MAYOR’S PAID QUOTE WRITER
DeB’s p.r. firm put words in pols’ mouths
Mayor de Blasio’s favorite publicrelations firm didn’t just run his 2013 mayoral campaign, it also functioned as a virtual shadow government, ghostwriting press release quotes and letters to the editor, e-mails released by the administration show.
In one e-mail string from January 2015, top City Hall staffer Marco Carrion pressed colleagues on rushing out a letter to the editor about luring the Democratic National Convention to Brooklyn — a missive that quickly ended up in the hands of the BerlinRosen p.r. firm.
“CM Cumbo will submit a LTE, but for quickest turnaround we need to write it,” Carrion wrote, referring to Brooklyn City Council member Laurie Cumbo.
Marti Adams, a de Blasio staffer, responded and cc’ed BerlinRosen senior vice president Dan Levitan, who she said had been writing letters “all day.”
“We can draft,” replied Levitan five minutes later. “Can someone send us what she already wrote?”
The e-mail string is one of hundreds released last week in response to a lawsuit filed by The Post and NY1 demanding City Hall share correspondence with five outside advisers.
It’s also one of several exchanges that offers a glimpse inside how City Hall and Berlin Rosen worked together to manipulate public perception on Hizzoner’s initiatives.
In another e-mail exchange from January 2014, City Hall staffers were tasked with getting members of Congress to sign off on quotes supporting de Blasio’s universal pre-K initiative.
In one e-mail, Levitan shared a draft press release with comments — one of which was labeled “unassigned” and included with no attribution. Another quote — which ap- pears actually to have been submitted by Rep. Nydia Velazquez (DBrooklyn) — also apparently needed more work.
“Do we want to point out to Nydia that her quote is weak and encourage her to join her more courageous colleagues in actually saying something?” wrote Josh Gold, a top consultant on the pre-K initiative.
De Blasio spokesman Eric Phillips on Monday brushed off Velazquez’s comment, saying the administration was “proud to have Rep. Velazquez’s support for universal pre-K.”
Velazquez said she didn’t remember the quote.
At the time, BerlinRosen was be- ing paid by the mayor’s nonprofit, Campaign for One New York to promote the city to the Democratic National Committee.
BerlinRosen co-founder Jonathan Rosen, one of de Blasio’s outside advisers, also enlisted surrogates to unleash attacks over the fight for pre-K funding in Albany.
In one January 2014 exchange, he asked top de Blasio aide Emma Wolfe for permission to release an unattributed quote criticizing Gov. Cuomo’s role in funding pre-K.
“The money [Cuomo] is proposing is not enough for truly universal, full-day pre-k,” reads the quote.