DAYS THE BUDGET IS LATE: 49 

YOU GET A PASS, AND YOU GET A PASS, AND YOU GET A PASS…: Mayor Zohran Mamdani is conceding the way City Hall doles out press passes is “not” good policy – after a trio of Luigi Mangione admirers celebrated the alleged murder of a health care CEO while flaunting newly minted press passes.

“Those three individuals should not have received press passes,” the mayor told reporters today, referencing the three Mangione supporters, who call themselves the Mangionistas.

The Mangionistas told reporters Monday outside a Manhattan courthouse that the children of slain UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson are “better off without their Dad” and that they “don’t give a flying fuck he died.”

They also posed for pictures with their press passes in hand — an image that landed on the cover of The New York Post this morning, with the tabloid squarely blaming City Hall for the fiasco.

Mamdani is now distancing himself from the city’s press pass policy — saying his administration will review its media credential application process, a job previously handled by the NYPD. That changed after 2020 protests in response to George Floyd’s murder prompted questions about whether the city’s police should control journalists’ access.

The internal review from Mamdani comes as he has sought to publicly ease tensions with business leaders after the mayor filmed a “Tax the Rich” video outside the pied-à-terre of Citadel CEO Ken Griffin that inflamed the hedge fund titan and other business leaders.

In public remarks, Griffin criticized Mamdani’s decision to use his personal address to promote his soak-the-rich policies and even referenced Thompson’s murder last year, which occurred only a few blocks away from the pied-à-terre in question. He also said he is excited to move much of his company’s operations to Miami.

Since then, Mamdani has seemingly been in rich-biz-exec damage control mode, publicly praising Griffin and reportedly reaching out via intermediaries to try and schedule a meeting. Mamdani also set up one-on-one sit-downs with other CEOs, including JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs’s David Solomon on Monday. He also met with Blackstone president Jonathan Gray last week.

The Mangionista press pass debacle certainly doesn’t stand to help his tension-easing efforts.

City Hall refused to answer a question from Playbook about when their passes were awarded, though The Post declared the three Mangione fans were awarded the credentials under Mamdani. A reporter for The Guardian, Victoria Bekiempis, posted the result of a records request she made which indicated dozens of individuals have obtained press passes in connection with the Mangione trial, with about half granted before Mamdani took over as mayor.

“There is a good-natured debate to be had about where a press pass should extend and where it shouldn’t. However, the three people that we are talking about don’t fall within that debate,” Mamdani also said today. “I, as the mayor, should not be deciding who is considered a journalist worthy of a pass and who is not. However, what we should have is a process that people can trust.”

As mayor, Mamdani has embraced “new media” influencers and content creators, even holding press events exclusively for them. Journalists from Room 9 — the City Hall press room — also say they’ve lodged complaints to Mamdani’s press office about the lax availability of city press credentials.

For instance, Raul Rivera, a man who allegedly bit a Mamdani campaign volunteer at a rally before his election, still held onto his press pass after his arrest, according to eyewitnesses who saw it around his neck at press conferences outside City Hall, where he is a frequent disruptor and provocateur. Other independent news gatherers, like the man behind the far-right “Viral News NYC,” were incensed about the Mangionista’s getting credentialed.

“I remember when I first got my press pass,” wrote the account, which internet sleuths have identified as written by Oren Levy. “I was proud that I was able to get one. Now it’s just another piece of plastic with no real meaning behind it because every jerk off and their mother has one.” — Jason Beeferman

From the Capitol

ALMOST THERE: Voting on the seven-week late state budget may begin next Tuesday.

Assembly Democrats were told during a closed-door conference today that votes are being eyed for early next week as top lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul try to finish up the $268 billion tax-and-spend plan.

“Next week is looking more promising,” Assemblymember Michaelle Solages said.

Read more from Blue Light News Pro’s Nick Reisman and Bill Mahoney. 

NO IMPACT: The deal between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and five unions to end a three-day Long Island Rail Road strike won’t affect the yet-to-be-completed state budget’s bottomline, state Senate Transportation Committee Chair Jeremy Cooney said.

On Monday night, Hochul announced the agreement ending the strike for the commuter rail service that connects New York City to a vital, vote-rich suburban bellwether.

