Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Open Government

Daily News Endorsement of Robert Morgenthaus


August 28, 2005 Sunday

Daily News Editorial

ROBERT MORGENTHAU FOR MANHATTAN DA

There are few public officials who merit being described as distinguished and fewer still who deserve the distinction for decades of service. Robert Morgenthau is one who does. Seeking reelection after 30 years as Manhattan district attorney, Morgenthau leads a prosecutor's office that is the national gold standard. His record on bringing criminals to justice, whether they be street thugs, corrupt politicians or thieving corporate chieftains, is superb. The borough's Democrats must serve the public good by voting to return Morgenthau to office in the Sept. 13 primary.

Years 26 through 30 have been remarkably productive for Morgenthau. His assistants brought far more accused felons to trial than did their peers in the other boroughs, had the highest trial conviction rate and sent by far the highest percentage to prison after guilty verdicts and pleas.

By themselves, those batting averages call for extending Morgenthau's tenure. But the statistics are all the more impressive when you consider his ambitious range of prosecutions. Thousands of murderers, robbers and rapists were packed off to prison while the DA's office also brought the high and mighty to justice. Morgenthau's newly minted convicted felons include former Tyco chief executive Dennis Kozlowski, former state Sen. Guy Velella, former Assemblywoman Gloria Davis and the leadership of the roofers' union, to name a few.

Along the way, Morgenthau also took on the role of Wall Street cop, prosecuting corrupt bankers, stockbrokers and money launderers and recouping $50 million for the state and city from JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup for their roles in the Enron fraud. And his office is deeply involved now in probing the UN oil-for-food scandal.

Morgenthau's opponent, Leslie Crocker Snyder, served for 20 years as a justice in Manhattan Supreme Court, earning a reputation for meting out tough sentences that provoked death threats from drug gangs. Before her judgeship, Snyder, 63, worked as a Manhattan assistant DA for nine years, during which she became the first woman in the history of the office to try homicides. Snyder, in other words, has a fine résumé. What she lacks is a rationale for dumping Morgenthau.

The central tenet of Snyder's campaign is that the DA's office has "grown stale and out of touch." Her accusation is a transparent reference to Morgenthau's age, 86, and is meant to suggest that everyone would be better off if the coot retired to pick apples. Some may agree. Among them we'd count contractor Phillip Minucci, who got 10 years after Morgenthau slammed him with innovative manslaughter charges stemming from the deaths of five $7-an-hour immigrant masonry workers.

Snyder's proposals for the DA's office range from a sensible focus on domestic violence to a wrongheaded retreat from Morgenthau's white-collar prosecutions. She says, for example, that she would have let other authorities pursue Tyco, forgetting that millions of small shareholders need a watchdog over corporate honesty. She also overlooks that Morgenthau's white-collar cases are a profit center for the city and state, recouping millions of dollars a year in fines, forfeitures and unpaid taxes.

Our occasional differences with Morgenthau - for example, he refused to apply the state's now-defunct death penalty law - pale in comparison to the sweep of his accomplishments. He has prosecuted without fear or favor, pursuing crime in the suites as well as in the streets, and he still has his fastball. The Daily News gives Robert Morgenthau its unqualified, wholehearted endorsement.

 

 

NY Times Endorses Charles Hynes


New York Times, September 4, 2005

For Cleaner Courts in Brooklyn

Two critical contests on the Sept. 13 Democratic primary ballot in Brooklyn -- for district attorney and for a Surrogate's Court judgeship -- offer voters a chance to register their disgust with the cozy clubhouse-courthouse ties that lie at the heart of the borough's judicial patronage and corruption scandal, and the undue influence of Clarence Norman's local Democratic machine. Together, these races amount to a referendum on cleaning up the local political and justice system.

District Attorney

In the district attorney's race, Charles Hynes, the 16-year incumbent, is vying for a fifth four-year term against Arnold Kriss, a former assistant district attorney and police department lawyer now in private law practice; Mark Peters, a private attorney who gained prosecutorial experience in the state attorney general's office; and John Sampson, an undistinguished incumbent state senator who is closely aligned with Mr. Norman.

Mr. Kriss and Mr. Peters have some good ideas for improving the workings of the district attorney's office, and much of their criticism of Mr. Hynes rings true. There is no question, for example, that Mr. Hynes would do well to drop his law school teaching gigs and focus on training young attorneys in his office. And a bad taste lingers from his decision, some years ago, to give a high-paying job to former Borough President Howard Golden.

But Mr. Hynes's innovative view of crime-fighting has led to effective programs that offer appropriate defendants drug treatment instead of prison, provide services to victims of domestic violence and help former inmates re-enter society. His newfound interest in investigating the way judicial nominations are awarded by the Democratic clubhouse is praiseworthy, even if belated.

