Chancellor Kamar Samuels is in deep trouble and scrambling to fix a mess he made on Tuesday. After getting booed off the stage during a town hall with Nikole Hannah-Jones, the schools chief reached out to the one person in New York who knows how to pull a fire alarm. He met with disgraced ex-Congressman Jamaal Bowman to figure out a fix strategy, according to a DOE insider who spoke to The New York Post.
This move has City Hall absolutely furious. The mayor’s team is already looking to put Samuels’ confidante, Sadye Campoamor, on the chopping block. They are “actively thinking about a future without Samuels,” a City Hall insider told The Post. The chancellor’s desperate gamble to save his job by calling in a controversial ally might just be the final straw.
A Desperate Gamble at City Hall
Samuels’ performance on Tuesday was a disaster. Although he defended screened schools, he failed to present an integration plan, which remains a top priority for the left. The fallout was immediate and severe.
Also present at the meeting was Sadye Campoamor, who helped facilitate the forum. “Ironically, Jamaal Bowman was here meeting with Kamar trying to figure out a fix strategy…. It’s really bad,” the DOE insider said. The irony is thick. A man who famously pulled the fire alarm in the Cannon Office Building in DC to stall a government shutdown vote in September 2023 is now being sought for help by Samuels.
City Hall Has Lost Patience
The mood inside Tweed has turned abysmal following Samuels’ embarrassing display. Sources say City Hall has hit its limit with the scandal-plagued chancellor. A non-DOE-approved vendor contract he signed in 2023 as superintendent of District 3, which was a shady no-bid deal, is under investigation for him. “Ran out of patience with Kamar’s foolishness,” the City Hall insider said regarding Vladeck, 49, an adjunct professor of labor law at New York Law School.
Mayor Mamdani’s team is “livid, annoyed and pissed off” about the situation. A DOE insider stated that if Samuels is turning to Jamaal Bowman for a lifeline, it raises a serious question about how far off course he’s drifted. The internal morale at the Department of Education has collapsed. “There’s a general feeling of defeat, despair and low morale,” the source said.
The End of the Line?
Samuels has no one left to blame but himself. By reaching out to a figure with such a tainted record, he has only deepened the crisis. The mayor’s team is looking to put Campoamor’s head on a pike and is actively considering removing the chancellor. The question is no longer if Samuels will be gone, but how fast it will happen.
This is opinion and commentary from the RapForMayor team.
