New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and other New York Democrats railed against the Republican tax plan. | AP Photo Playbook Beyond the Beltway New York Democrats rally against GOP tax plan -- Warren holds 16th town hall of the year

NEW YORK PLAYBOOK -- per Jimmy Vielkind and Laura Nahmias -- On Sunday, Mayor Bill de Blasio and other top Democrats, including U.S. Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, stood on the steps of City Hall and urged New Yorkers to throw themselves into the fight to kill the House and Senate GOP tax plans. “This tax plan hurts New York City to the core, and when you mess with New York City, New York City fights back,” de Blasio told the crowd. GOP House leadership is confident its version of that tax plan will pass sometime this week, but a few hours after de Blasio appeared at the rally, he announced he would be taking the whole week off, heading to Connecticut on vacation with his wife, with plans to return Friday.

Undoubtedly, the mayor is tired, and certainly deserves a break after packing his schedule in recent weeks leading up to last week’s elections. But it’s not the first time the mayor has declared war and then promptly left the battlefield. A day after he announced in June 2015 that Governor Andrew Cuomo was a vindictive person pursuing “revenge” against him, he departed for a summer vacation in the Southwest with his family. His administration announced plans that same summer to implement a cap on Uber, and the mayor went to Italy while the car-sharing company launched a scorched earth campaign to scare Council members away from the administration’s idea. And, in early 2016, on the weekend after de Blasio announced he’d reached a deal on a plan to limit horse-drawn carriages on city streets, he headed to Iowa for four days, to stump for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, giving just enough time for the deal to collapse. By the following Thursday, it was dead.


De Blasio has fielded plenty of criticism from people who say he spends more time on national issues than the local ones, and his response is always that he’s advocating for the city’s interests. In the federal tax reform bill, he’s found a very real example of that — the bill would have an outsize impact on hundreds of thousands of his constituents. His message this week is confusing — either the fighting can wait 'til next weekend, or he’s sending the signal that he’s inessential to the battle. http://politi.co/2zmX4qK

NEW JERSEY PLAYBOOK -- per Matt Friedman -- The NJEA, smarting off an embarrassing and extraordinarily expensive loss against state Senate President Stephen Sweeney only to see him win by double-digits, has turned its ire on Star-Ledger editorial page editor Tom Moran, a harsh critic of the union.

Moran’s offense: He tweeted that “Top Dems in NJ, deep down, want to murder the leaders of the teachers union.” That’s not a good choice of words. It’s also obviously hyperbole. I’ve certainly used that expression in casual conversation with people. Haven’t you? Moran deleted the tweet.

The official line of the union is that Moran, a caustic critic of the union, should apologize. “There is no place in public discourse for the kind of violent language that Tom Moran used on Twitter yesterday. His casual reference to the alleged desire of some top Democrats to murder NJEA’s leadership is disturbing and inappropriate,” NJEA spokesman Steve Baker wrote in an op-ed.

Moran told me he did apologize in an email to the union. “I do regret it. Some people apparently took me literally. It was a figure of speech,” Moran said over the phone. “I told the NJEA just before their email went out that I apologized to them directly. And I posted on my Facebook account: ‘Oops, sorry. My mistake.’”

But the NJEA is also retweeting from its official account tweets calling for Moran to be fired.

Those of you who have been here for a little while will remember the NJEA once found itself on the opposite side of a very similar situation, when its Bergen County president joked about wanting Gov. Chris Christie dead. Christie took umbrage and forced the statewide union’s president to come to his office and apologize, inviting the media to catch her on her way out. Christie called for the Bergen County official’s firing, which the NJEA didn’t do. http://politi.co/2AkLRop

FLORIDA PLAYBOOK -- per Marc Caputo -- It’s another committee week in Tallahassee ahead of the January legislative session. And like last week, the chatter is all about state Sen. Jack Latvala. We now know that Latvala faces a state Senate Rules Committee complaint about sexual harassment, and the still-anonymous accuser who filed it, her attorney tells POLITICO Florida, will likely and unwillingly be outed by the process and face political retribution. Latvala has vowed to fight the charges against him. So that virtually guarantees a big, ugly fight in the state Senate heading into the 60-day lawmaking session.