He is also the only candidate who stands a realistic chance of defeating Mr. Sampson's empty-suit candidacy. Voters should see the Sampson campaign for what it is: an audacious attempt by the Democratic machine to derail Mr. Hyne's continuing political corruption investigation. With that in mind, we endorse Mr. Hynes for one final, legacy-enhancing term.

Surrogate's Court

There are two Surrogate's Court seats to be filled this fall in Brooklyn. But voters in the Sept. 13 primary have been granted a say in filling only one -- the vacancy created in June when the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, took the rare step of removing Surrogate Michael Feinberg, a Democratic clubhouse stalwart, for doling out excessive fees to the crony he appointed to deal with the estates of those who died without leaving a will. In a disgraceful backroom deal, Albany recently created a second judgeship and timed it so that party regulars, not voters, would get to choose the candidate who will appear on the sure-to-win Democratic line in November.

These shenanigans make it all the more important to choose a candidate of proven independence from those who have long treated the Surrogate's Court as their personal cookie jar. Of the three candidates, only one fits the bill -- Margarita Lopez Torres. A veteran Civil Court judge, Ms. Torres would start on Day 1 of her tenure to reorganize the court to serve the people as it is meant to.

Her rivals in the race, Supreme Court Justices Diana Johnson and Lawrence Knipel, are smart, competent and pledge reform. But their close ties to the clubhouse do not bode well for achieving the necessary clean break. We enthusiastically endorse Ms. Lopez Torres.

Civil Court

Brooklyn is also the site of this year's only contested races for New York Civil Court.

For the boroughwide opening, we endorse Sylvia Ash, a quietly impressive attorney, over Norma Jennings, a court attorney for an incumbent Civil Court judge, and Sandra Roper, a local lawyer with a checkered ethics record who ran unsuccessfully for Brooklyn district attorney four years ago.

For the Civil Court opening in District 3 (covering Williamsburg and Greenpoint, and parts of Fort Greene and Bushwick), we recommend Martin Needleman, a respected legal services attorney with a caring manner and a wealth of legal knowledge, over Richard Velasquez, a lawyer with a local community program. Mr. Velasquez did not return our repeated phone calls inviting him for an interview.

In the three-way Civil Court race in District 6 (covering Flatbush, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Prospect-Lefferts, Midwood and parts of Crown Heights) we endorse Ingrid Joseph. Her two opponents, Michael Gerstein, a reform-minded lawyer in private practice, and Cynthia Boyce, an attorney and mediator running with Mr. Norman's backing, might make good judges. But as the principal law secretary to a Supreme Court judge, Ms. Joseph has proved her readiness for the bench.

 

 

 

 

 

9/11 And - Inappropriate Art'


George Negroponte once met an ironworker who had helped dismantle the last remnants of the Twin Towers after the terrorist attack of September 11th, an experience that changed the man’s life in two main ways -– he suffered a disability, and he enrolled in art school. “He is now working full-time as an artist,” Negroponte said. “I’ve heard so many stories about so many people finding the need to have an artistic response.”

This was one reason why Negroponte wanted to be involved in what he calls “the intersection between culture and rebuilding” –- a reason why the Drawing Center, a small museum founded in 1977 of which Negroponte is the president, was one of more than 100 cultural institutions to apply to be part of the new World Trade Center site. The Drawing Center was one of four that was chosen some 18 months ago.

It is one of the two -- the other is the International Freedom Center -- that will probably be kicked out. They are being accused of wanting to exhibit work that is unpatriotic, unAmerican or...inappropriate.

INAPPROPRIATE

Judging from the many harsh words lately, September 11th has spawned a new art movement - Inappropriate Art:

  • The Drawing Center and the International Freedom Center are "inappropriate institutions for a site where so many have died."
  • "The International Freedom Center plans to host controversial debates and sponsor inappropriate programming involving the Tribeca Film Festival."
  • "So long as there is but one square inch housing dialogue, debates, artistic impressions, or exhibits about extraneous historical events, the International Freedom Center is inappropriate and a slap in the face to the victims, their families, and everyone affected by the Sept. 11th attacks"

All three comments are from the Web site for Take Back The Memorial , an organization created after a former lawyer and Court TV producer named Debra Burlingame, the sister of the pilot whose plane was crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, wrote an article in The Wall Street Journal in June attacking the International Freedom Center, or IFC.

