Friday, July 15, 2011

Shhh!!!! It's the Bronx County Dinner!

The only thing said more than "Is the Bronx in the house?" last night was "Shhhhhh!" For $500 a plate, you would think the county leaders would let the people not listen to the same speech by ten different politicians.

Nevertheless, the annual Bronx County Dinner seemed to be a success, with big names from outside the borough such as former governor David Paterson, state Comptroller Tom Dinapoli, Lt. Gov. Bob Duffy, Manhattan BP Scott Stringer, New York State Democratic Party executive director Charlie King, Public Advocate Bill De Blasio, former city comptroller and mayor hopeful Bill Thompson and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn all attending.

After former governor David Paterson gave his speech, I had the chance to talk to him for a minute and asked him what he thinks of the book his wife is writing (the one where he supposedly said he might kill himself when he found out he was governor). Here's our quick back and forth:

BM: Do you think you'll get back into the political landscape?
DP: Being front and center, there's only a certain amount of time you can do it...A camera always trained on the front door of my apartment...after a while you just don't want to do that anymore.
BM: Well your wife's writing a book, does that make you nervous at all?
DP: No, she's gonna let it all hang out, it's gonna be pretty good.

I would have loved to dig deeper, but with the throngs of people waiting to introduce themselves to him as we stood in front of the bar (which they shut down only two hours into the night!), it was too tough to keep speaking with him.

Below are a pair of photos from last night's dinner. Bear with me as I try to figure out how to upload videos from my phone. It's not going well.

Rep. Eliot Engel with former governor David Paterson.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn with Councilman James Vacca.
For a full recap of the night, check out next week's issue of the Riverdale Review or Bronx Press.

UPDATE: Jump below for some videos from the dinner.

Here's Lt. Gov. Bob Duffy:


Former governor David Paterson:



Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr:

1 comment:

  1. To bad the sunlight covers most of the picture, but not all of Quinn.

    ReplyDelete