Unanswered questions about term limits coup

...who was that mystery man sitting in the Subway sandwich shop across from City Hall on the first day of the hearings? The guy with the cash-filled envelope doling out dollars to those who showed up early to grab front-row seats and wave pro-Bloomberg signs? One likely suspect, a well-practiced Brooklyn campaign worker, denied it. "It's nothing to do with me, man," he insisted. The search continues.

So does the hunt for the telephone bank that routed pro-Bloomberg calls directly into the offices of council foes of the mayor's bill. Who paid for that? Not us, said an administration official who suggested a friendly labor group was behind it.

The mayor's was a no-fingerprints operation. He closed out his 2005 campaign committee last year, never even bothering to report a poll his aides admitted he did last spring—months before the financial crisis hit—to check the public pulse for extending term limits (there was none; a pulse, that is).

Bloomberg's Term-Limits Coup: Heroes, Villains, and Wimps

Bloomberg and Quinn may have carried the day, but you had to believe they bought themselves a world of future political pain in doing so. As any tinpot banana republic generalissimo will tell you, the next coup is always around the corner.