Official Website of Ellis Henican | HIZZONER ALEC BALDWIN, NYC MAYOR

“Baldwin for NYC mayor? No Kidding”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, June 12, 2011

Alec Baldwin’s campaign for mayor must be serious. He’s just snagged the endorsement of Chevy Chase.

Who says politics is predictable and dull?

Just two weeks ago, Anthony Weiner was the presumptive favorite to replace Mike Bloomberg. The boyishcongressman had outer-boroughs chutzpah. He had money in the bank. He had City CouncilSpeaker Colleen Quinn as his chief opponent.Well, something happened on the way to a landslide. Not since Dominique Strauss-Kahn wrecked his campaign for president of France had a pol’s easy fortunes shifted quite so abruptly. Truly, we’re in Rudy-for-president-2008 territory here.So what’s with Alec? Does he really expect to go from “30 Rock” to City Hall? Give the Massapequa flash this much credit: He’s already leading in the polls of “SNL” alums.

You know what’s happening here, right? When a political race is in upheaval and no obvious front-runner is incommand, lots of people start looking in the mirror and asking themselves:
Why not the best?
Why not me?If Donald Trump is actually reconsidering his latest demurral from the Republican presidential campaign, how far-fetched does Mayor Baldwin really sound?

RAINY-WEEKEND FUN

1. Make the hard summer choice: Food or gas?

2. Read all 24,000 pages of Palin e-mails

3. Graph the coming teacher layoffs

4. Check Wikipedia for “double-dip recession”

5. Define “binding” and “nonbinding” referendum

THIS WEEK’S NEWS IN SONG:

“Should I Stay or Should I Go?” – The Clash

ASKED AND UNANSWERED:

The new LI bus company has ties to Alfonse? My goodness, what are the chances of that?…Aren’t tennis clubs supposed to be bastions of politeness and civility? Have you heard all the squabbling at the Port Jeff Country Club?…If Nassau officials can’t even run a legal referendum – Coliseum funding or no? — should the next vote they schedule be more of a recall?…How ’bout this as the new slogan at Stony Brook U? “A good education ain’t cheap”? Or would the beefed-up English Department prefer: “A good education isn’t cheap”?…Did impatient Atlantic Beach-goers really expect a 25-ton fin-back whale corpse to be hauled off in a matter of minutes? Don’t they know whale-corpse disposal takes time – and some major, major cutting implements?…Wait, didn’t the LIRR solve the gap problem? Why didn’t anyone tell 92-year-old Ben Goldman, who lost his footing and took a bad tumble in Great Neck?….What was Michael Fagen thinking when he allegedly failed to report all his income to Unemployment? That serving on the Long Beach City Council is far too easy to count as work?…Did you notice all the blow-back from last weekend’s wind-gust bounce house mishap in Oceanside? The home video of the flying inflatable castle in now a big hit on local-news shows across America, as anchors warn of Bounce House Terror everywhere…. Is anyone actually against the Daytop Village plan to bring drug treatment into William Floyd High in Mastic Beach? Isn’t school where the savable kids are? Why shouldn’t the saving start there?…Stick skills or acting chops? What were casting directors looking for at Hempstead High on Friday as they scoured the local talent for roles in Crooked Arrows, the new Brandon Routh lacrosse film? What does the Superman Returns star know about lacrosse, anyway?

LONG ISLANDERS OF THE WEEK

THE GILGO FAMILIES

The families of all murder victims suffer terribly. But there’s been an added burden for the relatives of five women who worked as escorts and whose bodies have now been found near Ocean Parkway. Whatever put these women in harm’s way – rotten boyfriends, poor career choices, bad luck – they and their families do not remotely deserve any of this. Megan Waterman was the first woman to be identified as a victim of a possible Long Island serial killer. She is being remembered this weekend by her mom, Lorraine, her brother Greg and others on this the first anniversary of her disappearance from the Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge. Megan’s family – and the families of Amber Lynn Costello, Jessica Taylor, Maureen Brainard-Barnes and Melissa Barthelemy — deserve our special understanding and our extra support.