I had been unbelieving for a year and a half that the outrageous loudmouth con man was serious about running. Or that he would actually compete in the Republican primaries. Or that he would best his 16 competitors. Or that he would pull the remarkable Electoral College inside straight against Hillary Clinton. I wasn’t alone in dismissing him. From when Trump rode that escalator into the basement of Trump Tower, the only person I know who accurately predicted that he would win was a friend of mine, a psychiatrist at Bellevue.

But it was now happening. Jan. 20 was here. What should I think? What could I do? It was so strange and so upsetting. As Trump was taking the oath and rambling at the Capitol about “American carnage,” I needed to be reassured.

I walked to the corner of Wall and Broad Sts. downtown, where the first Congress under the Constitution met in 1789 and counted the Electoral College ballots, uninterrupted by an attacking mob.

It was in Federal Hall that George Washington’s unanimous victory was certified. Tellingly, New York was the sole state in the new union not to have any electors counted, not because angry congressmen and senators objected but because the New York Legislature failed to select any electors due to a deadlock between the Assembly and state Senate. Albany traditions go back a long way.

And it was at Federal Hall where Washington was inaugurated. Later that momentous year, it was also where the Bill of Rights was written and sent to the states for ratification.

Today’s Federal Hall isn’t the same building where all that history happened. This is New York, where buildings get torn down and new ones erected. The structure at Wall and Broad is an old Custom House rebranded. But it is the same site. And the Bible that Washington used is there. As is the floor of the second-floor balcony where he stood and took his oath before those gathered outside.

Afterward, Washington gave the inaugural inaugural address.

Inside the door, there is a lectern with a three-ring binder holding sheets labeled “Federal Hall National Memorial Visitor Log” and “Please Sign In!” On this day, Jan. 20, 2017, as Trump was assuming power, a couple of tourists from Rome were the first to sign the book, writing “Poveri Noi!!!” It means “poor us” in Italian. I added my name underneath the Romans’ and stood there, pondering what I could possibly say, at this place, on this day.

Leaving, I retraced Washington’s steps. Like him, I walked down Wall St. and up Broadway to Vesey and St. Paul’s Chapel. Back in 1789, the nearby Trinity Church was then being rebuilt (it was still New York even back then). So I followed the same route that George and Martha and the Congress took to pray for the new government. But St. Paul’s, the oldest public building in New York, St. Paul’s, which survived 9/11 and then sheltered the heroes of the recovery, that St. Paul’s was closed the whole week while the old organ was being removed and readied for the installation of a new instrument at the end of 2017. Were we even without the Almighty.

I then went further downtown to the former Custom House at Bowling Green, now the federal Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. The photos in the entranceway were still Barack Obama and Joe Biden. New photos of Trump and Mike Pence would take some time to arrive.

The next day, Saturday, was the women’s march up Fifth Ave. to Trump Tower. While waiting for the march to arrive, I went into the lobby, through NYPD and Secret Service security. I rode the same escalator down to the basement and talked to the newsstand operator who told me that Trump’s favorite candy is ROLO.

I knew that the next four years would not be sweet, but nothing Trump has done has surprised me. It has upset me, but not surprised me. He has no bounds and all the traditions going back to Washington at Federal Hall have as much meaning to him as a candy wrapper.

Yesterday, I didn’t go to Federal Hall or St. Paul’s. Both have been closed since March due to COVID. But in a box wherever the National Park Service keeps old visitors’ logs, there is one dated Jan. 20, 2017, with what I wrote more with certainty than hope: “The Constitution and Bill of Rights remain strong.”

maronson@nydailynews.com

Prostitution was, in fact, among the least of Charlie Lucky’s many profitable enterprises. Dewey knew that. But hookers were the witnesses he had. And they were going to send the big boss to prison.

Since Al Capone’s conviction in Chicago, most mob prosecutions had relied on dependable income tax evasion charges. But by directly charging Luciano and eight associates with a criminal conspiracy, Dewey was, in the spring of 1936, attempting something new: “trial of a first-rank racketeer,” as the Daily News put it, “for the crime of which he is actually suspected.”

Luciano denied any knowledge of prostitution, insisting he was just a gambler and horseplayer. But Dewey had more than 50 witnesses who had overcome their fears of the deadly crimelord and were ready to testify against him working girls and madams who spent weeks describing Charlie Lucky’s illicit play-for-pay empire.

Then, methodically using phone records, police reports and mountains of other documents, Dewey began to link Luciano’s affairs with those of fellow mobsters Bugsy Siegel, Louis Lepke and Gurrah Shapiro. He hammered away for five hours. When he was through, Charlie Lucky looked very nervous.

Throughout mobdom and officialdom alike, those who had once laughed off the earnest Tom Dewey as an amusing little Boy Scout were rethinking that view.

Dewey was a Wall Street lawyer when in 1931 his Republican connections got him an appointment, at just 29 years of age, as chief assistant U.S. attorney for Manhattan.

He came to public attention a year later when he indicted mobster Waxey Gordon on tax charges. Waxey was easy. Though he had made millions from his hotels, nightclubs and breweries, Waxey had paid $10.76 in federal income taxes in 1930, and Dewey sent him over for 10 years with little trouble. Arthur Flegenheimer, a.k.a. Dutch Schultz, was another matter. Dewey won an indictment against Schultz but never personally got him into court, because shortly after that he was out of a job. Democrat Franklin Roosevelt had won the White House, and now New York had a new federal prosecutor.

