Blaz & upstart mano-a-mano
MAYOR DE BLASIO and former City Councilman Sal Albanese will face off in the first Democratic primary debate Wednesday — giving the long-shot challenger a chance to introduce himself to an electorate the mayor is heavily favored to win.
The crowd will be decidedly more intimate than the debates held in the fiercely competitive 2013 primary and will likely draw fewer eyeballs. But it will offer a large opportunity for Albanese, who will likely be the only person onstage besides de Blasio.
“Our campaign hasn’t got the attention that it should have received,” Albanese said last week, blaming the mayor’s incumbency and larger fund-raising haul. “And now, we’re going to get it.”
Albanese qualified for the debate earlier this month, when he met the Campaign Finance Board’s threshold of raising and spending $175,000. De Blasio has well exceeded that figure, and is required to debate Albanese twice because he is participating in the finance board’s matching funds program — which has paid him millions.
It will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday, and will be aired on television by NY1 and radio by WNYC. A second debate, sponsored in part by the Daily News and CBS, will be held Sept. 6.
Perhaps in an indication of how uncompetitive it is considered, no public institution has even conducted a poll on the Democratic mayoral primary, nor has Albanese or anyone else been included in general election polling — but de Blasio’s campaign said he was taking the debate, and the primary, seriously.
“The approach here is very much in line with how we’ve approached the whole campaign,” campaign manager Rick Fromberg told The News, “which is an opportunity to talk about the mayor’s record of achievement and his vision or the next four years.”
Indeed, with the exception of statements tying Republican nominee Nicole Malliotakis to President Trump, the de Blasio campaign’s statements to the press in response to criticism from his rivals have all mostly listed his accomplishments. Almost all of them end exactly the same way: “That is the mayor’s record, and we are happy to compare it against anyone.”
So it’s unlikely de Blasio will come out swinging at Albanese, considerably less well-known.
“We have a strategy, which is to talk about the mayor’s record and the reason that is the strategy is because it’s been so successful, and because we know from a campaign perspective voters respond to it,” Fromberg said. “We’re not going to walk away from it in the debate.”
Kenneth Sherrill, professor emeritus of political science at Hunter College, said he expects de Blasio to act as if Albanese isn’t even in the room.
“I think that de Blasio’s strategy should be to show that he towers over the opposition — not just physically,” he said.
The strategy for Albanese will be a little different — he said he aims to both criticize and offer his own ideas.
“I don’t think you have credibility if you just go out and run a campaign dragging the other person down,” Albanese said. “I think you talk about his record and then you have to talk about proposals. And I think I’ve got some really concrete ones.”
Albanese — whose Twitter account is full of digs about the mayor, including one post deeming de Blasio the biggest “a-----e” to occupy City Hall — will have to “remain on the attack, but not to be unpleasantly aggressive,” Sherrill said.
“The question is whether Albanese gets to de Blasio or not — does he finally get under de Blasio’s skin and provoke him to say something that he later wishes he hadn’t said?” Sherrill said. “Albanese has nothing to lose.”
While he will have room to gain, it might not be much, Sherrill said. Just as turnout for the primary will likely be low, so will viewership — and many tuning in will be political junkies who have already decided how to vote, he said.
“If he’s to have any hope at all, Albanese has to present himself as a positive alternative to de Blasio,” he said.