[iheartthed]

The suburbs are mostly inconsequential to NYC. I don't know the names of any mayors or elected officials outside of NYC, except for the governors of the tri-state, and the mayor of Newark.

NY's situation is completely the opposite of my experience growing up in the Detroit area, where suburban county executives were seen, locally at least, to have equal importance to the mayors of Detroit. L. Brooks Patterson, the late county exec of Oakland County, MI, was often jokingly referred to as the mayor of the suburbs. It is hard to imagine that any region had a more toxic urban-suburban divide than Detroit and suburban Detroit, from about 1970 until about 2010. The dynamic is quite noticeably less hostile now, but not perfect.