Prohibition was over anyway. The bootleggers and their rackets would soon be a thing of the past. Or so people thought.

Twelve dry years had only consolidated and strengthened organized crime. With Prohibition repealed in early 1933, the gangs moved into other enterprises one of them the policy racket. In the depths of the spirit-sapping Depression, the numbers offered people a chance for a little easy money a rigged chance, but still a chance.

In 1935, a Manhattan grand jury that had been empaneled to investigate the numbers racketeers began to sense that District Attorney William Dodge a Tammany Hall man who had been anomalously elected to office amid what was otherwise Fiorello LaGuardia’s 1933 reform sweepup at the polls really didn’t wish to probe too deeply. The grand jurors rebelled and went public, calling on Gov. Herbert Lehman to force Dodge to appoint a special prosecutor. They were joined by the city Bar Association which remembered Dewey and suggested him for the post. On July 29, Special Prosecutor Dewey took his oath of office.

The next night, he gave a radio speech. He would not, he said, go after the “ordinary vice trades” prostitution, gambling, lottery games; his ambitions were larger. “We are concerned with those predatory vultures who traffic on a wholesale scale in the bodies of women and mere girls for profit,” he said. “We are concerned with professional gamblers who run large, crooked gambling places and lotteries at the expense of the public.” He also targeted the extortion rings that made honest businesses pay protection money.

Setting up shop in the Woolworth Building, Dewey recruited a team of prosecutors and investigators. His first target: Dutch Schultz, the one that had got away from him in his federal days. In upstate Malone, the Dutchman had just been acquitted of that old tax charge, and now he was back in the city, defying LaGuardia’s order to stay out. And Dewey was openly out to get him.

But Dewey was deprived of the pleasure. In October, as the Dutchman dined in Newark’s Palace Chop House, three gunmen dispatched him from this world. Dewey wouldn’t know this until several years later, but Schultz had been ordered killed by senior mobsters because he had recklessly vowed to assassinate the special prosecutor, which would have meant big trouble. The mob, in short, had saved Dewey’s life.

If Dewey had lost one big catch, he had more fishing to do. He wanted Lepke, he wanted Gurrah, he wanted Charlie Lucky. Shortly, he was striking at the $1 million-a-week loan shark racket, rounding up dozens of usurers in citywide sweeps. Then, in early 1936, he went after the city’s prostitution rings, raiding dozens of brothels, on one occasion arresting 77 girls in a single night.

It wasn’t the working girls he was after. He wanted their bosses. Using a team of 20 stenographers, the Dewey team grilled a parade of women and began to turn up references to someone named Charlie.

Luciano was arrested April 2, as he relaxed in the underworld gambling resort of Hot Springs, Ark., and was extradited back to New York to face grim and unforgiving justice in the person of Tom Dewey.

On June 7, Luciano sat stunned as the blue-ribbon jury found him guilty of 62 counts of compulsory prostitution. Throughout the trial, the New York American observed, “Some strange confidence seemed to support him; some desperate faith that his luck would free him from this temporary inconvenience and set him once again on top of the gangster heap.”

Now, handcuffed and headed for the Tombs, Charlie Lucky’s luck had run out. It was the most shattering blow the State of New York had ever dealt to its mobsters.

Thomas E. Dewey had only just begun. After the Luciano trial, the special prosecutor empaneled two grand juries and started taking on the rackets industry by industry garments, restaurants, bakeries, trucking. By the end of 1937 he secured 72 convictions. He suffered just one acquittal.

Dewey’s success as a gangbuster propelled him into the district attorney’s office in 1937 and the governor’s mansion in 1942.

First published on May 18, 1998 as part of the “Big Town” series on old New York. Find more stories about the city’s epic history here.

There was only one person I know who correctly foresaw in the summer of 2015, at the very beginning, when there were 16 other Republicans in the fray, that Trump was for real: a friend who is a psychiatrist at Bellevue, dealing with the craziest people in the world.

I didn’t pay any attention at the time. It was so absurd that I forgot the bold prophecy. It was impossible, unthinkable even. Trump himself probably didn’t think that much of his chances when he began his run.

Months later, as Trump was trampling his rivals in caucuses and primaries, my friend the doc called to remind me of the prediction. After Trump conquered the GOP, I asked how it was foretold.

As we walked up First Ave. outside Bellevue one evening came the answer: “Everything the Daily News says about Trump is true. He is a liar, a cheat, a con man, a swindler, whatever you say. Trump University seems like a crime. But it doesn’t matter.”

The doc, who has had years of specialized training and experience in observing people and studying their thinking, continued, “Trump has tapped into a resonating anger that government is not working and he’s politically incorrect, which people like.”

I ask my friend about Trump’s promised wall on the southern border and the ban on Muslims entering the country. Answer: “They are not going to happen. Trump just said that to get votes.”

“He is outrageous, he’s a showman,” the doc said. But when Trump hinted that gun rights advocates could take out Hillary Clinton, that was too much: “This is dangerous. You can’t joke about guns. He should be arrested for that.” The doctor also didn’t like the attacks on John McCain, as “McCain was a hero” and “anybody else would have been thrown out of the race.”

