"This has now truly become a regional, if not national, effort."

Thus spoke City Council Speaker Christine Quinn at a press conference yesterday. Former-governor-turned-state-senator Richard Codey and New Jersey Assemblyman Ruben Ramos came to City Hall to join her in previewing their own version of a bill announced in New York City less than a month ago: a measure to boost the age at which you can buy cigarettes to 21. Quinn is a forerunner of the bill that has placed her directly in front of an issue Bloomberg has championed--a position that could injure her campaign more than help it.

"Less than a month after our initial announcement, our great neighboring state of New Jersey is planning to introduce legislation to do exactly the same thing: raise the age to purchase tobacco to 21," Quinn said. The provision has also been introduced in Albany to apply on a statewide level.

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Between 2009 and 2011, approximately 450 people died crossing the street in New York City. Whether to reckless driving, not looking both ways, or sheer confusion, the city lost 450 residents. And that's not counting bicycle fatalities. Needless to say, like subway deaths, it's become a problem that demands fixing ASAP, especially with the advent of CitiBike next weekend.

Enter Christine Quinn.

In a statement released yesterday, the City Council speaker and mayoral frontrunner laid out her platform on the issue of ground-level urban planning. Her goal is straightforward: By 2021, Quinn wants to cut New York City's street fatalities in half.

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NYCIsNotForSale

Quinn's political enemies are continuing their campaign to keep her from becoming mayor.

Two weeks after making news with a television advertisement attacking Christine Quinn, the "anyone-but-Quinn" coalition NYC Is Not For Sale is taking their message out into the streets of New York.

Yesterday the campaign set up outside six subway stops across the city, handing out plastic cigars and recreating the smoke-filled room, depicted in the TV ad, in which they say Quinn makes secretive political deals.

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NYCIsNotForSale

A still from the new attack ad on Christine Quinn that Quinn is inadvertently promoting.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is having a rough week so far. For one thing, new Quinnipiac poll shows the mayoral front-runner's numbers hitting a five-month low. She's also facing a new attack ad paid for by a coalition of labor and animal-rights groups.

The ad got some media attention early this week as the first outside ad to run in the mayoral race. But it didn't really grab anyone's attention until Quinn herself Streisand-Effected the thing to the top of the city's political discourse.

Rather than limiting herself to disputing the advertisement's allegations, say, or running an advertisement of its own, the Quinn campaign lashed out, sending a threatening-sounding cease-and-desist letter to NY1, the Time Warner news channel, which is among the stations airing the ad.

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You might've already seen this little snippet released by New York City Is Not For Sale 2013 (that's a mouthful).The video opens to a "smoke-filled room" with four stools in it, where the viewer would assume the City Council Speaker makes shady deals with business-type folk. She's charged with a pseudo-liberal appeal that is more rhetoric than substance.

It's a part of a million dollar "A.B.Q.--Anybody But Quinn" campaign, which has been put together by the union forces left over from Bloomberg's 2009 re-election. It'll be on major cable networks in the days to come as the first notable attack campaign launched thus far (and this early) in the mayoral race. Also, it represents the political landscape of a City Hall race post-Citizens United, where money and politics are two sides of the same shitty sword.

The electoral aim of the video is Quinn's worst fear: to be painted as Bloomberg Jr.

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As you may have heard yesterday, City Councilman Dan "America's Top Heathen" Halloran is in a whole lot of trouble.

Along with state Senator Malcolm Smith, the two were involved in a rigging scheme that planned to posit Smith as a Democrat switching over to the Republican side to run for mayor of New York. We're talking bribery, envelopes filled with a whole ton of cash, real estate tycoons' funds, and your classic FBI mole. So mark it down as the archetypal tale of New York City corruption.

And, of course, it happened during an election year, which begs the question: who's the closest indirect candidate to this story? Well, Halloran was a fan of Joe Lhota and one of the linked schemers was an advisor to John Catsimatidis and even served as counsel for his company, Gristedes.

But, besides that, being the head of the council that Halloran called home for a few years home has provided more than enough flak for many of Christine Quinn's Democratic rivals.

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Last week, we reported on the Community Safety Act--a big legislative package floating around City Council that is espousing serious comments from everyone involved, including the Mayor, NYPD Commish Ray Kelly, and a handful of your mayoral hopefuls.

The main stipulation of the bill under fire calls for an inspector general, a position that would oversee the actions of the Boys in Blue. Bloomberg and Kelly have both stated that the position would add another layer of bureaucracy, stalling an agency that needs to be fast on its toes. And, against their will, it had the support of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who argued that, in light of recent controversies involving surveillance and stop-and-frisk, an inspector general was needed now more than ever.

So it was only a matter of time before this happened.

In a move that posits Joe Lhota directly in opposition with Quinn for the first time in this race, the Republican frontrunner and Giuliani apostle held a conference at City Hall yesterday. There, he lambasted the Speaker for supporting such a "reckless and dangerous" proposal. He even threw in a pun for fun: that the measure would "handcuff" NYPD procedure.

Aside from the strange undertones of Giuliani, the comments made by Lhota confirm yet another major theme that we predicted last week: The NYPD's activities will shape up to be the hot-button issue of this mayoral election.

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Looks like Christine Quinn has won... on a few levels.

Last Friday, we reported on the paid sick day bill in City Council, where it's been garnering support for a few years now. The legislation sought to mandate employers to give their workers at least five paid sick days if they had at least 20 employees.

And, after a compromise with exemptions for smaller companies, it finally picked up the attention of a much-needed player: City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

That was due to mayoral consequences. Quinn didn't want to halt a bill that would please the labor vote. Her rival, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, has been calling her out left and right on her lack of attention towards the bill. But, of course in the end, it's all about Bloomberg: she has used the opportunity to distance herself from an electorally overbearing mayor who threatened to veto the bill this weekend.

And it could work out for her: News sources reported yesterday that it looks as if the speaker has collected enough votes to 1) pass the bill and 2) overturn the veto. Look at this victory as a legislative beginning of Quinn's full-fledged attempt to cast herself as the "middle class" candidate who's not antonymous with 'Hizzoner.'

Oh, and New Yorkers: Enjoy your shiny new paid sick days.

[jsurico15@gmail.com/@JohnSurico]

As we learned on Wednesday with the Community Safety Act, a mayoral race can do wonders to political priorities.

This week, the paid sick day bill in the City Council has been on a legislative roller coaster. At first, Christine Quinn, using her privileges as speaker, refused to allow the bill to come to a vote on the floor. She argued that the bill was "anti-business" and would hurt companies by forcing them to provide five paid sick days.

This is an election year, so the labor vote (the endorsement of the 32BJ union) is a serious mover/shaker. And now Daily News and Post have both reported that Quinn has agreed to negotiate on the bill.

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Today Mayor Bloomberg will sign off on two hefty pieces of immigration legislation that will maintain New York's reputation as one of the most immigrant-friendly cities in the nation.

The two laws, which passed 40-7 in City Council at the end of February, are a reaction to Secure Communities, the highly controversial federal solution to immigration-enforcement that expanded to New York last May. Under that plan, the fingerprints of anybody passing through local or state jails are sent to the Department of Homeland Security and run through its database. If a match is found showing that a suspect is an illegal immigrant or is a non-citizen with a criminal record, a "detainer" will likely be issued, requesting that the police hold the person until he or she is handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

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