Standing beside the governor, MTA CEO Janno Lieber said they were able to reach a deal that was structured in a way that doesn’t prompt new fare increases or tax hikes.

The unions have been working without a contract for three years. Salary increases for those years — 3 percent, 3 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively — will be paid retroactively, but the sticking point was how to handle a fourth year that begins next month. NY1 reported the salary increase would be 4.5 percent with a $3,000 lump sum and that the contract year would be extended by six weeks. — Nick Reisman and Ry Rivard

FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

BLAKEMAN’S DESANTIS BASH: The New York GOP is hosting a fundraiser with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tonight as their gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman hopes to unseat Gov. Kathy Hochul.

The New York Republican State Committee’s annual gala, set to take place at 7 p.m. at The Plaza Hotel, will feature remarks from the Florida governor as he makes an uphill push for Blakeman and others to turn New York red.

The event will occur at the same time as the Legislative Correspondents Association’s annual “LCA Show” in Albany, where the city’s press corps spoofs the New York politicians they cover with an original musical in a longstanding tradition. Hochul and Blakeman were originally scheduled to deliver the show’s “rebuttals,” where the electeds who are the targets of the jokes get the chance to give comedic retorts in front of the live audience, but Blakeman canceled his appearance. He will send a video instead.

“We regret the conflict with the LCA show, which was unavoidable,” the state GOP said in a press advisory.

Other GOP candidates like attorney general candidate Saritha Komatireddy and comptroller hopeful Joseph Hernandez will also deliver remarks.

The swanky gala is taking place as another big name in the GOP — President Donald Trump — is flying to New York this week to hold an event with Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in the Hudson Valley on Friday.

Despite the show of support for New York candidates from some of the Republican Party’s biggest names, not all is kumbaya between national and local leaders. Just weeks ago, Trump broke from state GOP Chair Ed Cox with his endorsement in the race to replace Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik. — Jason Beeferman

TERMINAL TURMOIL: The path forward for the Brooklyn Marine Terminal is turning into a point of contention in the heated primary between Rep. Dan Goldman and former City Comptroller Brad Lander.

The initiative to revamp the Red Hook terminal — led in part by Goldman — has been a delicate process. A task force approved the proposal last September after five delayed votes due to holdouts from Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and City Council Member Shahana Hanif, who eventually came around. The project is still years away from construction.

But at a forum hosted this morning by Abundance New York and NYC New Liberals, Lander said he thinks “a little more time is needed to refine that plan” — a sentiment he’s recently shared publicly. But privately, Lander reportedly “lobbied holdout members of a city task force last year to line up support” for the plan, according to Crain’s. When asked if he changed his position on the terminal, Lander replied that he “didn’t take a public position at the time that the plan was adopted,” later adding that he had “doubts about the plan at the time.”

Lander noted that people questioned the nature of port operations at the harbor and transportation in the area.

“With a new administration, with some doubts about it, it is worth a few more months,” Lander said during the forum. “I will be a champion to get it done, and you know I will be, because you’ve seen me on every single project, every single hard choice, being on the side of spending some time building consensus, and then moving forward productively.”

Goldman appeared on stage after Lander, who said he didn’t want a debate because he didn’t think “one minute sniping back and forth” would be as productive as the moderator Ben Max “asking thoughtful questions that push each of us.” The incumbent wanted seven debates; Lander committed to two.

Goldman agreed the plan “certainly needs some work in terms of the transit and infrastructure, and making sure that the space can support what is proposed,” but he was quick to fire back. He accused his challenger of “flip-flopping” on his support for the project and drew a contrast with Lander’s Gowanus rezoning. The incumbent said that rezoning “was done well” — but that he also hears from Gowanus residents now priced out of the neighborhood — a dynamic he doesn’t want to see unfold with the Brooklyn Marine Terminal.

“The concerns that you hear about, ‘Oh we need a few more months, the process,’ that is NIMBYism — that is how things don’t get done,” he said. “We went through an exhaustive process that considered all of these things.”