Unofficial diagnosis: “He needs a psychiatrist on his campaign, this guy needs some lithium, just a little bit to bring him down.”

“He is a very talented fellow, but he doesn’t listen. He is unbound with his mouth.”

Isn’t a that problem, I asked, yes said the doc, there was the “big, big mistake with Mr. Khan, [the Gold Star Father of Capt. Khan]. I think it was his biggest mistake. To question the ultimate sacrifice by those parents. It shows a real lack of empathy.”

As the campaign moved into October and the video surfaced of Trump lewdly bragging of groping women, I put in a call to the psychiatrist.

“Disgusting. But it is just locker-room talk. It’s not about the issues. Trump is a rough character, an egoist. He doesn’t have the best character. He cheated on his taxes. But when he’s knocked down, he gets up.”

With all these flaws, I asked my friend who foresaw Trump’s rise more than a year ago, why are millions following Trump and lining up to vote for him? Because Trump is “charismatic in many ways. He’s the right candidate for the right time.”

“He is a negotiator who gets things done.”

“He will fight for U.S., not the Trump brand.”

The doctor admitted that it would be hard for Trump to win because “the press hates him tremendously, like the big business, elite Republicans, networks, Hollywood, lobbyists, politicians and all others that want the game continued the way it is so they can still get their rewards and favors while the U.S. and the middle class continues to get screwed.”

A few days ago my doctor friend said Trump is not just a candidate, but “a movement. There is a wave behind him.”

So I had to ask, “who are you voting for?”

“Trump. I think he’ll be an excellent President. He deserves to win. I hope he wins.”

A Manhattan doctor, a Trump voter? Maybe the Trump phenomenon is not so crazy after all.

Yes, I know that sitting in a theater for three hours is not going change Donald Trump’s crazed rhetoric and bombastic tweeting, but it would be his time well spent for the GOP standard-bearer to learn about the miracle that we have in this country and its Constitution.

I thought about Trump and “Hamilton” as I watched another special matinee a few weeks ago, not with fat cats paying thousands, but with 1,300 New York City public school 11th graders who paid $10 each.

The student-only matinees began in the spring, a collaboration of Miranda’s own Founding Father — his dad Luis — the show’s producer, Tony-winner Jeffrey Seller, the city schools, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute, which prepared a curriculum and a study guide, funded by a $1.46 million Rockefeller Foundation grant.

The project seeks to teach students history: political compromise, the separation of powers and limited government, all areas where Trump needs instruction.

But most of all, he can learn from the civic education phenomenon that “Hamilton” has become, as a diverse, pro-immigrant, contemporary celebration of American history and America today.

Once a month during the academic year, different high schools — all predominantly low-income — send juniors to the show.

At 9 a.m. on May 11, I watched 1,300 kids from 21 schools from all five boroughs descend on the W. 46th St. theater. Curtis High on Staten Island sent 120 kids by ferry and subway. Fordham High School for the Arts used a charter bus from the Bronx. The Preparatory Academy for Writers in Springfield Gardens, Queens, put 63 kids on the LIRR. Students from the Facing History School walked three blocks.

There were kids of all shades and kinds and immigrants from every land, from Jewish boys in yarmulkes to Muslim girls in headscarves. Once seated, Miranda — who Saturday ended his run as Hamilton — welcomed them to Broadway from the stage.

Most of these young people had never seen a Broadway show, let alone an impossible-to-get ticket to “Hamilton.” They were there not just to be entertained, but to learn. Each had to complete a study course requiring analyzing historical texts, understanding how Miranda translated the material for the stage and then creating their own performance piece using people, events and documents from American history, from songs to poems to monologues.

Acting as emcee, Miranda and Chris Jackson, who plays Washington, led the theater in a clapping sing-along with 1,300 people to “My Shot,” a rousing anthem that Miranda said took him over a year to write. He also talked about the immigrant experience of Hamilton, as newcomers — then and now — have to work “twice as hard,” which Trump doesn’t want to understand.

Then Miranda and Jackson introduced acts from 13 schools who had to get up before 1,300 other kids and do their thing.

First up were Sadia Muthana and Kimberley Vega from Bronx River High School doing a spoken-word interpretation of the Boston Tea Party. Sadia wore a headscarf. This wasn’t Trump’s Muslim bogeyman, just an American girl learning U.S. history.

Broome St. Academy, which caters to homeless and foster kids, had Christopher Zaragoza and Osariemen (Tootie) Uwaifo with a Whiskey Rebellion rap.

The show-stopper was Reynaldo Reyes from Long Island City High School bringing down the house with his Hamilton portrayal, including a backwards flying leap when he was shot in his duel with Aaron Burr (the anniversary of which is Monday). Even Miranda was asking for an encore.

In the wings was the “Hamilton” team, like Seller and Tony-winner director Tommy Kail. Kail had long left the show, but was back because “this is home,” he said.

Tony-winner Daveed Diggs, who plays Jefferson and Lafayette, said it was the “best day of the year,” while he had his cellphone out, videoing.

The students then saw “Hamilton,” with its powerful themes from the peaceful transition of power to the place of alliances and foreign entanglements that are still relevant today, and where Trump could take a lesson or two.

