NYC mayoral race gets nasty
GOP hopeful takes swings; polls give Dem rival big lead
NEW YORK — Corpses are sprawled on crime-ridden streets. Rioters hurl bottles through the night sky. An elderly woman stands alone, grim-faced and tense, on a subway car slathered in graffiti.
Thescenes in Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota’s new TV ad recall the city’s ugliest days — days that Lhota says could return if New Yorkers elect his rival, Democrat Bill de Blasio, on Nov. 5.
De Blasio bashed the commercial, which began airing Wednesday, as “just like the Willie Horton ad” from George H.W. Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign. Critics labeled the ad racist because it used images of Horton, a black convict who committed a rape and assault while free on a weekend prison furlough, to illustrate Bush’s argument that Democrat Michael Dukakis was soft on crime.
“It is desperate. It is divisive. It is inappropriate,” said de Blasio, who in a televised debate the previous day accused Lhota of pandering to the tea party.
Lhota called de Blasio “vacuous” and even poked fun at his height, calling De Blasio “this 6-foot-6 guy saying things about me that aren’t true.”
New York’s mayoral race, which has run from raunchy to raucous to downright sleepy, has now turned nasty despite — or because of — polls indicating that there is no contest. If recent surveys are any guide, voters prefer de Blasio by more than 40 percentage points over Lhota.
DeBlasio, a former Housing and Urban Development official who managed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, became a city councilman in 2001. He was elected New York’s public advocate — serving as a watchdog for the people — in 2009. Lhota, a onetime investment banker, was deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani. He served last year as chief of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, responsible for buses, subways and other mass transit.
The poll numbers are eye-popping on their own, but more so considering that New Yorkers haven’t elected a Democrat as mayor since they chose David Dinkins in 1989.
“But the Democrats are back, big time,” said Dinkins, who served one term before losing to Giuliani in 1993. Giuliani was elected twice and then Bloomberg — a Republicanturned-independent now in his third and final term — took office in 2001.
Given the leftward leanings of the city, where by registration Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 5-to-1, the party would seem to have a guaranteed key to Gracie Mansion, the mayoral home on the East River. But extraordinary events, extraordinary wealth onBloomberg’s part, and the challenge of unseating an incumbent have proved a recipe for successive Democratic defeats.
“I know it sounds like ‘Gee, the Democrats haven’t won in a long time,’ but if you take it apart, you can find a rationale,” Dinkins said.
Political experts agree and note that Giuliani and Bloomberg won by slim margins in their first elections and later had incumbency on their side.
Dinkins, the city’s first and only black mayor, blames his loss 20 years ago in large part on an attempt that year by Staten Island — an overwhelmingly Repub- lican borough — to secede from New York City. The effort fueled a huge GOP turnout, and Dinkins lost by 53,000 votes.
Crises, including the crime alluded to in Lhota’s ad and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, proved unifying issues that helped Giuliani and later Bloomberg to rally voter support.
But Jeanne Zaino, an expert on campaign communications, said, “If we look at Lhota now, that’s not something he can enjoy.”
Voters, after 12 years under Bloomberg, are eager for change in a city with astronomical housing costs, struggling public schools and a growing income gap. His personal wealth — Forbes magazine lists him as the 10th-richest American — has proved a tool for de Blasio, who has portrayed Bloomberg’s New York as “a tale of two cities,” divided between rich and poor, black and white.
It’s a message that has resonated, especially among the city’s growing number of nonwhite voters, who relate to de Blasio’s biracial family. De Blasio is white and his wife is black. Lhota, meanwhile, has scrambled to distance himself from the Republican Party, an effort that became clear during the candidates’ Tuesday debate.
“Do not lump me with the national Republicans,” Lhota said as he attempted to appeal to moderate Democrats who might be uncomfortable with de Blasio’s liberal views. Among other things, the Democrat has vowed to raise taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers to fund educational programs and to replace police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, whose stop-and-frisk practice in high-crime areas has been denounced by critics as racial profiling.
Lhota has made some progress. On a conference call recently with registered Democrats, a woman identified as Renee assured him that she and two neighbors would vote Republican.
“The alternative, he’s so leftist,” the woman said.