Following a series of campaign-finance irregularities, one of John Liu’s top advisers is reportedly jumping ship, though it supposedly has more to do with his own electoral ambitions than his boss’s sinking stock: According to the Daily News, Deputy Controller Simcha Felder is very seriously considering stepping down and crossing the aisle to run for state senate as a Republican. The possible Felder campaign is the brainstorm of State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos. Felder (a former City Council member) would run in a new “super Jewish district” that will likely be gerrymandered into existence in Brooklyn — an especially interesting development in light of this fall’s congressional race in Brooklyn–Queens’s District Nine, where a heavily Jewish population propelled a Republican candidate to victory in a traditionally Democratic district.
