For hours Tuesday at City Hall, the City Council railed and tore through the record of Randy Mastro, the litigator whom Mayor Eric Adams tapped to be New York City’s next chief corporation counsel.
The position, akin to an attorney general’s post, is one of the few mayoral appointments for which the City Council has advice and consent oversight. It is an important post because the chief corporation counsel represents the city’s interest in various legal affairs, from lawsuits to legislation drafting, and it requires someone with deft and great legal expertise.
Of course, the City Council must do its due diligence with any such appointment to ensure the people’s best interests are represented. Yet the Council, in its prolonged inquest of Mastro, seemed not to review Mastro’s qualifications for the job as much as it dug up decades-old grievances with a former mayor — and vented misplaced anger over the current mayor.
Lawmakers grilled Mastro over his service during the administration of then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani nearly 30 years ago. They seemed more interested in relitigating the culture wars that Giuliani fought in the 1990s rather than focusing on Mastro’s legal work since then, but brushed aside Mastro’s efforts in that administration to root out organized crime at the Fulton Fish Market and “personally” lobby the Republican mayor to work with the Democratic-led City Council to pass protections for same-sex married couples.
The Council also criticized Mastro’s representation of former New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie during the Bridgegate scandal, and opponents of an Upper West Side homeless shelter in 2021. In the latter case, City Council Deputy Speaker Diana Ayala took particular umbrage with reports that Mastro hired private investigators to sneak into the shelter and take a photo of one individual, Shams Da Baron, to prove he no longer lived there and should not be party to the lawsuit.
As Ayala said, it was “shocking and unacceptable. ” However, Mastro pointed out that the tactic employed was ethical, and Da Baron has since endorsed his confirmation as chief corporation counsel.
Mastro’s list of clients is as diverse as it is long—Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, elected officials and ordinary citizens, rich and poor, large corporations and small protest groups. The only things that seem to matter to Mastro are the strength of the cases brought before him and how best he can represent his clients.
If confirmed as chief corporation counsel, Mastro does not strike us as the type to merely rubber-stamp whatever Mayor Adams wants. Instead, it seems the City Council is poised to reject Mastro, seemingly to prove a political point and send a message to the mayor.
Mastro deserved a fair shake from a Council that didn’t seem to have its mind made up about him before the confirmation hearing.