The production also showcases leaders with competing philosophies like Hamilton and Jefferson matching wits, not (merely) insulting each other into submission.

The whole day — the kids’ numbers and the show itself — said so much about what America is and what it should be and what Trump is missing. Getting to the theater on 46th St. would only be a quick 10-block limo ride from 56th St. That’s where Trump Tower is.

maronson@nydailynews.com

Oh, and the New York Police Department will assign roughly 900 cops or school safety agents to monitor all those polling sites from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. — despite the fact that not a single voter will show up at more than 97% of the balloting spots.

But do not blame the elections board or the NYPD for this fiasco. Blame primarily the state Legislature, along with Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino and a fringe-party activist who set out to demonstrate the absurdity of key aspects of New York’s election laws.

“I’m hoping New Yorkers will besiege the Legislature to reform the process,” said Frank Morano, a radio producer from Staten Island.

The story begins with Astorino’s losing a 2014 run for governor against Andrew Cuomo. A registered Republican, Astorino formed the Stop Common Core Party to attack Cuomo on a second flank.

Because Astorino drew more than 50,000 votes on the Stop Common Core ballot line, the organization won recognition as a so-called permanent party that could place candidates on ballots in future contests. Subsequently, with a grand total of 377 registered voters statewide, the group changed its name to the Reform Party.

Enter the state Legislature, which committed to waste $25 million by holding two rounds of primaries, one for Congress in June and one for state and local offices in September.

The city encompasses all or part of 13 congressional districts, 12 held by Democrats and one by a Republican. In six of the districts there are no Democratic or Republican challengers so there will be no Democratic or Republican primaries.

But, in four of them, Reform Party member Morano has filed petitions — each with a lone signature — mandating the opportunity to stage a write-in contest to let Reform Party voters choose the party’s nominee for the congressional seat.

Each congressional district includes roughly 700,000 people.

Rep. Yvette Clarke’s stretches from Gerritsen Beach to Park Slope in Brooklyn and is home to all of four Reform Party members.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries’ covers from Coney Island to Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and has five registered Reform voters.

Rep. Grace Meng’s encompasses Flushing, Forest Hills and Middle Village and has six Reform Voters.

Rep. Eliot Engel’s has part of the northern Bronx and southern Westchester. He has two Reform voters in the Bronx portion and two in Westchester.

Thus, the grand total of potential city Reform Party primary voters is 17. Still, election law requires the board to open and staff every polling site in the districts, a total, again, of 366 schools and other facilities.

In turn, the polling sites cover 1,650 election districts, each needing to be staffed with workers. A full complement totals 7,485 poll aides, some making $200 a day, others $300.

Total cost: $1.5 million. Expense per vote if all 17 voters cast ballots: $88,000.

The board may have the flexibility to trim the number of workers to 1,830 by combining election districts.

Total reduced cost: $366,000. Expense per vote: $22,000.

Plus security costs. State election law requires the NYPD to post a cop or a school safety agent at each polling place “from the opening until the closing of the polls.” Since June 28 is a school day with safety agents on duty, there won’t be unused personnel who can be assigned to other, non-school poll sites, meaning cops must be used.

Elections board boss Mike Ryan is exploring whether he can legally reduce the number of poll sites and Board commissioners are pulling their hair out, suggesting only having 17 poll sites open (one per voter) or even just one poll site per borough. But under any scheme, from 366 poll sites to just one, the board will hold elections and nearly no one will vote.

All of this insanity starts with New York’s policy of letting the leaders of tiny parties award ballot lines — and votes that count — to members of other parties.

Thus, even the head of a party with fewer than 400 members becomes a power broker when major party candidates compete to have their names appear more than once on a ballot — in this case on both the Democratic or Republican lines and as the Reform Party candidate.

Compounding the felony, Democratic Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Republican Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan refused to hold congressional, state and local primaries on a single day, a move that would have saved $25 million, ensured major party primaries in every district, making the 17 Reform Party votes a cost-free afterthought.

Morano is right on one point: Heastie and Flanagan are shameful and shameless.

She was sorry, she said, that she had taken $1 million from a contractor and given it to Shelly Silver for the Grand St. parking garage, a garage that would later collapse.

SHELDON SILVER SENTENCED TO 12 YEARS IN PRISON FOR CORRUPTION SCHEMES

Mintz was also sorry that she had taken $1 million from a woman and given it to a judge who was hearing the woman’s divorce case.

Was it true? Not all deathbed confessions are. The dollar figures were very, perhaps suspiciously, large. Was this belated apparent bout of conscience actually delirium motivated by the pain of breast cancer, which had spread, or by the effects of the morphine in her last days?

Maybe. Since Mintz died more than a decade ago, I have tried and tried to pursue her tale about Silver. I could never prove it. Regardless, the claims convinced me long ago that Silver was dirty, and his sentencing this week to 12 years in prison underlines that.

Mintz lived at 387 Grand St., right next to the garage whose 1999 collapse tormented her memory and just a few blocks from Silver’s home at 550 Grand. Which is to say, any supposed payoff couldn’t have been about the garage’s construction, since it was built in 1960, when Silver was 16 years old. But something made her tie Silver to corruption.

And corrupt he was. In many ways.