Their campaign -- aided by a drumbeat of blunt attacks from the tabloids (one Post editorial: "...anti-American activism of the sort implicitly embedded in the IFC and the Drawing Center is inappropriate at any memorial site") -- got results. The Drawing Center has announced it is looking at other options, and the International Freedom Center has been given a deadline of September 23rd in effect to satisfy its critics; since its critics only want exhibitions directly related to 9/11, it is difficult to see how the International Freedom Center can satisfy them.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who objected to the latest turn of events, nevertheless said: "The challenge for the curators is going to be: given the context of where these cultural institutions are, what's appropriate here?''

Whatever else this particular controversy has illustrated, it is just the latest trouble to visit the four cultural structures of the new World Trade Center site. One way or another, the future of all four of them -- the memorial, the memorial museum, the performing arts center, and the cultural building -- is unclear.

"It remains to be seen how it will play out,” says Petra Todorovich, senior planner and coordinator of Civic Alliance, the sponsors of the “Listening To The City” workshops that attracted nearly 5,000 people three years ago to participate in the initial planning for Ground Zero. They will soon hold two similar workshops for the public to react to the preliminary designs for the Memorial Museum.

9/11 AND THE USES OF ART

The arts have been part of September 11th from the beginning, when makeshift shrines and spontaneous walls of "Missing" posters sprouted all over the city.

There was some talk of "appropriate" art even then - Clear Channel Communications reportedly circulated a list of 150 songs deemed inappropriate for broadcast on their radio stations - but the urgency to create took precedence, and impressed many people, especially those professionally involved in the arts.

It taught art critic Arthur Danto, he says, that "even the most ordinary people respond to tragedy with art." Danto is the curator of "The Art of 9/11," an exhibition of a dozen well-known artists, at apexart, in Tribeca.

It helped Radhika Subramaniam see that "art is used as healing, and for memory, and for telling stories.” Subramaniam is the curator of "What Comes After: Cities, Art + Recovery", which through panel discussions, art exhibitions and performance pieces, looks at the role of art in cities affected by catastrophe around the world. There are times, she learned, when art can literally save somebody. During Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, a painter named Vann Nath was put in a prison where nearly 20,000 inmates were killed; only seven survived. Vann Nath was one of the seven, because his guards, discovering his talent, kept him alive to paint portraits of the dictator. Art saved him again, in a different way, when the new government asked him to paint scenes from his prison experiences.

By the first anniversary of September 11th there were dozens of songs and theater pieces, hundreds of museum exhibitions , and countless memorials, many of them identified as temporary, but some of them permanent.

The urge of those affected by September 11th to create showed Kay Turner, a folklorist on the staff of the Brooklyn Arts Council, that “some people have a need to forget, but a lot of people have a need to process. Art casts things in light of metaphor, and becomes a source of understanding.”

At the third anniversary last year, Turner said, “I was very moved to see lots of new spontaneous memorials. It doesn’t happen when the tourists are there during the rest of the year. But it still happens on anniversaries."

Turner, moderator for "Art of Memory/Art of Memorial,” a panel discussion at the Brooklyn Historical Society on September 10th, wonders whether there will be a place for this kind of "spontaneous expression" in the rebuilt World Trade Center site.

But art as a palliative and outlet for tragedy is not its only intended use at Ground Zero. If, as the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s “Report on the Memorial Center and Cultural Complex” pointed out, “culture has the potential to infuse the redevelopment with hope and energy drawn from the human spirit,” it also offers the possibility of drawing visitors, and new residents, to Lower Manhattan. “A lot of people see the arts as an asset that is underutilized in Lower Manhattan,” said Petra Todovich, “that could be enhanced to revitalize the neighborhoods. If it becomes a cutting-edge place to experience arts and culture, it could bring people down to discover other assets."

THE STATE OF THE ARTS AT GROUND ZERO

If few New Yorkers know that there are four separate cultural structures planned for the World Trade Center site, even those who have been following carefully couldn’t say where they are and where they are going.

1. The Memorial

"Reflecting Absence" was selected in January, 2004 as the memorial to commemorate September 11, 2001, and February 26, 1993 (the earlier terrorist attack at the World Trade Center), after the largest design competition in history, with proposals by 5,201 individuals from 63 nations and 49 states. The winner, a young architect named Michael Arad, who was working for the New York City Housing Authority, designed two sunken pools where the Twin Towers had stood, with an austere plaza in-between.

There were immediate objections. Some said that the design violated Daniel Libeskind's original conception, in which the memorial would be sunken rather than at ground level. Others said the site was too barren. Victims' families argued over whether the names of firefighters and other emergency workers should be placed separately from the others who died.

Within weeks, the plan had been revised , Arad paired with landscape architect Peter Walker to surround the pools with a lush garden of trees and plantings – “oak, sweetgum, grass, moss and groundcover,” Walker has explained.

