FBI Investigates Anti-Christine Quinn Group, Questions Donations To De Blasio

About this time last year Christine Quinn had a comfortable lead in the polls and many thought that she was a lock to become New York City's first openly gay mayor. Late in the summer of 2013 she fell to third place not long after the Anyone But Quinn campaign began running attack ads that accused her, among other things, of allowing the closure of a major West Village hospital. The FBI is now investigating the group behind Anyone But Quinn over donations made to them by a union with ties with now-Mayor Bill De Blasio. The investigation is centering on the continuing battle to ban the city's horse-drawn carriage trade, which Quinn opposed. Via the New York Daily News:

De Blasio came out against the Central Park industry after receiving campaign donations from the anti-carriage group, New Yorkers for Clean, Livable & Safe Streets.  NYCLASS supporters spent hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking Quinn shortly after de Blasio publicly embraced their cause. The “Anyone but Quinn” campaign blasted the Democratic mayoral contender who entered the race as the favorite to succeed former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Agents have zeroed in on $225,000 donated to NYCLASS by a union run by de Blasio’s cousin, John Wilhelm, and a key de Blasio fund-raiser, lawyer Jay Eisenhoffer, several sources familiar with the matter told The News. A spokesman for Quinn declined to comment Saturday, as did J. Peter Donald of the FBI’s New York office.  De Blasio, asked Saturday about the investigation, denied that the feds were looking at him.

RELATED: The Daily News opposes any ban on the carriage trade and has rallied its readers with a petition to De Blasio, who had vowed to eliminate the 156 year-old industry in his first week in office. De Blasio has suggested replacing the carriages with electric replicas of antique cars.

Mediaite Names Worst In 2013 Media

Mediaite readers have named Michelle Malkin and Ben Shapiro as the worst personalities in the above formats. Plenty of progressives made the poll too. Hit the link for more.

Matt Drudge's Nightmare

The DNC Spikes The Ball

Body Language

New York City Mayor-Elect Bill De Blasio sat down with Bloomberg yesterday. Gothamist writes: 

The people of New York pulled a fast one on Mayor Bloomberg last night, defying Dear Leader and electing his supposedly "racist," "class warfare"-waging arch-enemy to replace him. So it should come as no surprise that Bill de Blasio got a very grumpy-looking Bloomberg this morning when the two sat down for some special post-election bonding time at City Hall. De Blasio reportedly told the press that the mayor had given him some "good advice," and that being at City Hall as the mayoral-elect was a "special feeling," though from the looks of things, Bloomberg was brewing his own "special" brand of good old fashioned rancor.

Planned Parenthood Cheers Cooch Loss

NEW YORK CITY: Corey Johnson Easily Wins Chelsea City Council Seat

Openly gay and openly HIV+ former GLAAD staffer Corey Johnson scored an easy win yesterday, taking the Chelsea/West Village city council district of outgoing Speaker Christine Quinn by a massive margin. Johnson was first appointed to Chelsea's Community Board 4 in 2011 and later became its chair. He is a former contributor to Towleroad.

NEW JERSEY: Gay Republican Don Guardian Elected Mayor Of Atlantic Ciy

Openly gay Republican Don Guardian has been elected mayor of Atlantic City.

“It’s very humbling,” said Guardian, who admitted he worried down to the last few districts as the numbers came in for the tight race. “Sometimes David beats Goliath,” the mayor-elect told supporters who crowded into the Tun Tavern to hear him claim victory. He joked about writing three speeches, including a concession speech and one if the race were “too close to call.” Those who gathered cheered that he didn't need to give either one of those. Before the speech, he admitted he was unsure victory would come. Guardian, who is openly gay, joked during his speech about his partner, Louis Fatato, bringing him back to normal Wednesday by having him cook and clean.

Atlantic City's incumbent mayor Lorenzo Langford had several public battles with Chris Christie over the last few years.

Langford, a former casino dealer, previously ran the city from 2002 to 2005 and won a special election in 2008 and a full term in 2009. Langford was mayor when both Tropical Storm Irene and Superstorm Sandy swamped his city. Right after Sandy hit, Christie, with whom Langford has clashed repeatedly, blasted him for not fully evacuating the city. Langford rejected the criticism and defended his handling of the storm and its aftermath.

 (Tipped by JMG reader Stephen)

NOTE: The first draft of this post incorrectly named the city as Asbury Park. I'm tired, y'all.

Today's NYC Tabloids

Seattle Elects Gay Mayor

Openly gay state Sen. Ed Murray was elected mayor of Seattle yesterday.

State Sen. Ed Murray’s promise of a more collaborative leadership style carried him to victory Tuesday night, as voters signaled they were fed up with four years of Mayor Mike McGinn’s political brawls. Murray grabbed a commanding 56 percent of the votes counted on election night, compared with 43 percent for McGinn. At a jubilant party at Neumos on Capitol Hill, Murray took the stage before 9 p.m. to cheers and hugs from supporters, including a pack of elected leaders who’d endorsed him. Signaling the change in tone he hopes to bring to City Hall, Murray said his campaign “was energized by the belief that Seattle can show the nation that government can work once again.