Silver put on the appearance of a being a pious Jew, but of the Ten Commandments, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara proved that Silver broke an awful lot of them. Surely seven through 10: Thou shalt not commit adultery; Thou shalt not steal; Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor; Thou shalt not covet anything that belongs to thy neighbor.

LOVETT: N.Y. POLS BETTER GET THE MESSAGE THAT CORRUPTION WON’T BE TOLERATED

I also think he breached No. 2 (Thou shalt have no other gods before Me) by worshiping power above all. And he clearly busted No. 3 (Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain) by violating the sworn oaths of office he took with his criminal acts.

On the other hand, Silver did make a public expression to “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” And he may or may not have been a good son (Honor thy father and thy mother). Nor is there any evidence that Silver went afoul of commandment No. 6 (Thou shalt not murder).

But by any count, he broke a majority of the Decalogue — making him a bad Jew as well as a bad man.

Beyond his many federal crimes and his many moral failings, what Silver also did was commit many offenses against democracy by centering power in himself and himself alone for 21 years as the Assembly speaker.

He wasn’t just first among equals, the most powerful of 150 Assembly members. In his chamber, he alone mattered. He alone decided who would rise and who would fall, based mostly on unswerving loyalty to his agenda and ambitions. He alone decided which legislation would advance and which would die.

He was able to become the dictator because his Democratic caucus members — acting in closed-door party sessions — let him.

It wasn’t always this way. The dean of the Assembly, the West Side of Manhattan’s Dick Gottfried, was first elected in 1970. He once told me as in his early years as a Democratic minority member, in a GOP-led chamber, there was more openness and greater ability even for members of the minority party to advance bills.

Those days are ancient history. Before Silver fell, I would joke that taxpayers could just pay Silver alone and save 149 salaries.

Silver didn’t just know that. He reveled in it. Once, when visiting with the Daily News Editorial Board, he was explaining how he ran the Assembly from his office just off the floor. I pressed him what happened when he had to be elsewhere, say, for a dentist appointment or a luncheon. He said without pausing, “Nothing happens without me.”

True. With his accomplices — who remain in office — he transformed the open debating forum of the Assembly into a secretive one-man operation. Silver is gone, but his damage to the institution remains.

Wherever the long-departed Edie Mintz is now, Shelly Silver, who professes remorse but seems to have none, is heading for a far worse place — in this life and beyond. Justice took a very long time, but finally Silver is getting what he deserves.

maronson@nydailynews.com

That was the first thing that the late, great Antonin Scalia said when I went up to the Supreme Court justice at a Washington dinner in April 2007 and, without an introduction or a hello, asked him, “Are you from Elmhurst or East Elmhurst?”

He was right. The name East Elmhurst, the area around LaGuardia Airport, didn’t get coined until after Scalia grew up a block from Newtown High School in the 1940s and ’50s.

HERE’S OBAMA’S SHORTLIST FOR NEW SUPREME COURT JUSTICE

He then asked how I knew about Elmhurst; I introduced myself and said I was from the Daily News. “Ahh, the Daily News.”

I then told him that I was planning to come down to Washington in the fall to watch the Supreme Court oral arguments on a New York case involving political parties’ total control of the nomination of judges. He said, “That should be a fun case. Do you have a seat?”

I hadn’t thought of that and said no, I would go through the court’s press office. Scalia said, “You’ll need a seat. Call my chambers.” I said thank you very much to a man who I had never met before.

At that same dinner, I ran into a liberal friend who had served as a top Democratic White House aide and told him about what the hard-core conservative Scalia was going to do. He said, “I disagree with him entirely, but it’s hard to dislike him since he’s such a nice guy.”

About a week before the argument, I was on the phone with Scalia’s chambers. A woman asked if I wanted to use Mrs. Scalia’s seat or be with the honored guests.

SIX BIG CASES BEFORE SUPREME COURT FOLLOWING SCALIA’S DEATH

Uhh, I said, “I’ll just go with the honored guests,” and I was told to report to the court’s marshal’s office the morning of the argument.

On the Amtrak down to Washington there were plenty of people I recognized who were also heading to the argument; all were going to get in line for one of the precious 250 public seats available in the courtroom. I didn’t have to worry.

When I arrived at the court, I gave my name to the officer in the marshal’s office. He led me through a maze of corridors ending in the enormous empty courtroom. He brought me up the central aisle past all the seating to the first row. Showing me the seat on the aisle, he told me to sit there.

He left. I was alone in the magisterial courtroom.

A few feet in front of me was the bar; on the other side, tables and chairs for the lawyers, and the podium for advocates to address the justices, whose nine-seated bench was at the very front.

Nearby were a series of large wooden chairs with brass plates labeled “Mrs. Rehnquist,” “Mr. Ginsburg,” “Mrs. Scalia,” etc. I was very glad that I wasn’t up there in Mrs. Scalia’s throne.

People started filing in. Rep. Anthony Weiner sat next to me and asked me how I got a seat reserved for members of Congress. I said I had a friend with connections.

Scalia was right. The case was fun, as the justices immediately ripped into the side I was rooting for — which was against the political parties’ boss-run conventions to pick judges. Fritz Schwarz, the lawyer for the reformers, said that he knew right away that he was in deep trouble when liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter went after him. All eight justices who spoke were terrific. (Clarence Thomas sat in silence.) My side lost the case, and New York’s screwy judicial elections were upheld unanimously, with Scalia writing the decision.