Of all the projects on the site, the six-acre memorial probably attracts the least controversy now, though there remain some quibbles. Still, while the aim is for a groundbreaking at the end of 2006, there are many design issues to work out - " It's not a simple matter to design an underground facility that will have millions of visitors a year and have waterfalls that flow during the winter," one observer points out.

And there is the question of the cost. Initial estimate of planning, building and operating the memorial was put at over $350 million.

2. Memorial Museum

The World Trade Center Memorial Museum will be separate from the Reflecting Absence memorial in tone and, also (at least according to the latest plan) in physical space.

A recent article in the New York Times said that the museum “is beginning to take form.” But then the author explained what he meant: “There is no director, though a national search is under way. No artifacts have been chosen, though a three-volume catalog suggests how many there are to choose. Boundary skirmishes among the users of underground space on the trade center site are settled enough that officials can say the museum will have at least 110,000 square feet of floor area.”

As Petra Todorovich explains, “the museum consultants have put together preliminary ideas of what the story line of this museum might be -– for example, it will take you through the events of the day; there’ll be a contemplation room. The public will have the opportunity to review these ideas, discuss them in small groups, give their feedback.” That is the purpose for a presentation September 15th at the Center for Architecture and the workshops on September 19 and October 11th at the Woolworth Building.

Though Listening to the City attracted some 5,000 participants, the Civic Alliance is expecting only about 200 this time. “This is an opportunity to shape something that’s really still in formation,” Todorovich says.

3.Performing Arts Center

In June, 2004, four cultural institutions, out of 113 that applied, were selected to take up residence in the site of the World Trade Center. Two of them, the Joyce International Dance Center and the Signature Theater Company, were slated to occupy the Performing Arts Center, which would also present the Tribeca Film Festival. The Joyce (which has two other theaters in Manhattan, one in Chelsea, the other in Soho) would present 30 different dance companies from around the world. The Signature, which pioneered the presentation of the work of a single living playwright per season, would operate "three intimate theaters, a café, bookstore, studios for rehearsals and performances, and classrooms."

Once the two institutions were selected, the corporation hired Frank Gehry to design the building.

But in April, the corporation announced that the center would be excluded from the initial $500 million fundraising drive for the World Trade Center site. Wall Street Journal architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable declared this "the final betrayal" in what had been a continuing "downgrading and evisceration of the cultural components" of Daniel Libeskind's original plan -- thanks to those who lack "the courage, or conviction, to demand that the arts be restored to their proper place as one of the city's greatest strengths and a source of its spiritual continuity."

Just recently, LMDC chair John Whitehead announced that the organization would earmark $50 million specifically for the performing arts center. Nevertheless, the unofficial word is that the center is on hold.

Part of the problem is the realization that, because of the small "footprint" in which they have to build, the structure will have to be a tower -- not a typical home for a theater, and expensive to adapt.

But that is not the only reason, some say, there has been little visible progress. It would make sense to wait to see how the current controversies and challenges play out. After all, the Joyce and the Signature not only have nothing to do with September 11th, the Signature is a theater known for the high quality of its productions and its selections. If the Signature Theater produces, say, Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," which uses the Salem witch trials to attack modern-day groupthink and hysteria, will that be seen as unpatriotic or besmirching the memory of September 11th?

4. The Cultural Building

The Drawing Center, which has been in existence since 1977, and the International Freedom Center, which was conceived for the site, were also selected in June of 2004, to occupy the other building, which since has been designed by the Norwegian architecture firm Snohetta.

 

The troubles began a year after their selection, with the article by Debra Burlingame. They were compounded by articles and editorials in the Daily News that pointed to Drawing Center exhibitions from several years back that it depicted as "silly, self-important, half-baked pieces of 'political art'...You've made a mistake, Governor. Fix it, please. Show these people the door."

Shortly afterward, though he had said that these institutions would "reaffirm life in the wake of tragedy," Governor George Pataki did just that, demanding an "absolute guarantee" that the two institutions would proceed "with total respect for the sanctity of the site." What did this mean exactly? "We're not going to let it turn into something anti-American, anti-freedom or questioning the values of New York..."

INAPPROPRIATE ANNIVERSARY

Apparently flush from their success in protecting the World Trade Center from the possibility of inappropriate art -- and surely not because they felt egged on by the identical tough-guy approach of their competitor -- both the Daily News and the New York Post decided earlier this month to expand their protection and attack "A Knock At The Door," a group exhibition that promised to "explore the relationships between artists and authority in the post 9/11 world" and "raise public awareness of the current retreat of our most basic rights." It is one out of the two dozen or so art exhibitions that are part of "What Comes After: Cities, Art + Recovery" organized by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

"Appropriate - adj., suitable or proper. Inappropriate - adj. unsuitable or improper," a Daily News editorial began. "We repeat these words and definitions here today because the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council appears to be unaware of them." The exhibition was "puerile," "in questionable taste" and "simply inappropriate." Why inappropriate? Because it will be open during September 11th (It's running from September 8 to October 1), and, as an earlier Daily News article explained, is "8 blocks from Ground Zero" -- at the South Street Seaport Museum, to be precise, on the other side of town. A New York Post editorial had expressed much the same sentiments the day before, though stretching in their own way -- attempting (but failing) to demonstrate that the people in charge of the "Knock At The Door" exhibition "are some of the same people shaping" the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center.