In this current climate of taking down men accused of sexual impropriety and harassment, how does Latvala survive? Yes, it’s a majority GOP chamber. But regardless of party affiliation, the allegations from six women deeply trouble state senators. And many already believe the charges sound true. Also, a good number of Republicans aren’t fans of Latvala (you should hear them off the record). There’s a reason he lost the state Senate presidency to Joe Negron. So if the case goes forward, and only half of the 24 Republicans vote to expel him — they’ll join the 15 Democrats who are almost guaranteed to vote as a block against him. (There used to be 16 Democrats, but his best pal in the state Senate, Democrat Jeff Clemens, resigned last month after admitting an affair with a lobbyist.) And 27 votes is the threshold to remove or censure a state senator in the 40-member chamber (it’s only 39 due to Clemens’ resignation). http://politi.co/2Asj1mn

MASSACHUSETTS PLAYBOOK -- per Lauren Dezenski -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren hit her 16th town hall of the year on Sunday in Greenfield — and with 908 attendees, it’s one of her bigger town hall crowds to date (but not her biggest).

Warren's stump speech might have changed — it's sharpened over the past year — but her audiences remain as responsive as ever. She reliably enjoys big cheers, applause, and standing ovations as she winds through her own tales of the need to fight for the middle class or the misgivings of the Trump administration, peppered with her signature “fight”-based language and imagery (you can always count on talk about the middle class “up against the ropes,” with the threat of a “knockout blow”). Her most recent book is titled “This Fight is Our Fight,” after all.

The town hall audience inevitably wants to know how to get involved in the resistance against the Trump administration, and the fight to save the Affordable Care Act has become Warren’s key example to point to. This spring, Warren would tell attendees to get active and get involved and to encourage loved ones in red and purple states to call their members of Congress who could be crucial deciding votes. Now, months later, the ACA fight has turned into a specific example where citizen resistance and pushback made a difference in the Trump era, Warren says. “We didn’t have any more votes in Senate or the House, but the difference was you,” she said yesterday. “The difference was every single person who said ‘I’m in this health care fight.’ Who posted on Facebook, who sent a tweet about it … You bet we want to get things done. And it’s going to be tough and we’re going to lose a lot of these fights. We can’t fight on every front at every moment. … But it isn’t a battle. It’s like a muscle. The more you use it, the better you are.”

And the biggest mainstay of the Warren town hall: Her reliable, ice-breaking crowd-pleaser to shout-out to everyone seated in the back of the room. “I can see you,” Warren mock-chides, craning her neck and pointing to the back of the always-packed hall. “I am a school teacher. And I know to keep an eye on all of the ones in the back of the room. You will be called on!” http://politi.co/2zAx2QZ

ILLINOIS PLAYBOOK -- per Natasha Korecki -- With veto session behind him, Gov. Bruce Rauner is making stops in Decatur and Champaign today as part of a week-long campaign tour. In an announcement, his camp says Rauner will discuss his agenda and “the next steps our state needs to overcome the corrupt system in Springfield and enact real reform that gives power back to the people.” Sound familiar? Rauner has some $65 million in his campaign fund but he has drawn a primary opponent -- state Rep. Jeanne Ives, a conservative lawmaker from Wheaton who threatens to mobilize Republicans who are livid with Rauner over his signature on a bill expanding the public funding of abortion and an immigration bill. http://politi.co/2zBwR7P

CALIFORNIA PLAYBOOK -- per David Siders and Carla Marinucci -- State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León on Saturday moved out of the Sacramento-area home he shares with state Sen. Tony Mendoza, the Artesia Democrat facing accusations of inappropriate behavior from two former female staffers.

From the SacBee's Taryn Luna: "The California Senate, its process for addressing complaints against lawmakers under fire, announced Sunday that an outside legal firm will handle all investigations of sexual harassment in the house going forward, shifting some control away from a committee of senators who previously controlled the process." http://politi.co/2icLDsi

