Last summer, Randy Mastro was being run out of town. The former chief of staff for Rudy Giuliani was flailing in his attempts to be installed as Mayor Eric Adams's corporation counsel. A truly battering City Council hearing subjected Mastro to six hours of rehashing the worst excesses of the Giuliani-era, as well as running through the rogues' gallery of odious clients he's represented as a private attorney. Eventually, knowing his confirmation was cooked, Mastro withdrew his nomination.
Fast forward to today, and now Randy Mastro seemingly runs New York City from his perch as first deputy mayor, where he was installed after resignations by much of Eric Adams's senior staff in February.
It's no secret that while Eric Adams flits around the city raising flags and frequenting private clubs, he leaves the day-to-day running of New York City, like a lot of previous mayors, to his first deputy mayor, a position that has been a revolving door for much of his administration. First, it was former de Blasio top aide Lorraine Grillo, who split after just a year. Then Adams appointed Sheena Wright, who resigned last October, a month after the FBI raided her home. After Wright, Adams installed the capable technocrat Maria Torres-Springer, who herself resigned after the indignities of Adams supplicating himself to Trump to have his criminal charges dropped became too much for her, and many other reasonable people in the administration, to bear.
So what has Mastro been up to during his first month on the job? In a nutshell, it seems he's been busy championing and pushing reactionary politics in City Hall, while Adams, unmoored from the Democratic Party, is gearing up for a quixotic mayoral bid as an independent.