But during the argument, the justices were so good and so smart on the Constitution and the law that I wished the whole country could watch them in action instead of just the 250 people who lined up early to get a seat. Scalia always opposed letting cameras into his courtroom. He thought that the justices and lawyers would play to the audience.

I disagree on behalf of 320 million Americans who can’t make the trip to Washington — or aren’t lucky enough to have a seat reserved by a friendly justice.

maronson@nydailynews.com

This is a review of how a man of monumental importance is largely, and scandalously, a historical afterthought — a fact that Miranda’s amazing production will hopefully help rectify.

Anyone educated in America can recite something about Washington, Jefferson and Franklin (teeth, the Declaration and electricity). Adams, Madison and Monroe are remembered for their terms as President.

Then there’s Hamilton — military hero, lawyer, banker, publisher (of the New York Post), constitutional framer, first and most important cabinet member — New York’s giant in a time of giants.

But what’s even named for him besides a crummy bridge on the hated Cross Bronx Expressway?

The travails of his official national memorial, Hamilton Grange, exemplify the long insult. His “sweet project” was a country house he built in 1802 in then-Harlem farmland. After his family sold it, the house was moved a block in 1889 to make way for the street grid, and became hemmed in and damaged.

Back in 1908, Albany passed a law that the Grange be moved to a pastoral setting in a nearby city park. Nothing happened. In 1962, Congress declared it a national memorial and again ordered it moved to the park. Nothing happened.

It wasn’t until 2008, exactly 100 years after the first plan, that the Grange was relocated and restored. Still, it’s on few guide-books’ must-see lists.

Part of the sidelining of the “short-tempered protean creator,” as Miranda’s lyrics call him, was no doubt because he feuded viciously with his Founding Father rivals, and fatally with Aaron Burr, who put a dueling bullet in him. He died. They wrote the history.

Now we know better. One of Washington’s closest confidants in war and the first President’s essential partner in government, Hamilton was everywhere at the creation. Miranda captures the moment the 19-year-old orphaned immigrant enters history by rebutting Loyalists on the city streets; as the song goes, “In New York, you can be a new man.”

His meteoric rise in the Continental Army at Washington’s side is faithfully chronicled, culminating with his command at the Battle of Yorktown, in league with his French friend Lafayette. They say in unison, “Immigrants: We get the job done,” and high-five to a huge round of applause. Brilliant.

There are even jabs like this, as Hamilton/Miranda sings: “Corruption’s such an old song that we can sing along in harmony; nowhere is it stronger than in Albany.” Ever thus shall it be.

Then Hamilton signs the new Constitution and writes most of the Federalist Papers — the logic and rationale for our government.

In his legendary life, all that’s a warmup. His greatest feats come in the second act.

Hamilton sets up U.S. finances, including the critical decision to take on states’ war debt. This binds America together in the famous compromise with Madison and Jefferson and moves the federal capital from New York to the Potomac.

He also founds the Customs Service, the Coast Guard and the first political party, and writes Washington’s farewell address.

Most of all, the show wonderfully conveys Hamilton’s prescient vision: a nation of industry, banks, manufacturing, trade and cities, in stark contrast to Jefferson’s idealized yeoman farmers and slavery.

All of it true, and all of it too few of us are taught. Now, finally, on the Great White Way, people are clamoring for it, even the sex scandal that shocked the nation.

Which is why it’s so disheartening that the current holder of the office Hamilton created, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, has plans to demote old Alexander from the one place where everyone sees him, the $10 bill.

For Hamilton’s legacy, “Hamilton” is a major step forward, one Lew should not walk back.

maronson@nydailynews.com

If you thought you’d heard the loudest skirmishes between charter-school leader Eva Moskowitz and her nemesis, Mayor de Blasio, adjust the volume on your TV set.

The hard-charging Moskowitz is leading a massive expansion of her Success Academy charter schools. With the approval to open six new branches in August, Moskowitz is on track to run a whopping 46 schools serving 12,000 city kids by the end of 2015.

Coming off a year in which Moskowitz beat back a de Blasio push to shutter one of her finest schools, that growth will give her network a powerful permanent presence in the five boroughs, along with a fierce pro-charter parent army to fend off City Hall’s attempts to weaken the movement.

On new Common Core tests, English and math scores for the schools’ predominantly low-income, black and Latino students has been on par with the best suburban schools — resetting expectations for what city kids can achieve.

De Blasio and Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña see these charters as more a threat than an inspiration. Moskowitz, dogged as ever, is intent on molding shining models for next-generation public education. Josh Greenman

JOSH MOHRER and DAVID HANTMAN

There’s an earthquake beneath the streets of New York: The regulations governing taxis and other cars-for-hire are cracking up, thanks to an assault by $40 billion juggernaut Uber.

Uber doesn’t just let passengers hail cars differently, via their slick phone app. It dispatches cars differently, hires people differently, prices rides differently — all of which could undermine the rigid yellow (and now green) cab network New Yorkers have grown used to.

On a parallel track — challenging another highly regulated, powerful industry — Airbnb is enabling some 25,000 New Yorkers to make extra cash by renting out private rooms or vacant apartments to some 700,000 guests a year, sometimes against the letter of the law.

