Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll look at the Manhattan congressional campaign of Jack Schlossberg, President John F. Kennedy’s grandson. We’ll also get details on an obscure metric that will figure in the new second-home tax in New York City.

Jack Schlossberg is one of nine candidates running for a House seat in Manhattan. When he entered the race, he was known for his social media personality — and for being President John F. Kennedy’s grandson. But rapid staff turnover and Schlossberg’s own erratic actions have gotten attention in the New York political world. With the Democratic primary only six weeks away, I asked my colleague Nicholas Fandos for an assessment.

His campaign sounds like it’s not ready for prime time. Is that a reasonable assessment? This is the first time he’s run for office.

There are few political campaigns that I’ve covered that are not at least a little messy. It comes with the territory. But the degree of the messiness in Schlossberg’s campaign, and the specifics, are unusual.

He has had a surprisingly high rate of staff turnover — at least two campaign managers, two field directors, a handful of advisers and a rotating cast of consultants in the six months since he announced his candidacy.

On the day of his campaign launch, Schlossberg said he needed to nap and then was unreachable for most of the rest of the day, which left his team scrambling. A couple of weeks after the announcement, he had a run-in with a sitting congressman who felt that Schlossberg had ripped off his social media commentary.

Many candidates run on their records. What does Schlossberg list as accomplishments when he’s asked?

Schlossberg has relatively little professional experience, so when he talks about what qualifies him for the job, he brings up things like receiving law and business degrees at Harvard, scoring near the top on the bar exam and being an E.M.T. in college. He’s also worked as a freelancer for Vogue and as an assistant at the State Department, but both of those gigs lasted only a few months. And he readily points out that he has built a large social media following.

There is no standard set of qualifications to be a member of Congress, but most people who run have worked their way up through local government or careers in business or the law. Sclossberg has not followed any of those paths.

What was that social media dust-up about?

Social media seems to be one of Schlossberg’s biggest strengths, but it’s also potentially a vulnerability. He has built a large audience with revealing, funny and sometimes outright bizarre posts that are captivating to some and alienating to others.

I found that in at least one case in this campaign, he essentially mimicked a video from Representative Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, commenting on President Trump’s policy on Venezuela. He made his own video, saying almost the same thing Moulton had said. He rewrote the words, but it was still very close.

Moulton’s team was so taken aback that they reached out to Schlossberg, asking, What gives? They were told that he had indeed copied Moulton’s post because he had liked it so much. This may be common social media practice, but it’s traditionally been a no-no in politics.

What about fund-raising? Has he raised more than his opponents?

He’s doing well on fund-raising. He’s not at the front of the pack, but he has raised $2.3 million from donors.

Some of that has come from small donations across the country, and others from large checks from friends of his famous family. He has his own substantial wealth but has said that he does not intend to spend any of it on the race.

Is he the front-runner right now?

There has not been good polling. The internal polls that we have seen show that he’s a slight favorite in a crowded field that includes two state assemblymen, Micah Lasher and Alex Bores. Lasher is a protégé of Representative Jerrold Nadler, who’s vacating the seat they’re all running for.

Two of the other candidates are George Conway, a former Republican who has become one of President Trump’s biggest critics, and Nina Schwalbe, a global health expert.

Schlossberg did not talk to you when you were reporting the story you wrote. What did his aides tell you about Schlossberg’s management of his campaign and the turnover of his staff?

Schlossberg’s campaign did not dispute most of the details in my story. They downplayed the significance of the staff turnover, saying no one should be surprised that a first-time candidate, especially one as intense as he is, would cycle through staff members in a high-pressure campaign.

In addressing his occasional absences from the campaign, they pointed out that the campaign had coincided with the death of his sister Tatiana Schlossberg, from cancer.

Weather

Sunny skies with a high around 67 degrees. Tonight will be mostly clear with a low near 54.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

In effect until May 22 (Shavuot).

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I’m standing behind a mylar curtain, building the character. I part the curtain, stand in a fixed position, and allow the audience to feed me with shouts of joy and respect and admiration and whatever else they’re thinking. Let the people have what they came for. Apotheosis.” — André De Shields, who plays the godlike Old Deuteronomy in “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” on how he gets into character.