Commenting on the likely expulsion of the Drawing Center and the International Freedom Center from the World Trade Center site, architecture critic Paul Goldberger told WNYC: "We like to think of New York as the nation's most cosmopolitan city, a place in which the independence and freedom and values of art and culture are not questioned by anybody, [as if] that debate is over. But that debate is never really over, and Ground Zero is the perfect way to bring that debate back to the fore, even in New York."

 

 

Mayoral Debate Transcript - September 8, 2005


Following is text of the New York City Democratic mayoral candidates debate televised on WABC-TV Thursday as recorded by The New York Times.

BILL RITTER. And good evening everyone. I'm Bill Ritter of Channel 7's Eyewitness News. Welcome to the final televised debate in the Democratic Party primary election for New York City mayor. All four of the candidates are here, right here in our studio. They are vying for the right to take on Mayor Michael Bloomberg and become the city's 109th mayor.

We do hope tonight program will help you make an informed decision, first for the primary which is next Tuesday, Sept. 13, and eventually for the general election in November.

We're going to begin by introducing the candidates. The order in which they appear on stage was picked randomly. And the first one, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, Congressman Anthony Weiner and former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer.

I'm also joined today by three respected New York City journalists who will be asking the questions of the candidates. They are Dave Evans, political reporter for Eyewitness News, Errol Lewis, columnist for The Daily News of New York, he's also a member of the paper's editorial board, and Denisse Oller, an anchor with Univision Television.

Now in the first round each candidate will have 45 seconds to answer the question. We would ask each candidate to please stick to the time limits. I will be polite in enforcing that rule the first time. The first question tonight from Dave Evans and it is directed to Ms. Fields. Dave.

Q. Thank you, Bill. Ms. Fields, of course on Sunday morning we will all be commemorating the tragedy of Sept. 11. If we've seen anything in the investigation over the last few years it is that we as a nation were certainly not well-prepared for such an attack. These last couple of weeks we've seen certainly an inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina. In your opinion are we in New York City adequately prepared for such an emergency? What do you see as the most serious deficiency here in New York City? How do you fix it?

C. VIRGINIA FIELDS. We have heard from the mayor that we are adequately prepared, but we have not been told what those preparations are. We must be prepared not only in terms of providing security for our transit system, but for our ports, our tunnels, safe - soft spots as Broadway and shopping areas.

I have called for an additional 2,000 police officers to be added to the antiterrorism unit so that we will not have to remove police officers from their regular assignments. We must make sure that our staff are trained sufficiently in our subway system. And involve our citizens. Let's prepare our citizens for emergency response training as well as our staff municipal employees. Those are the important steps to make sure that we are more adequately prepared.

Q. Thank you, Ms. Fields. Mr. Miller.

MILLER. Well, first of all, I think you have to give the Police Department, Fire Department great credit for doing a good job of preventing a terrorist attack. And in terms of our uniform agencies, I think they do the best they can with the resources they have.

I do think that this mayor has significantly downgraded the Office of Emergency Management. In the broader sense, we are not having one person and one agency in charge of coordinating all of our response. And that's a mistake. I've said that I will replace the Office of Emergency Management with the Department of Homeland Security: one person in charge, 24 hours a day, of making us really prepared.

And not just coordinating agencies, but also preparing civilians. New Yorkers are not as prepared as they need to be. We've trained 200 people to be part of neighborhood response teams in this city. In San Francisco, they trained 11,000. We need to change that and in a Miller administration I will.

Q. Mr. Weiner.

WEINER. Well, you know, safety and security is a continuum. We should never stop, pat ourselves on the back and say it's O.K., we're safe. We should always need to be thinking the way, frankly, terrorists and criminals think about ways to vex our system by seeing how we can do more.

If I would have told you three and a half years ago that we would have 3,000 fewer cops on the street, now nearly four years after Sept. 11, you would have said, that's a ridiculous response to the challenges we face. I want to hire those cops back.

We also need a telecommunications contingency plan. If all of us get on a cell phone at the same exact time, if there's a flood or an emergency, none of us are going to be able to get through. In my administration we're going to build a backup plan so that fire, emergency, police officers can talk to one another and deal with the crisis, should we have one.