That’s set off a huge fight with legislators and regulators who want wholesale bans on what they call illegal hotels.

Uber New York City general manager Josh Mohrer and Airbnb public policy chief David Hantman are leading their respective charges to bust open the nation’s largest market. The entrenched cab and hotel lobbies have thus far failed to hold back their rivals. Watch their war — and the tech upstarts’ counterattack — escalate in 2015. Josh Greenman

SHOLA OLATOYE

Mayor of the 400,000-strong city within a city that is the New York City Housing Authority, Chairwoman Shola Olatoye endured a grim first year that included a madman’s stabbing of two children in an elevator, the police shooting of Akai Gurley and a stubborn infestation of drug-related crime. All the while, she laid the foundation to transform crumbling housing projects into more decent places to live.

To get there, Olatoye will need to win concessions from employees’ union local — whose members work bankers’ hours while their tenants have 24/7 needs — and find a way to unleash money-making development on NYCHA’s 2,056 acres of open space to fill gaping holes in the authority’s budget.

One more project for 2015: a third child, due in May. Alyssa Katz

MERRYL TISCH

Mayor de Blasio has often accused his predecessor, Mike Bloomberg, of hastily abandoning failing schools in favor and closing and reopening them as clusters of new, small schools.

Although the evidence shows that the smaller schools have well served their students, de Blasio has done his own quick abandonment — of the reform strategy.

He and schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña say they will turn around 96 struggling campuses with new money and services, firing staff only as a last resort.

But state Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch is unlikely to let the experiment play out — and with good reason: The schools “have failed for generations now,” she says.

She has the power to effectively order them closed if de Blasio and Fariña fail to sufficiently overhaul teaching staffs.

Meantime, Tisch will be at the center of negotiations to toughen teacher evalutions, with Gov. Cuomo breathing down her neck.

She’ll continue to champion the worthy Common Core standards, which remain under siege across the state. In 2015, they will get weakened for good — or be cemented in classrooms from Brooklyn to Buffalo.

All that is after she finds a likeminded state education commissioner to replace the outgoing John King. Josh Greenman

PREET BHARARA

Few names strike more fear in the hearts of New York politicians than that of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

Between taking down Wall Street inside traders, drug traffickers and international terrorists, the hard-charging federal prosecutor has bagged more than his share of corrupt public officials — including several members of the City Council and state Legislature.

Even Gov. Cuomo has felt the heat, when Bharara publicly blasted the governor’s decision to shut down an anti-corruption commission — in a deal cut with legislative leaders who were among those being probed.

Bharara not only opened an investigation of the panel’s demise, but also took possession of its files — a potential mother lode of sleaze for his office to go after.

All of Albany waits for the next indictment to drop. Bill Hammond

HECTOR FIGUEROA

You see Hector Figueroa’s members every day. They are the doormen, supers, maintenance cleaners and security guards in residential and commercial buildings across New York. His local, 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, is the biggest private-sector union in the state and a powerful force stretching up and down the East Coast.

Since Figueroa took the helm in 2012, he has been working hard to bring bring others into the House of Labor, most notably the 12,000 forgotten and dispossessed contract workers at the three big airports, who are employed by middlemen contracted out by the airlines.

Under his leadership, they have started to get better pay and benefits, but more is to be done, and it’s up to Figueroa to deliver. Michael Aronson

KEN THOMPSON

Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson has emerged as perhaps the leading face of criminal justice reform — even as he leads the country’s largest local prosecutorial office.

His move to effectively decriminalize marijuana possession in Brooklyn pressed Mayor de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton to offer a citywide variation on the same policy months later.

His conviction review unit has emerged as a national model.

And the grand jury he announced Friday to probe the apparently accidental police shooting that killed Akai Gurley is being closely watched in the aftermath of the failure to indict in Eric Garner’s death.

While he’s at it, Thompson has to prosecute robberies, rapes, murders and the rest of the day-to-day crime that, even in a safer city, afflicts 2.5 million Brookynites. Harry Siegel

JOHN BANKS

Real estate has been a juggernaut here since Peter Minuit’s little 1626 transaction with the Native Americans, and for more than a century, the Real Estate Board of New York has been its voice. Starting in March, REBNY will be led by John Banks, who takes over from stalwart Steve Spinola.

Banks, the former top staffer in the City Council, will represent the interests of major land and property owners on everything from the long-delayed rezoning of East Midtown, the nation’s premier business district, to affordable-housing development to politics. REBNY, one the biggest players around, will not be ignored. Michael Aronson

KEONI WRIGHT

Wright vs. New York: Get used to the name of that lawsuit. Brownsville native Keoni Wright, father of twin girls, is the named plaintiff in a case that, if successful, could force a rewrite of state laws that make it next to impossible to fire tenured teachers.

Alongside high-profile allies Campbell Brown and attorney David Boies, Wright argues that the statutes disproportionately saddle low-income kids with burnout teachers.

If the court action succeeds, as a similar suit did in California last year, teachers unions will get a huge punch in the gut — and millions of kids will get the promise of better classroom teachers. Josh Greenman

BRAD LANDER

He’s stacked with impressive academic credentials — a Truman and a Marshall Scholarship — but Brooklyn Councilman Brad Lander is no ivory tower egghead. A former community organizer, he was an outsider on the Council until he teamed up with fellow backbencher Melissa Mark-Viverito to create the Progressive Caucus.

