Classes were cancelled one recent morning at Brooklyn Science and Engineering Academy, in East Flatbush, so that everyone could attend the middle-school spelling bee. As a few hundred kids squirmed in their seats in the auditorium, a parent coördinator put on a fedora and acted as a d.j., spinning Rihanna. Fifteen jittery contestants were seated onstage, and a secret V.I.P. visitor waited just outside.
“Oh, I think they’re gonna love him,” Mr. Johnson, a young math teacher in Chelsea boots, said. A colleague didn’t seem so sure: “Who?” she asked. “Oh, yeah.”
The d.j. led the room in a few cheers, and then it was time to bring out the special guest. “Show some love,” he shouted, “to Frankie Focusssss!”
The doors burst open, and a neon-green creature pranced out, waving its limbs. It had chartreuse fur, gremlin-like ears that were disturbingly flesh-colored, and bushy orange eyebrows that rested over huge, unblinking eyes. Frankie Focus is the official mascot of a recent state policy, spearheaded by Governor Kathy Hochul, that bans smartphones and other “internet-enabled devices” from schools. (Identifying as “New York’s first Mom Governor,” Hochul has said, “I know our young people succeed when they’re learning and growing, not clicking and scrolling.”)
Frankie has become a kind of surrogate (a “spokesthing,” one aide tried out on a reporter) for the Governor on the issue. He can’t recite talking points, as he does not speak, but he can attend local events, like school spelling bees, that don’t fit on Hochul’s calendar.
“There’s a lot else going on in New York and the country right now,” Sam Spokony, a strategist who works for the Governor, said in a phone call. His team had been looking for a cheap, easy way to keep the device ban in the news. Hochul encouraged her staff to be “as dynamic as possible” in dreaming up a P.R. stunt; she selected the big green critter out of what Spokony called “mild, medium, and spicy” options. (“Mild” meant posters featuring stock photos of smiling children. Frankie was all spice.)
Last fall, when Frankie made his début, at M.S. 582, in East Williamsburg, the response was not dynamic. Commentators predicted that Frankie would scare little kids and bore teen-agers. Peter Sagal, the host of NPR’s “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!,” put it this way: “Who’s better to convince kids to get excited about giving up their phones than a six-foot-tall fluorescent-green furry?” The Post demanded to know how much the Frankie campaign cost. In a New Yorker cartoon, Frankie was depicted trying to play Fortnite on a student’s phone.
Spokony was prepared for the backlash. “We always assumed that some people would say it was silly,” he said. “It is silly. It’s a mascot.” Hochul’s team was undeterred: the “organic-slash-earned” media coverage has been solid. In late September, Jimmy Kimmel’s people called. On the air, Kimmel said that Frankie looked coked out, but he immortalized the suit by putting Matt Damon in it and expressed support for not letting kids have phones in school. “Why they were allowed to have them in the first place,” Kimmel said, “I have no idea.”
In East Flatbush, the haters were proved wrong. As Frankie galumphed down the aisle, the uproar was instantaneous. He stopped for jumps, twirls, and daps. In the back row, a girl with long braids threw her skinny arms in the air at the sight of him.