Fox News: The Cooch Has Lost

Let's hope this sticks...

UPDATE: CNN calls it too.

VIRGINIA: Freak Show Douchecanoe EW Jackson Loses Lieutenant Gov Bid

E.W. Jackson, the raging homophobe who lied about gay people and then lied about having lied, has lost his bid for Virginia lieutenant governor. The scary part is that he didn't lose by all that much.

Breitbart: Democrats Sabotaged The Cooch With The Libertarian Candidate

For months the Tea People have been screaming the Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis is Nader-ing Ken Cuccinelli out of the governor's mansion. Today on Breitbart:

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Tuesday, Wes Benedict, co-founder and President of the Libertarian Booster PAC that spent $11,454 to circulate petitions necessary to get Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Robert Sarvis on the ballot in Virginia said "[w]e probably wouldn’t have spent the $11,000 on Sarvis if we had not received the $150,000 from him [major Democratic donor Joseph Liemandt].” We’ve gotten support from the right and the left," Benedict said, adding that "I don’t think the intention was to make Cuccinelli lose but I have no problem if the perception is Sarvis caused Cuccinelli to lose. Republicans deserve to lose lots of election for supporting bailouts and for supporting a nominee for president whose Romneycare plan helped deliver Obamacare."

From the comments at the above-linked article: "I still find it interesting that Republican votes are syphoned off by a Libertarian who is pro abortion, pro gay marriage, pro gun control, pro legal drugs, pro immigration reform, and pro small military. Just what did he offer to Cooch voters? Or did they just hate Cooch that much?"

Homocon Tweet Of The Day

Maddow BUSTS E.W. Jackson

EW Jackson: God Made The Tea Party

God ignored Virginia lieutenant governor candidate EW Jackson AND his church when they fasted against the election of President Obama. But Sky Daddy snapped to attention after he realized what he'd done and immediately created the Tea Party.

Bad News For The Cooch

Source.

ST. PAUL: Crackpot Mayoral Candidate Calls Twin Cities "Sodom & Gomorrah"

From Wonkette's Docktor Zoom:

While the mayoral election in Minneapolis has attracted a bit more attention for its wide variety of oddballs (especially lake-coffee man Jeff Wagner), St. Paul has its own stable of “characters” too. So here is St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman — the incumbent, which is something that Minneapolis does not have in its election — having a very hard time suppressing the giggles at a mayoral candidate forum Thursday, mostly in response to “perennial candidate” Sharon Anderson, who is kind of like the Basil Marceaux of St. Paul. The St. Paul Pioneer Press politely says that Anderson, who runs for attorney general just about every chance she gets, despite not being an attorney, occasionally gave answers that veered off topic.  She also likened St. Paul and Minneapolis to Sodom and Gomorrah, and compared light rail to Nazi train cars carrying Holocaust victims to concentration camps.

Well, she's not boring.

McAuliffe Leads By Seven In New VA Poll

Via the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Democrat Terry McAuliffe leads Republican Ken Cuccinelli 46 percent to 39 percent among likely Virginia voters while 10 percent back third-party candidate Robert C. Sarvis, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, less than two weeks before the election. Though 47 percent of the voters say the federal government shutdown hurt the defense-heavy state “a great deal,” the poll’s analysis indicates that it did not appear to affect the governor’s race. McAuliffe leads 92 percent to 3 percent among Democrats, with 2 percent for Sarvis, while Cuccinelli leads 81 percent to 6 percent among Republicans, with 11 percent for Sarvis, according to Wednesday’s poll. Independent voters split 39-39 percent, with 14 percent for Sarvis.

Right wing sites continue to bemoan the spoiler role being played by Libertarian candidate Sarvis. Without Sarvis in the race, Cuccinelli would likely be leading.

VIRGINIA: Democrats Yank Anti-Cuccinelli "Oral Sex" Posters From College Campus

The Washington Post reports:

Both posters say at the bottom that they were paid for by “Education Votes, a project of the Democratic Party of Virginia.” They were distributed to other campuses around the state, too, but DPV spokesman Brian Coy said the party has had a change of heart. “While we feel Virginians deserve to know the truth about Ken Cuccinelli’s extreme social agenda, we apologize to those who were offended,” Coy said. “We’re working to remove these posters from the campuses in question and they will not be used again.”

Garren Shipley, a spokesman for the Republican Party of Virginia, called the posters “par for the course” for Virginia Democrats. “Not only does it repeat this thoroughly-debunked Terry McAuliffe falsehood,” Shipley said, “but it manages to do it in an even more crass and tasteless way than before. Mailers and posters like this are what you get when your candidates have no record to run on. The Democratic Party of Virginia should be ashamed. But they’re probably not.”

I would love to have one of these posters.