Nicole aims 1st shot at Bill on turnout
A DAY AFTER Mayor de Blasio’s primary victory, Hizzoner and his Republican opponent Nicole Malliotakis took their opening shots in the campaign for November’s general election.
Malliotakis, a Staten Island assemblywoman, said the dismal turnout in Tuesday’s primary shows “apathy” among Democrats.
“His base is not energized. He has let them down,” she told reporters in Ozone Park, Queens.
De Blasio cruised to a 60-percentage-point primary victory over challenger Sal Albanese, but only about 14% of registered Democrats showed up to vote.
“There’s an apathy among Democrats,” Malliotakis said, arguing that with independents and Republicans in the mix, she could benefit from a larger anti-de Blasio vote in November.
“I am the candidate of the disenchanted in the City of New York,” she said, taking a shot at the mayor’s attempts to become a national progressive presence. “I’m not in this race to fight an ideological war.”
De Blasio, in a visit to his downtown Brooklyn campaign headquarters, said he won’t have any trouble making the case for a second term over his opponent.
“It’s very simple — Assembly member Malliotakis is a proTrump Republican,” he said. “We will have in the next eight weeks a strong contest between a progressive Democrat and a pro-Trump Republican.”
De Blasio wouldn’t speculate on why turnout was low, but noted it was higher than in 2009, the last time there was a less than competitive primary.
“I don’t think this is the pertinent thing to analyze,” he said. “I am looking forward to the general election because I think there will be more interest in it than the primary.” Hizzoner has run mostly on his first-term record, including establishing universal pre-kindergarten and bringing down stop-andfrisk, and offered little in the way of new campaign proposals. He wouldn’t offer any such proposals when asked Wednesday, but said he’d have several in the coming weeks. De Blasio also vowed to turn his focus after the election to pushing for change at the problem-plagued Board of Elections. Many would-be voters Tuesday did not know their poll sites had been changed. Structural changes to the board require legislation from Albany. De Blasio offered the Board of Elections $20 million to make reforms voluntarily, but they turned him down. “It’s not acceptable,” de Blasio said. “It needs to change.” IT WASN’T exactly the most substantive of mayoral debates. Sal Albanese — who lost his bid to be the Democratic mayoral nominee but remains the Reform Party candidate — got into a Twitter tiff Wednesday with independent candidate Bo Dietl, who had sought to wrest the Reform line from him. After Albanese tweeted about successfully holding the line, the former detective pounced. “Sal, you lost by 60 points. What did De Blasio promise you for the sham debates to get him matching funds?” Dietl tweeted, suggesting Albanese’s poor showing on the Democratic line revealed he wasn’t a serious enough challenger for the mayor to get matching funds. Albanese shot back about beating Dietl on the Reform line. “Bo, I think I beat you handily last night! However that’s not too hard given your embarrassing foray in this race,” Albanese wrote.