Podcast: Ester Fuchs on budgets and Bloomberg

It’s safe to say that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg had starkly different approaches to the city budget – the former driven by aspirational policies and pluralism, the latter by mitigating fiscal turmoil by reducing spending and creating long-term savings.

As a former advisor to Bloomberg, Ester Fuchs – now a professor of political science at Columbia University – had a firsthand look at how the budget sausage is made. Fuchs joined Alexis Grenell and me to share her thoughts on the nuanced differences between de Blasio’s and Bloomberg’s budgets on this week’s episode of The Slant podcast.

Fuchs’ former boss also made some waves in national politics over the weekend by floating a possible third party presidential bid. We asked Fuchs what sort of coalition of support Bloomberg would have to build to blaze a path to victory, and who his hypothetical candidacy would hurt most – the Democratic or Republican nominee?

Later, Gerson Borrero joined me for our “Bochinche & Buzz” segment. Last week, Gerson got the lowdown from state Assemblyman Charles Barron on why he interrupted Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s State of the State address, and this week he reveals that de Blasio might be welcomed with a “Bronx cheer” when he gives his State of the City address on February 4.

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