used in his 2005 race, including media guy Jim Margolis of the Philadelphia-based firm GMMB. Another, Mr. Thompson, is also expected to bring in out-of-town talent, possibly to work alongside the Harlem-based Bill Lynch Associates.)

The consultants drawn into the Bloomberg orbit also have professional and personal relationships with other individuals and firms who will, essentially, be precluded from actively working against the mayor.

Mr. Wolfson’s colleagues at the Glover Park consulting firm, for example, will almost certainly be off-limits to the people challenging Mr. Bloomberg. The same goes for the small but capable staff at Mr. Sheinkopf’s firm.

As one prominent Democrat put it, “I think he wants to hire anyone with a pulse and totally clear the field.”

Here’s a list of accomplished connected Democratic operatives who have been taken off the market this year by Mr. Bloomberg.

Bradley Tusk: Now installed as the mayor’s campaign manager, he worked as a spokesman for Chuck Schumer and then became a top aide to the mayor during the first Bloomberg term.

Howard Wolfson: Another distinguished Schumer alumnus, his Democratic credentials are impeccable: Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, New York’s Democratic Party.

Josh Isay: He’s yet another Schumer guy, and a founding partner of Knickerbocker SKD and partner at Squier Knapp Dunn Communications, which did print, radio and television ads for Bloomberg’s 2005 mayoral campaign.

Basil Smikle: Just a few months ago, this former Hillary Clinton aide was working for Mr. Weiner. Now, the AP reports, he’s signed on with the incumbent.

Hank Sheinkopf: The colorful and unflinching operative who was the general consultant on Bill Thompson’s 2001 citywide campaign for comptroller is not signing on for Mr. Thompson’s 2009 mayoral campaign. Now he’s on the mayor’s campaign payroll.

Doug Schoen: A founding partner in the firm that helped define its most famous client, Bill Clinton, Mr. Schoen has worked on both of Mr. Bloomberg’s previous campaigns.

Ken Strasma: A number cruncher who worked on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, he will focus on analyzing poll numbers and targeting a message to a niche audience.

Maura Keaney: A top aide to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, she did field operations for the mayor’s reelection campaign in 2005 and is returning this year in a similar role. Ms. Keaney is married to Democratic consultant Mark Guma, who worked on the mayoral campaign of Alan Hevesi in 2001.

Patrick Brennan: He’s a former staffer in the Community Assistance Unit who traveled to various states to lay the groundwork for Mr. Bloomberg’s much-discussed hypothetical presidential race. He left City Hall to work at the Parkside Group.

Larry Scott Blackmon: He just left his job as chief of staff and deputy commissioner for intergovernmental affairs at the city’s Small Business Services Department to lead the campaign’s outreach to black voters.

Neil Giacobbi: A former chief of staff to Democratic City Councilman David Yassky of Brooklyn and aide to Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey, Mr. Giacobbi, 35, helped organize the Republican National Convention in 2004.

Micah Lasher: He’s not yet 30, but Mr. Lasher is among the most capable political operators in the city. He worked for Mark Green’s mayoral campaign in 2001 and worked until 2007 with Mr. Isay at Knickerbocker. He just left his most recent job, as an aide to Representative Jerry Nadler, to work for the city’s Department of Education. Which would seem to rule out a role on any Democratic mayoral campaign against his new boss.

Lasher emailed friends and supporters over the weekend to say he’s accepted a position at the Department of Education as executive director of public affairs.

Lasher had been working for Representative Jerry Nadler and prior to that, he worked at Knickerbocker SKD, the firm that helped run the mayor’s re-election campaign.

Lasher, 25, co-founded Knickerbocker in September 2002 at the ripe old age of 20, along with another veteran of the Andrew Cuomo for Governor campaign, Josh Isay.

Knickerbocker has also made some recent acquisitions, partly as a reaction to Lasher's departure.

Lasher will join Nadler's staff as a West Side community representative, according to Nadler's chief of staff Amy Rutkin.

That's because of Brian Kavanagh, the who finished second in a crowded City Council race last year, and who is now challenging Friedman. He'll be formidable, with a considerable warchest and the Knickerbocker SKD consulting firm working on his campaign.

But Kavanagh's candidacy apparently had something of a hiccup recently when he showed up late for an endorsement interview with a Working Families Party steering committee, blamed a staffer for the mix-up and then told the stunned room of labor-lefties that the worker in question was no longer with the campaign.

The committee of about 15 promptly endorsed Friedman. Kavanagh got no votes.

"He should have taken the blame himself," said WFP member Michael Hirsch, who related the story. "I guess he didn't know his audience."

Micah Lasher, responding for Kavanagh, took issue with the account and said, "Brian's proud to have the support of many progressive labor unions and looks forward to winning the primary of Democratic voters in Sept. 12."