Q. Congressman, why should we see more police officers if we see crime down dramatically these last four years.

WEINER. Well, you know, first of all the job of protecting the city has become a lot more complex in the last four years. We are not only doing the job of stopping criminals from stealing iPods in the subways. Now our police are being called upon to stop Bin Laden from striking again at ground zero, which is all the more outrageous the fact that the Bush administration has eliminated the COPS program, something that I sponsored to renew, that Chuck Schumer originally fought for. That's why we need to be fighting every single day against Washington.

Q. All right. Thank you, Mr. Weiner. Mr. Ferrer, your response.

FERNANDO FERRER. No leader can predict exactly when and where a calamity strikes a city, whether it's God-made of manmade. But I can tell you this, a leader has to be ready to respond. A leader has to be ready to protect human life.

And that means, one, a unified command of first and secondary level responders in this city.

Second, it means communications that aren't confused, communications that are clear and functional above the ground and below the ground. And third, it means an unconfused way of responding to emergencies with no overlapping jurisdictions. There has to be one commissioner of emergency management - not only settling disputes on the ground but there should be no disputes about saving human life, protecting human life and protecting our city.

Q. All right. Thank you, Mr. Ferrer and all the candidates. The next question, Errol Lewis of The Daily News and it's directed to Mr. Miller.

Q. Mr. Speaker, in 2002, after an economic downturn following 9/11 and a city budget shortfall of more than $3 billion, Mayor Bloomberg raised property taxes by 18.5 percent. Do you think he was right to do that? And if not what would you have done differently?

MILLER. Well actually the mayor tried to raise property taxes by 25 percent. And I reduced that proposal to 18.5 percent. Look, we were facing not a budget of $3-billion gap, we were facing a $7.5-billion gap. And I'm proud of the fact that I'm the person on the stage who made the tough decisions and the person who was in there fighting every day to make sure that we made the right choices and that we put our values into place. We had to protect the basic services that New Yorkers depend upon and I stopped this mayor from closing seniors centers and child health clinics, from making the wrong choices. And ultimately reduced his tax increase request.

And as we move forward we need to do more to make this city a better and more just place - cut taxes for working families, provide rent tax credits for renters - and to make sure that we continue to make those right choices. And I'm proud of having done it over the last four years.

Q. Mr. Weiner.

WEINER. You know, part of my concern about the discussion about taxes: It's been fundamentally dishonest. It was an 18.5-percent increase. It was closer to a 40-percent increase. There was an 18.5-percent increase in the rate and then the city rushed in and evaluated - reevaluated everyone's property, which has now gone up about 20 percent in the last couple of years. That means that for an average business, a homeowner, their taxes have gone up 40 percent despite the fact that their income has been flat. That's why I'm saying we need to provide tax relief.

If you make less than $150,000, I'm going to give you a 10-percent tax cut on your income tax. We're going to pay for it with a new seventh tax bracket on millionaires and cutting 5 percent of waste each and every year out of the budget. That's the kind of budgeting we need and that's what Democrats should stand for: helping middle-class New Yorkers stay in the city.

Q. Mr. Ferrer.

FERRER. There's a rising crisis of affordability in this city and it affects owners, renters and consumers alike. It is, in part, set into motion by an 18.5-percent real estate tax increase. And the interesting thing is the tax hiker that you're talking about is Mike Bloomberg and he's not in this studio answering for it.

But I'll tell you this, also: He sends a $400 rebate check with his name festooned all over it to homeowners and he dares to call it a tax cut. Well, it's not. We've got to look for ways to bring down that property tax rate. It's clear that he asked too much.

But it's also clear that on the other side of it money was no object when he was ready to give away $1.2 billion of our money to build a Jets stadium on the West Side of Manhattan. It's about priorities. His priorities are wrong.

Q. O.K. Thank you. Ms. Fields.

FIELDS. You know, this mayor did not pay attention. You will recall during that time period this mayor was so involved with making sure that George Pataki was reelected and did not pay attention. So therefore, after the budget was in fact passed in November, we were told we have to increase the taxes and property and it had to be 18.5 percent. Had that decision been made in July, we could have had a smaller tax cut because we would have had a longer period of time to realize savings from that cut. But at the time it was made, it was made at the last minute, it was made after George Bush - George Pataki, I'm sorry, it was elected and the decision did not have to go against the people of this city in the way that this mayor did it.

Q. O.K. Thank you, candidates. The next question is from Univision anchor Denisse Oller and she has a question for Mr. Weiner. Denisse.

Q. Mr. Weiner, good evening. There is a widely noted housing shortage in New York City. We spoke with one Brooklyn man, Jose Fortuna, whose situation is typical of many New Yorkers. This is what he had to say.

