Bill de Blasio’s Circle of Power annotated with one linkage unmentioned by NYT: Forest City Ratner

On the cover of the Sunday New York Times Metropolitan section, and online yesterday, is Bill de Blasio’s Circle of Power, with the following explanation:

Officeholders have kitchen cabinets: advisers who provide counsel, feedback and friendship. Bill de Blasio’s includes people he met as a Democratic operative, a city official and an active parent in Brooklyn. Here is a guide to those in the mayor-elect’s orbit.

Two major connections, as noted at right, are Acorn and the affiliated Working Families Party, both of which are linked to de Blasio via "inner ring" connection Emma Wolfe. Other connections include Park Slope, S.E.I.U., David N. Dinkins, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama.

Omitted is any connection to Forest City Ratner, a key campaign supporter of de Blasio, who has resisted any opportunity to criticize the powerful Brooklyn developer.

Two in de Blasio's inner circle have business relationships with the powerful Brooklyn developer. Jonathan Rosen's firm BerlinRosen works for Forest City and is also connected to the WFP and Acorn (and likely will still have a role in the Atlantic Yards affordable housing.)

Former Acorn head Bertha Lewis signed the Atlantic Yards Housing Memorandum of Understanding, committing herself to publicly support the project, and is of course a founder of the WFP.  The Times notes, regarding ACORN, that "A spinoff organization, New York Communities for Change, was led by [the late] Jon Kest, who was a close friend of Mr. de Blasio and a founder of the Working Families Party."

So I annotated the main graphic to add Forest City Ratner.