Lobbyist salivating over DeBlasio victory

From the Daily News:

Joe Lhota is so very right about Bill de Blasio taking us back to the bad old days of the David Dinkins era.

He is just wrong about why we should worry.

The biggest threat to the city in potential slippage is not a spike in crime or renewed riots that leave police cars spinning upside down like tops on the street, as Lhota’s ads suggest. No, the threat comes from the return of lobbyists like Sid Davidoff, who, with the rise of de Blasio, are returning like Freddy Krueger on Halloween.

If you do not recall the dalliance between Davidoff and the Dinkins administration, count yourself lucky. It went something like this:

Dinkins was a tennis fanatic. He played many mornings and had a good backhand. Naturally, there were many people looking to bounce a ball back and forth with the mayor.

Among them was Davidoff, another fine tennis player whose deep interest in city government began with his days in the John Lindsay administration and continued as head of a prosperous firm of lobbyists and lawyers.

Davidoff made an excellent living making sure that contracts, leases and variances for his clients won approvals. In those years, he was a regular fixture in the west wing of City Hall, where he was also close with the first deputy mayor, Norman Steisel, and closer still with Steisel’s chief of staff.

These ties served Davidoff well. With clients ranging from Donald Trump to water meter suppliers, his firm was the league champion among city lobbyists throughout the Dinkins years . It helped that every time the press reported that one of Davidoff’s clients had scored an unseemly gain from the public coffers, more clients appeared at his door.

Davidoff is now an honored senior citizen in the lobbying ranks. And he is also among the excited army of advocates-for-hire who, thanks to de Blasio’s rise, are already beating on the doors of City Hall, somewhat like those ravenous tribes of the undead that populate all the best television shows.