Mallio rants as Blaz rolls
NEW YORK CITY will choose its next mayor on Tuesday — and for plenty of people, it may feel like a foregone conclusion.
“The election is going to be something of a non-event,” predicted Kenneth Sherrill, professor emeritus of political science at Hunter College.
Mayor de Blasio, the incumbent Democrat, is defending his tenure against Republican Nicole Malliotakis, a Staten Island assemblywoman whom he has crushed in every public poll in the race — besting her by 33 points in a poll last week by NY1 and Baruch.
Malliotakis has run on a platform of focusing on the everyday city services she believes people feel are slipping by the wayside — trash, transit and traffic, as she often says. She’s assailed de Blasio’s management of the homeless crisis, argued that people are urinating in the streets with impunity after his criminal justice reforms, and in recent days has sought to capitalize off shocking testimony from a former donor, Jona Rechnitz, who has said he tried to buy favors from the mayor.
In turn, de Blasio has painted Malliotakis as a “Trump Republican” in a town where the President is a pariah — noting at every available opportunity the candidate voted for Trump .
He’s also sought to tout his prior achievements in a low-key campaign that has offered almost no new policy ideas or proposals for his second term — focusing instead on expanding signature issues like pre-K for all, spinning off to “3-K for all,” a program that’s already begun to provide classes for 3-year-olds.
Malliotakis, a newcomer to citywide campaigns, has offered platforms on homelessness and mental illness, and has said she’d work with the state to fix the transit system. “The campaign has basically been, if you don’t like de Blasio, vote for me. And what she seems never to have undertsood is that if people don’t like de Blasio and there’s no viable alternative, they’ll stay home,” Sherrill said. “And similarly if people do like de Blasio and it’s apparent that he has no serious opposition, they’ll stay home too.”
That’s what happened in the primary — de Blasio cruised to a huge victory over Sal Albanese (who is on the general election ballot as the Reform Party candidate) as just 14% of the city’s 3.07 million registered active Democrats bothered to vote. Low turnout can often boost an incumbent. But de Blasio campaign manager Rick Fromberg said they’re not taking anything for granted.
“We have always operated from the premise and continue to operate from the premise that we are going to do every single thing possible to get every single possible vote for the mayor,” Fromberg said.
On Friday, Fromberg said the campaign would spend the four days prior to Tuesday knocking on thousands of doors and making a million phone calls. They’d host 459 events, and de Blasio would take to rallies and the streets to shake hands and ask for votes.
Rob Ryan, a spokesman for Malliotakis, said she too would be going “full steam” — despite a fractured foot.
The campaign has two new television spots on the air, and she’ll hit all five boroughs in the four days prior to the election — including a Sunday rally on Staten Island, her home turf where de Blasio is deeply unpopular in polls. The two aren’t the only ones on the ballot — in addition to Albanese on the Reform line, Bo Dietl has run a campaign, marred at times by rhetoric his critics have deemed racist, as an independent candidate running on the “Dump De Blasio” line.