JOSE FORTUNA. Rent is too high, everything is high, you know. And I live in one room, paying $450 a month for one single room. I'm trying to get into housing and it's so hard to get in and everything, you know. So I wonder what's going to happen to us, you know.

Q. Mr. Weiner, can you tell which areas of the city have the most serious housing problems and how do you intend to target those areas?

WEINER. Well, I have to tell you, if there's something that's transcending in every corner of this city, people talk about how difficult it is to find affordable housing. And if we have one kind of real existential threat to the future of our city being a magnet for creative people - being a place that immigrants come, get their start, keep generating the economy - it's the lack of affordable housing.

You know, there used to be a place that you could recommend: Well, here's a neighborhood you for a starter home. Here's where you can go to find a cheaper rent. Those places are disappearing. We have to do a couple of things very quickly.

One, we have to provide Section 202 housing for seniors. We can do it on public housing property, there's a surplus of property. And what that'll do is free up apartments.

Second, we need to reduce the tax burden on people like Jose and so many others who are paying so much out of their pocket for taxes they can't afford to pay it for rent.

And the third thing that we have to do is we have to build more housing that's not just focused on the very well-to-do, but focused on working- and middle-class people and those who strive to get into the middle class.

FERRER. There's no part of this city that's immune from people. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers being priced out of the neighborhoods they love, tens of thousands of New York

ers who can't find a decent place to live at a rent that they can afford.

Look, I know the value - the power - of decent housing in people's lives. I know it in my own life. I know it as borough president of the Bronx when we worked with two mayors and scores of community organizations to build 66,000 units of affordable homes and apartments. It made a difference in people's lives. It made a difference in the life of a borough. We got to get serious about affordable homes and apartments. And that's why I've proposed a plan to build and maintain the affordability of 167,000 units over 10 years in the city, and a way to pay for it. Anything less will not serve the legitimate, real, pressing housing needs of New Yorkers.

Q. Ms. Fields.

FIELDS. Demand outpaces supply for affordable housing throughout every area of this city. We must build more affordable housing at all of the income levels. And as mayor I will begin the pathway of building 100,000 new units of affordable housing, 10,000 units annually, and I have proposed ways to pay for it.

But we must also preserve housing. Let's protect New York City Housing Authority developments. Let's make sure that they are not privatized. Because if they are that will mean massive displacement.

And yes, I have put forth a plan for building more affordable housing for seniors, not only using Section 202, but 5 percent of all city-subsidized housing development will be set aside for seniors.

Q. O.K. Ms. Fields. Thank you very much. Mr. Miller, you have the last word on this subject.

MILLER. Well first of all, one difference between me and a lot of the other candidates in this race is that I've really focused on preservation in this race. We need to use more of our resources to preserve existing affordable housing. It does us no good when we create new units of affordable housing and we see tens of thousands of units in Section 8 and Mitchell-Lama and other rent-control and rent-stabilized units leaving our system.

And we need to preserve it, and that's one of the reasons I'm proud to be endorsed by Tenant-PAC because of my work already in doing that and my commitment to doing it as mayor.

Secondly, rent's hit an all-time high. What Jose's talking about is his rent keeps going up. It hit an all-time high this year. I'm the only candidate on this stage to propose a renters tax credit: 3 percent of your rent. We need to give relief to homeowners, and we do, and we should do it more fairly and more effectively. But we also need to give some relief to renters. They are two-thirds of New York residents and they very get extraordinarily little attention in this city.

Q. Thank you, Mr. Miller and all the candidates. The fourth question is a round. Dave Evans for Mr. Ferrer. Dave.

Q. Mr. Ferrer, at the M.T.A. there are a lot of different proposals on the table right now, everything from the Second Avenue subway to extending the No. 7 line to the far West Side to the downtown rail link. Let's say you're mayor: Which one of those proposals is your No. 1 mass transit proposal? How do you pay for it?

FERRER. Well, Dave. In a world of unlimited resources, I'd like to do most or all of them. But we don't live in such a world. I'd pick one - it's the full-length Second Avenue subway. It unites not only new residential communities with new job-generating communities, but goes through four boroughs and provides the East Side of Manhattan with much needed relief from it's one existing East Side subway line. Look, it's an investment in the economic future of this city that we dare not not make. I support it.

Q. How do you pay for it?

FERRER. Well, first of all, I think that's why we need the commuter tax back in this city, a dedicated stream of revenue to offset the payment of bonds so that we can build that Second Avenue subway. That is an important investment in the economic future of New York.

