Rodney Capel

Bill Lipton, Ed Skyler, Rich Baum, Rodney Capel...

These names (and precisely 31 others) can be found on the City Hall News list of "Rising Stars." It's not clearwhat the criteria were for making it, other than that the honoree be less than 40 years old.

In any event, the young Manhattan Media publication is hosting a reception at City Hall restaurant tonight for whichever of the young political stars feel like showing up.

The full roll of the City Hall News honorees is after the jump.  read more »

-- Azi Paybarah

The Times reports on Mike Bloomberg's chitchat with President Bush.

Christine Quinn appoints Rodney Capel as deputy chief of staff.

The Post reports on a study that shows those doing business with city government are the highest contributors to candidates.

—Nicole Brydson

From the people bringing you the C. Virginia Fields Comeback Campaign for State Senate, the following:

She raised around $100,000 yesterday at an event at the Yale Club, a sum that her handlers say will make her the money leader in the race to replace David Paterson.

Bill Perkins, the former councilman who is also running for the seat, has some significant organizational support of his own, including backing from Local 1199 as well as three current council members who represent part of the senate district.

The outcome of the contest featuring two well-known Harlem officials -- Fields, who left her borough presidency because of term limits, and Perkins, who left his council seat because of term limits -- will hardly produce a tectonic shift in the balance of power in Albany.

But the race is worth watching as part of the larger narrative of Harlem politics, where a younger generation has fought with mixed success to win power and influence from the generation of political lions like Carl McCall and Basil Paterson, both of whom occupied the seat now being contested.

When David Paterson won election to his father's old seat in 1985 at the age of 31, much was made of the notion that he was part of a new crop of emerging black leaders from a post-civil rights generation.

If history were linear, the seat he is abandoning to run for lieutenant governor might have fallen to Rodney Capel, the eminently likeable son of Charlie Rangel's chief of staff.

Capel toyed with the idea of running for it before withdrawing his name in March, citing "the large influence of money and challenges that face new leadership."

Sometimes, things just go in circles.

Rodney Capel, the executive director of the State Democratic Party, says he's not running for David Paterson's State Senate seat after all.

That leaves two victims of term limits, Bill Perkins and Virginia Fields (parts of whose Borough President Web site still live), in the running for the seat.

"Although it was a great compliment to be considered for the senate seat, the large influence of money and challenges that face new leadership make it hard for young candidates to succeed. Although I won't be a candidate in 2006, I don't plan on leaving the work i have established in this race and look forward to a very successful 2006 for the State Democratic Party," he says.

And speaking of new leadership, Capel sent over that statement via Instant Message.

As names start to float up in the contest to replace David Paterson in the State Senate -- Bill Perkins and Keith Wright first among them -- here's another: Rodney Capel.

The Politicker is told that the executive director of the State Democratic Party, Rodney Capel -- also the son of Charlie Rangel's chief of staff -- is bein encouraged to run.  read more »

Reached yesterday, Capel said he was too caught up in Eliot's Lieutenant Governor choice to think about his own plans.

The executive director of the State Democratic Party, Chung Seto, has confirmed for us that she is leaving. (Will she, we in the press wonder, take with her the "weekly GOP failures" email?)

She'll be replaced by the current political director, Rodney Capel.  read more »

We're not sure this has any broader significance. Let us know if we're wrong.