A breakfast with George Arzt is a lesson in decades of New York City political history. He\u2019s now wrapping up his decades-long career running a top political communications firm, but he can still recall the days when he took home a drunk Vincent Impellitteri \u2013 mayor from 1950 to 1953.<\/p>\n
The Inner Circle Show, the annual parody musical staged by City Hall journalists, used to rehearse at a club on 23rd Street, \u201cand Impellitteri was always there, snookered,\u201d Arzt explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cOwen Fitzgerald of the Daily News would say, \u2018We can\u2019t let the mayor sit here all night.\u2019 So one of us would go with him in a cab to Brooklyn to drop him off. And he would tell me about what they did,\u201d Arzt said. \u201cDid you know that he started parking meters?\u201d<\/p>\n
Arzt has known all the mayors since, too, as he moved from jobs reporting at the New York Post, to a stint as Mayor Ed Koch\u2019s press secretary, to starting his own firm. City & State talked through it all over coffee at The Beekman hotel, down the street from City Hall. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n
You just retired, after a 58-year career in New York politics.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was hoping to go quietly into the sunset. And people wanted to do stories on me. And I said, \u201cnot yet, not yet.\u201d Hopefully they forget about it.<\/p>\n
So why now?<\/p>\n
I will be 79 on April 8. And I decided that it\u2019s time to start a new chapter. I\u2019ve been working in politics since 1968, when I went to the (New York) Post. A year as a copy boy and clerk at the Post, and then City Hall bureau chief for 19 years. And I decided that I want to do something other than lobbying and running campaigns. The fact that I could get off the subway now and not worry about clients, and not worry about a job. It\u2019s just so refreshing. I could smell the fresh air outside, and I’m not rushing anywhere. People bump into me going to work. And I said, \u201cWhat are they rushing for? Where are they going?\u201d I think, boy, that used to be me. Not anymore.<\/p>\n
When was the peak of City Hall reporting?<\/p>\n
Room 9 was very competitive, extremely competitive. One day, I was at Longchamps bar across the street from City Hall, which is now, the last time I looked, a drug store. Everyone went to Longchamps late at night, in the days when I drank. And one day, me and the Long Island Press reporter George Douris saw the lights on at City Hall at 10 o\u2019clock. So I went back to Room 9 to get my coat, and I walk into the mayor\u2019s press office, and I said, \u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d It was the Beame administration. And they said, \u201cWe\u2019re doing the first layoff since the Depression.\u201d I said, \u201cWow.\u201d And I said, \u201cGive me the story.\u201d Well, all the reporters were told to come in early. The papers are delivered to Room 9, and it says, \u201c1,700 to be laid off.\u201d The AP reporter had a heart attack, truly a heart attack in Room 9, because I had the story in the paper. And I was home at that time because I had written my story until 5 o\u2019clock in the morning.<\/p>\n
So in 1986, you were City Hall bureau chief at the Post. You\u2019d already covered Koch for two terms. Why\u2019d you join him as press secretary?<\/p>\n
There was a scandal in the Koch administration. It was (the late Queens Borough President) Donald Manes. I was getting bored doing the stories. And my wife convinced me that this would be good if I got out of reporting to do something else. My wife talked to Dan Wolf, one of Koch\u2019s top aides at that time. And she came home and said, \u201cYou\u2019re going to be asked to be press secretary. You\u2019re going to take it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The way I see it, reporters\u2019 main focus is accountability, and the press office\u2019s main role is public perception. Sometimes there\u2019s overlap of goals, and often there isn\u2019t. How do you see the relationship between the City Hall press corps and the mayor\u2019s team?<\/p>\n
You have to gain the trust of reporters. And to do that, you\u2019ve got to be honest and open. There\u2019s sometimes you can\u2019t. I remember one day, on a busy day, Marcia Kramer (formerly of the Daily News, now of CBS) came over to me and said, \u201cI hear so and so is going to be taxi commissioner.\u201d I said, I don\u2019t know. \u201cOf course, you know!\u201d I said, there are a million things going on, I don\u2019t know. She said, \u201cYou know!\u201d So I walk into the deputy mayor\u2019s office, I said, is this person going to be (taxi commissioner)? He told me no. I told her no. Turns out, he was the TLC commissioner. And she said, \u201cYou lied to me.\u201d I said, I told you what I knew.<\/p>\n
Who was the most powerful mayor?<\/p>\n
(Mike) Bloomberg. Because Bloomberg had the money to back up what he wanted. He cut the budget in some places when he needed to, but he made it up. Like the culturals, he would give donations to.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve had a lot of real estate clients. Have you had to do a lot of counseling over the past year, explaining Zohran Mamdani?<\/p>\n
No, I said I don\u2019t know! I said the best thing is to keep away from complex real estate processes that needed approvals and do as-of-right. That was the best advice I could give them, because I didn\u2019t know which way they would go. You want to build an 80-story tower, and the city would say, OK we don\u2019t want 25% affordable, we want 50%. And we\u2019ve got to make sure the elevators are all together, because we don\u2019t want a rich man, poor man elevator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A breakfast with George Arzt is a lesson in decades of New York City political history. He\u2019s now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12617,9,24,11,10,7159],"class_list":{"0":"post-181931","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-interviews-profiles","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news","13":"tag-personality"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}