She is now the term-limited speaker, and he’s a rising No. 2 who runs the crucial rules committee and sets the policy agenda.

Unlike posers who claim they support reform, Lander lives it by refusing his lulu, or extra payment for leadership work, now $15,000 a year.

He is a real force on an often weak body that still needs to establish its independence from a powerful mayor who helped install the Mark-Viverito/Lander team. Michael Aronson

DANIEL HUTTENLOCHER

Daniel Huttenlocher is the power behind the institution that will do more than any other to shape the city’s tech future.

As dean of Cornell Tech, the brainchild of Mike Bloomberg that’s taking shape on Roosevelt Island, Huttenlocher leads a campus that will churn out the young people — and the companies — that will or won’t create Facebook-level profits and rafts of new New York jobs to boot.

In January, they’ll break ground on the $2 billion, space-age permanent campus — and increase the size of the student body, now being taught in temporary facilities in space owned by Google in Chelsea.

Even as New York City produces new jobs at a reasonable clip, wages have been flat or sinking — and millions of families are trapped in poverty-level employment.

Preparing people for the burgeoning tech sector, and its promise of decent-paying jobs, is the great hope to change that depressing reality.

More than anybody else, Huttenlocher holds the key. Josh Greenman

ALICIA GLEN

With construction cranes about as popular in city neighborhoods as a car-alarm chorus, it’ll be Alicia Glen’s job as deputy mayor of housing and economic development to turn public loathing of large-scale real-estate development into passion for the benefits it brings — including affordable apartments, promised to arrive at a record clip of 20,000 a year.

Starting in 2015, the Upper West Sider will have to convince a skeptical City Council to supersize a dozen low-rise neighborhoods, starting with East New York in Brooklyn, all the while wresting promises from developers that they’ll rent to lower-income tenants as well as the wealthy.

Glen will walk a high wire: Pushing developers too hard will curse striving neighborhoods by making projects economically unfeasible. Push them too little, and risk a Council revolt. If anyone can bring together the financiers and the needy in common cause, it’s this dealmaker who came to de Blasio’s City Hall by way of the Giuliani administration, Goldman Sachs and Legal Aid. Alyssa Katz

BENJAMIN TUCKER and PHILIP EURE

Inside the NYPD, First Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Tucker is the top-ranking person of color, claiming the No. 2 job after then-Chief of Department Philip Banks resigned rather than take it, fearing he’d be promoted to the sidelines.

Now Tucker, who’d been in charge of police retraining and who 30 years ago oversaw investigations at the Civilian Complaint Review Board, will be who cops and community members watch as the department tries to police the city ever more sensitively and effectively.

Polls show a racially split city, where just 26% of New Yorkers think the justice system is fair to people of color, even as the mayor and commissioner implement major reforms — like retraining thousands of cops and deploying more wearable cameras and Tasers into the field.

Closely watching those reforms, and the department more generally, is Philip Eure, the first to fill the new post of inspector general for the NYPD — effectively, the man policing the police, a role he previously held in Washington.

He’s launched an investigation on chokeholds and departmental use of force, and more is surely coming.

Commissioner Bill Bratton promises a smooth relationship with the new IG, but that could be tested, especially if Eure leans aggressively into the job. Harry Siegel

I’ve seen Election Night workers waste hours tabulating vote totals by hand — never mind that the city’s electronic vote scanners are equipped with memory drives that could tally votes instantaneously and exactly.

I’ve seen the board’s 10 members talk themselves into silly paralysis about finding a new and better way — never mind that every other election board in the state gets quick, accurate results by plugging the memory drives into computers for tabulations.

And now, almost a week after indicating that Rep. Charles Rangel had defeated state Sen. Adriano Espaillat in a congressional primary by 2,331 votes, I see the consequences of the board’s stubborn incompetence. After finally getting around to checking the memory drives, the board says that Rangel’s true margin is 802 votes, with three times that number in absentee and affidavit ballots yet to be tallied.

It has been widely reported that Rangel’s advantage narrowed in the vote-counting process. This is false.

The board is also blaming the police for the botched Election Night results. This, too, is false.

What’s true is that the board is dodging every which way to avoid accountability for an all-too-predictable and nationally embarrassing fiasco.

The first thing you need to understand is that Election Night results are a quick, unofficial count that has long entailed writing down numbers produced by voting machines and transporting the figures to a police stationhouse for entry into a computer and then distribution by The Associated Press.

The system worked smoothly when voters used the old mechanical lever machines. But the board has let the process go haywire since the adoption of the electronic vote scanners —
which were supposed to simplify things.

Rather than have poll workers plug the memory drive in each scanner into a computer, the board has poll workers print out paper tapes that show voting tallies, cut the tapes into fragments by election district, add the numbers for each election district — and then enter the figures onto sheets of paper to be taken to stationhouses for manual entry into a computer.

The poll workers get a lot of things wrong — and that’s what happened in the Rangel-Espaillat contest. The votes in dozens of districts were never added up so that, four days later, when the board finally got around to checking the memory drives, Rangel and Espaillat got wildly different numbers.

maronson@nydailynews.com