Barrett: despite de Blasio profession of purity vs. Cuomo, he's transactional too (irony: both make deals with FCR)

So Wayne Barrett has a long piece in the Daily News today headlined The transactional Bill de Blasio, counting up the ways the mayor is not so pure as he professes, especially in comparison to Gov. Andrew Cuomo (though the late Mario Cuomo declared,“He’s a lot like Andrew”).

They include:

• "He has awarded the richest labor contracts in city history, and support for his 2017 reelection bid from the union recipients of his public largesse may ward off any primary challenge"
• "In another bow to a backer, de Blasio didn’t just deliver big bucks to the teachers union, he’s effectively surrendered the management of the schools to it, even letting it vet the parents chosen to sit on school committees."
• The mayor's defense of disgraced Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver as “a man of integrity” 
• "De Blasio’s top budget officials came to him from Silver, and he uses the same key political consulting firm as Silver, Berlin Rosen, which also represents HTC, the hospital workers, the teacher unions and their collective ballot line, the Working Families Party."
• The mayor's defense of new Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, benefiting from his mother's embezzlement, as having done everything "appropriate” 

The irony, unmentioned by Barrett, is that both de Blasio and Cuomo are transactional when it comes to Forest City Ratner, which supplies campaign cash and photo ops.

It also should be noted that Barrett, whose wife works for Cuomo, did not identify hedge fund backers of charter schools as a special interest, as Ted Hamm pointed out.