What’s the “market value” of your co-op or condo?

Those two words are in quotation marks for a reason. In New York City, the “market value” of an apartment may not be what it sells for, because “market value” is a bureaucratic metric that often underestimates an apartment’s actual worth.

“Market value” will figure in the new tax surcharge on part-time residents of the city. As proposed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, the second-home tax plan would initially target co-ops and condos that have a “market value” of at least $1 million. They would be taxed an extra 4 percent to 6.5 percent in addition to their existing property taxes.

How many apartments would be affected is unclear. The governor’s office says that an apartment with a “market value” of $1 million would sell for about $5 million. But the disparity is often more pronounced: One Midtown Manhattan penthouse with a “market value” of about $4.2 million sold for more than $135 million last year.

The surcharge has been the talk of the New York political world since Hochul announced it last month. It wouldn’t bring in as much revenue as some of its boosters had wanted, but Mayor Zohran Mamdani cast it as an example of how government was making good on his promise to tax the rich.

The “market value” metric would govern second-home surcharge payments for only the first two years of the new tax. After that, the city and the state would rely on a different measurement to determine which properties are above the threshold. That new metric would be added to a tax system that many taxpayers already find impenetrable.

“I know we just sent people around the moon and back, so you’d think anything is possible,” said Jason Haber, a real estate broker and a co-founder of the American Real Estate Association. “But because of how the city tax system is set up, this is crazy complicated in the first place. And they tried to rush it though, I think without fully appreciating its complexity.”

METROPOLITAN diary

Out of stock

Dear Diary:

It was a Saturday, and I was on Fifth Avenue and 14th Street. Two young women were walking and talking behind me.

“Is there anything you need at the market?” one said.

“The will to live,” the other replied.

I couldn’t help myself.

“I don’t think they sell that there,” I said.

We all laughed and kept going.

— Nancy Lane

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.

Where is Representative Thomas Kean Jr.?

Lately, curious political watchers have noted where Mr. Kean is not. He seems to be absent on Capitol Hill, where he represents the people of New Jersey’s Seventh District but hasn’t cast a vote in more than two months. Mr. Kean, a Republican, has not been seen on the campaign trail as he runs for re-election in a competitive midterm race.

He has not appeared in pixel form, either: No candid photos have emerged of the incumbent to allay the worries of donors and constituents. Two weeks ago his office released a written statement, attributed to Mr. Kean, explaining that he was dealing with a “medical issue” and would be back “very soon.”

Since then? No reported sightings.

Mr. Kean’s social media accounts have remained active in his prolonged absence. The posts are often written in the first person, but paired with older photos.

“What we are being assured is that his team is carrying the torch,” Tina Shah, who is vying for the chance to unseat Mr. Kean, said on Tuesday at a debate with three other Democrats. “But we elected Tom Kean Jr., not his team.”

Members of Mr. Kean’s team were seated conspicuously in the third row, watching as the Democrats took turns weighing in on their boss’s mysterious absence. Afterward, his chief of staff, Dan Scharfenberger, reiterated a now familiar explanation.

“He’s dealing with a personal health condition, and he’ll be back soon,” Mr. Scharfenberger said in an interview.

When pressed on the nature of the health condition and why Mr. Kean had not been seen in New Jersey or in Washington, Mr. Scharfenberger said, “There’s no cameras where Tom is.”

He declined to elaborate.

National Democratic officials see Mr. Kean’s district — a largely affluent and suburban region that stretches like a girdle across North Jersey from its eastern shoreline to its western border with Pennsylvania — as one of the party’s best pickup opportunities in November. And Democrats had been aggressively targeting his seat well before Mr. Kean began missing votes.

“He’s going to be totally fine, and he’ll be back to a full schedule soon,” Harrison Neely, Mr. Kean’s spokesman, said on Tuesday.

Soon may not be imminent. The Morris County Chamber of Commerce has amended the program for a May 28 breakfast meeting focused on Washington policies, saying that Mr. Kean will no longer be speaking at the event.

“As you no doubt have heard, Congressman Kean will be unable to appear due to his ongoing health concerns,” a notice posted on the chamber’s website states. “We wish him well.”

