The Post reports that Adolfo Carrion, former Bronx borough prez who served as Barack Obama’s urban czar, is weighing whether to run for mayor “and will make a decision by the fall.”
Carrion, 51, would likely bill himself as a middle-of-the-road alternative to the other Democrat contenders, who he reportedly thinks ‘”are all trying to out-left each other.'”
He’s so popular with moderates and conservatives, in fact, that Republican leaders have asked him to run on a G.O.P. ticket, according to the paper.
Granted, Carrion’s candidacy wouldn’t be too surprising.
When he left the Urban Affairs gig to head the New York/New Jersey HUD office, it was very much an expected homecoming — even if his stint at the White House wasn’t altogether that memorable.
What is memorable: as the Voice reported in 2008, Carrion booted some Bronx community board members from their positions when they “objected a couple years ago to giving the richest team in baseball a public park and a few hundred million bucks to build a brand new stadium.”
More: when Carrion raised $2.3 million for citywide office in 2008, some 66 percent came from the real estate industry. He also didn’t check to make sure that 25 percent of Yankee stadium-related construction jobs went to Bronx residents — as required by a community benefits agreement, “never bothering to make sure a new community oversight board even met.”
He also didn’t find a new home for the Bronx Terminal Market, as he was supposed to do, so the merchants had to relocate throughout the city.