Goldman also mused that there’s “some surprise” that Trump hasn’t “tried to stop” the project. “I think it’s obviously because he’s afraid of me,” he joked. — Madison Fernandez

IN OTHER NEWS

— FOLLOW THE BLUE BRICK ROAD?: New York Democrats see a potential opening in Rep. Elise Stefanik’s deep red district. (Gothamist)

— ‘HATEFUL ACT’: The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating an incident where a Muslim man was hit with an egg outside a Brooklyn mosque. (New York Daily News)

— LOOK MA, NO HANDS: State Sen. Patricia Fahy introduced a bill that would bring self-driving cars to Albany. (Times Union)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.

President Donald Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for Texas’ Senate GOP race in an eleventh-hour decision, siding with a longtime MAGA ally — and potentially imperiling GOP control of the seat.

Trump’s endorsement Tuesday gives Paxton a late boost over establishment Republicans’ preferred candidate, Sen. John Cornyn, ahead of next week’s May primary runoff, where polls show a razor-thin race. And it comes after the president refused for months to take sides, in spite of heavy lobbying from both Cornyn’s and Paxton’s allies.

The timing of the last-minute endorsement comes as a surprise, months after he was initially expected to jump in: Just on Monday, Cornyn said “the ship has finally sailed” regarding Trump’s stamp of approval.

“Ken is a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough.”

Cornyn and his supporters fear that nominating scandal-plagued Paxton, a figure of the far right with significant personal baggage, would put control of the Senate at risk and cost the party hundreds of millions of dollars to defend the seat this fall.

As Texas’ top lawyer for a decade, Paxton has faced impeachment, a securities fraud investigation, ethics complaints and an ongoing divorce with allegations of infidelity. Democrats believe they have the best shot in decades at winning statewide in Texas, and Republicans worry that Democratic nominee James Talarico is a formidable opponent.

White House allies predicted that Cornyn’s stronger-than-expected showing in the first round of voting would convince Trump to endorse him. The president played into those expectations when he posted on Truth Social back in early March that the Texas GOP primary can’t “be allowed to go on any longer” and he would announce his pick soon.

But in the end, after more than six weeks of delay, Trump was swayed by the MAGA wing of the party who see Paxton as a true believer in their movement and despise Cornyn for occasionally being at odds with the president.

Paxton is a staunch Trump ally who supported his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. And after some White House allies told Blue Light News and other media outlets that Trump was looking at endorsing Cornyn, MAGA influencers including Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec led a public full-court-press to get Trump to reverse course.

Paxton, ahead of Trump’s decision, said he would consider stepping aside if the Senate chose to eliminate the filibuster and pass the SAVE America Act, the elections overhaul bill that has since stalled in the Senate over GOP divisions. That offer was seen among Texas Republicans as a ploy from Paxton to remind Trump that the pair are closely aligned, while driving a wedge between the president and Cornyn, an establishment Republican who is opposed to removing the filibuster.

Georgia Republicans are already bracing for their bruising Senate primary to continue past Tuesday night.

Once viewed as a clear GOP pickup opportunity, the contest to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has remained largely static for months — with no candidate fully separating from the field and President Donald Trump yet to get involved.

Many expect the contest to go to a runoff, interviews with more than half a dozen GOP strategists and campaign officials reveal. Rep. Mike Collins, the front-runner, is likely to make the cut, but it’s unclear whether he’ll face fellow Rep. Buddy Carter or former football coach Derek Dooley, who’s had a late rise in the polls.

That means while the candidates are poised to duke it out until June 16 for the GOP nomination, Ossoff has free rein to shore up his cash advantage and attack lines ahead of November. The Democrat, Republicans say, is beatable — but the path to unseating him gets more difficult if their own primary drags on.

“The longer the party stays fractured … that harms the chances in the general election,” said Jason Shepherd, the former Cobb County GOP chair. “The beneficiary of all this is Jon Ossoff. All he has to do right now is continue to raise money.”

Cole Muzio, a conservative activist and president of the Frontline Policy Council who voted for Collins, said the nearly large faction of undecided voters “is wild for what was initially supposed to be the most competitive race in the country…. It is not a good scenario.”

With Trump still on the sidelines, the candidates have been largely left to battle it out on their own, exposing fault lines over MAGA loyalty. Collins and Carter, both allies of the president, have mostly aimed their fire at one another as they work to win over the far-right base.