Mr. Neely had no immediate response on whether the congressman had canceled other similar events.

Democrats vying for the Seventh District seat have seemed cautious about attacking Mr. Kean, perhaps aware of the political risk of going after a man whose condition is not known. But at Tuesday’s debate, a few of them offered some measured criticism about the Republican’s lack of transparency.

“Look, at the end of the day you’re a public servant,” said Brian Varela, who owns child care centers and is campaigning to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. “And while I don’t think you need to be putting your own personal medical history out there, you at the very least have a responsibility to be communicating with your constituents and with your district.”

Michael Roth, who helped to lead the Small Business Administration during the Biden administration, said most workers would be required to be more transparent with their employers if they needed to take two months off.

“If you were missing work, you would tell your boss,” he said. “And Tom Kean Jr.’s boss is the people.”

Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot who has worked as a strategist for health care companies, avoided discussing Mr. Kean’s absence and instead said the election was about the job Mr. Kean had been doing before he disappeared from public view.

Mr. Kean is the only Republican on the June 2 primary ballot. If he had exited the race at least 62 days before the primary, a three-person team of campaign advisers would have filled the vacancy. Republican leaders from the district’s six counties would select a nominee if he were to drop out after the primary. His aides maintain that the congressman has no plans to bow out.

Leonard Lance, a moderate Republican who lost re-election in the Seventh District in 2018 after five terms in Congress, said the loss of any of the state’s three G.O.P. House members would be a blow to New Jersey’s historically centrist core. But he said he believed Mr. Kean was still the best candidate “by far” to fend off what is likely to be a fierce Democratic challenge.

“I take at face value the statement of his office that he will be back at 100 percent,” Mr. Lance said.

There were no reported sightings of Mr. Kean on Wednesday, the day after the debate. However, the congressman’s X account did post an update on his activities.

“I’m pleased to join the Congressional Crypto Caucus,” the post said. “The United States must lead on digital assets — driving innovation, delivering regulatory clarity and protecting consumers. I look forward to working with this bipartisan group of colleagues to advance that agenda.”

Kirsten Noyes contributed research.

A flag displaying two swastikas and a Star of David appeared on top of a building on the New York University campus on Wednesday, the Police Department confirmed on Thursday.

The flag, which appeared near Washington Square Park, resembled the many purple N.Y.U. flags flying on campus buildings but was emblazoned with two swastikas surrounding a Star of David. According to the student newspaper, Washington Square News, the flag appeared about 5 p.m. and was removed roughly 15 minutes later.

The Police Department received a 911 call at 5:21 p.m. reporting harassment. When officers arrived, a man told them that a flag had been tampered with to display swastikas. An investigation remains ongoing, a Police Department spokeswoman said, and no arrests have been made.

“We are shocked and deeply troubled that this hateful symbol expressing antisemitism was raised on a flagpole overlooking Washington Square Park,” Wiley Norvell, an N.Y.U. spokesman, said in a statement. “Campus safety responded immediately to remove it, and we are working closely with the N.Y.P.D. to identify whoever is responsible.”

The flag appeared during a graduation week event known as Grad Alley, a block party where soon-to-be graduates and their families take in live music, dance performances and play carnival games. During the event, some people noticed the flag waving on top of the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, on a corner overlooking the park, according to the student newspaper.

The Steinhardt School was named for Michael and Judy Steinhardt after they donated $10 million to N.Y.U. to support “faculty development, doctoral fellowships and research.”

Mr. Steinhardt, a billionaire, made his money on Wall Street before becoming a major donor to N.Y.U. as well as to Jewish philanthropies. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden includes a Steinhardt conservatory, and the Steinhardt Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is also named for him. Mr. Steinhardt is one of the founders of Birthright Israel, which sends young Jewish people on free trips to Israel to bolster their connection to the country and support their Jewish identity.

The incident during the Grad Alley event followed objections to N.Y.U.’s choice of a commencement speaker. Student government leaders objected to Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and author, being selected to speak at the graduation ceremony and sent a letter to university officials asking them to reconsider their choice. The student leaders cited Dr. Haidt’s criticism of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.