Collins, who has the backing of the Club for Growth PAC, a major conservative super PAC, appeared at a campaign rally with Trump earlier this year, while Carter has presented himself as a “trusted MAGA warrior.” Carter has ramped up his spending in the contest’s closing weeks, but recent polling shows Dooley beating him in second place.

And that’s exactly where Dooley’s campaign says they want him to be.

Dooley jumped into the race with Gov. Brian Kemp’s backing — and he’s gained momentum in the final stretch by leaning on his status as a political outsider and emphasizing his ties to a popular governor whose approval rating is nearly 20 points higher than Trump’s in Georgia.

His rise is emerging as yet another test of Kemp’s political muscle against the party’s more hardline MAGA wing. The governor has joined Dooley at dozens of campaign stops. And Hardworking Americans, a Kemp-aligned PAC, is up on the air on Dooley’s behalf.

“I’m totally fine with the timing of where we are, because really all we lost is the D.C. chattering class thinking that Derek didn’t have a chance. I’m more than happy to overperform expectations,” said one senior Dooley adviser, who, like others in this article, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Traditionally, you want to be spending your money and peaking when people are voting or right before they’re voting, and that’s what we’ve been able to do.”

Dooley’s campaign declined to comment.

Collins spokesperson Corbin Keown said in a statement that “despite the field outspending Mike Collins 15-to-1 in advertising, Georgians have consistently shown that they want [his] conservative record.” Carter, in a statement, expressed confidence in his standing with voters and said “Ossoff is desperate to face one of my primary opponents because he knows their baggage would distract from his terrible record.”

Republicans are hopeful that Tuesday night’s outcome — especially if it’s a runoff — will finally force Trump’s hand on an endorsement, putting the national political spotlight back on the Georgia Senate race.

The Collins campaign is already looking to make a pitch for Trump’s backing after the results come in.

“We are definitely going to make the case starting Wednesday that it’s clear he’s the best candidate for the general,” said one Republican strategist close to Collins’ campaign.

Trump’s endorsement has already proven to have significant sway in Republican primaries. His efforts to run challengers against several state GOP senators in Indiana and against Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana paid off. His endorsement of Barry Moore in Alabama’s Senate race helped him become the new front-runner. And he’s fronting a challenger to Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie in what has turned into a very tight — and incredibly expensive — contest.

But even though all three leading GOP candidates for Georgia Senate have had meetings at the White House, they’ve had little luck getting Trump to weigh in publicly. That has meant that other party operations, such as the National Republican Senatorial Committee — which typically follow the president’s lead or wait until a nominee emerges from the primary — have also stayed on the sidelines.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some Republicans argue that outside funding will ramp up significantly once the primary concludes.

“Every race in Georgia will tighten between now and Sept. 1, and when it comes time to put resources together, Georgia will be in the fold,” said one Georgia-based GOP strategist close to Kemp. The Senate Leadership Fund, the top Senate GOP super PAC, has committed an initial $44 million in Georgia.

But in the meantime, the fractured primary field has started Republicans on their back foot while Ossoff continues to raise money. The Democrat ended the first quarter of the year with $31 million in the bank, according to federal campaign finance reports, and has largely allowed his trio of challengers to battle themselves rather than taking direct aim across the aisle.

“[The race] will tighten, I think, but right now, it’s looking a little gloomier than what it normally would just because Ossoff is building a war chest and we’re infighting and all these things,” said another Georgia-based Republican strategist, who is unaffiliated with a Senate campaign.

Beyond contending with Ossoff’s warchest, the Senate GOP candidates continue to face another hurdle: Breaking through with voters at the same time as the Republican gubernatorial race is sucking up all the political — and advertising — oxygen.

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and billionaire Rick Jackson, who are locked in their own monstrously expensive primary, have spent a combined $94 million in that race so far. Their television and digital ads, paired with an overwhelming amount of physical mailers, has made it harder for candidates in other races to attract Georgians’ attention.

“The challenge for the Senate race is you’re not going to see a slowdown in spending in the governor’s race come the runoff,” Muzio said. “Can any of these guys really elevate above the noise to make a clear message?”