Q. Thank you, Mr. Ferrer. Ms. Fields, the subject is transportation.

FIELDS. As the borough president who brought the Second Avenue subway back and made sure that it is now a part of this debate, the Second Avenue subway would certainly be my priority because, again, not only will it provide safe, efficient transportation for the many residents on the East Side corridor, as well as some other boroughs, but it is about jobs, economic development and being able to have safe and efficient transportation.

We pay for it - must have support from Washington. The good news is that we do have a line in the budget now in Washington for the Second Avenue subway. But we must have a steady revenue stream within the M.T.A. and I, too, support reinstatement of the commuter tax in an effort to be able to pay for the Second Avenue subway as well as maintain other safety services on our system.

Q. Mr. Miller.

MILLER. Well, you're going to get a lot of agreement here. I - first of all, let's say this - and let's acknowledge this - that the subways are breaking down. They're going in the wrong direction and part of the reason is that this mayor has been silent about this. He's watched as fare increase after fare increase has occurred. He's failed to fight, whether it's on the security for our subways or whether it's on expansion of the Second Avenue subway, which is - would certainly be my top priority. When the Second Avenue subway is built, Dave, on Day 1 it will be the only major transportation improvement in the history of this county that will be operating at 100 percent of capacity. That's how badly it's needed. And certainly I was the first candidate here to propose - and I agree with my colleagues - we need to use a progressive commuter tax because people that live outside the city but work here ought to be investing something in New York. And the most sensible thing for them to invest in is something they use: our mass transit system.

As mayor, I'll go up to Albany and fight to get that done.

Q. Thank you, Mr. Miller. Mr. Weiner, you have the last word on transportation.

WEINER. The Second Avenue subway, I was helpful in passing, on the transportation committee, a down payment on it. We need to pool the resources from the other major projects and do this one first. But I want to ask your viewers and ask you a question: Can you name two members of the M.T.A. board? Who are these people? Why do they have so much control over the destiny of our city? We provide 90 percent of the fare box, only get 70 percent back. When there's a major development deal to be done on the West Side or in downtown Brooklyn, it's - the M.T.A. board suddenly takes over our destiny.

One of the things I'm going to do every single day as mayor is start to question why so little of our future isn't in our own hands as New York City residents. The mayor deserves credit for winning back control of the Board of Ed, but we shouldn't stop there. We should demand representation. We only have four seats in a 14-member board at the M.T.A. and yet they control so much of our destiny. I'm going to fight to change that as mayor.

Q. All right, thank you Mr. Weiner and candidates. In fact in this round we're going to talk about education. The rules are going to be a little different. We're going to have what we hope will be a free-wheeling discussion about education. We will not be timing each answer, candidates. But brevity will be appreciated as always. All the candidates will have the opportunity to jump in when and if they want. We want a free-wheeling discussion.

The first topic is overcrowding in the classroom. And here's what one high school student's firsthand experience.

VOICEOVER. It's ridiculous. It shouldn't be like that. And we shouldn't be put through it. We're bunched up. We're always bumping into each other. There's always fights. There's always commotion, really big ones.

Q. Mr. Miller, my question is to you. The cornerstone of your education plan is to reduce class size. But you propose to pay for it with a tax that depends on Albany's approval. And spokesmen for both the governor's office and the State Senate have in effect told us that is not going to happen. What is your Plan B? Could you explain?

MILLER. Well I don't think we need a Plan B. I'm not prepared to give up on Plan A yet. This is a - The way I'm planning to pay for lowering class sizes to 17 kids in a class for kindergarten through third grade, 20 kids for fourth and fifth, and 23 kids for sixth through eighth is to cancel a tax cut that's coming Jan. 1 for people in this city that are making more than $500,000 a year. We can't afford to give people making more than $500,000 a year a tax cut when our schools are as overcrowded as they are today. And I have made a real commitment to this issue.

I think New Yorkers want to know - they hear a lot of noise, they hear a lot of talk about this - they want to know what have we done. Here's what I've done, over the past year I stopped this mayor from cutting $1.3 billion, half of the capital budget, in order to build more schools. And when I'm the mayor of the City of New York and I go up to Albany - and Shelly Silver has said that he thinks this is a sensible idea - when the mayor and the City Council go up together and say, you know what, we need to invest in our schools, we need to invest in lower class sizes because that's how kids are going to learn better, we're going to get that. And I won't come back until it gets done.

Q. Mr. Miller, I have a follow-up question. Your plan does not focus on high school, which remains by the way the most overcrowded in the system. Why did you exclude them? And what to you plan to do about the overcrowding?

MILLER. Well, look, in order to do something about high school overcrowding we need to build more schools. And there is some capacity in elementary and middle school. It will take longer for us to be able to get the class size reduction in high schools that we need. And we need to build those schools. I don't like to make promises that I can't keep. I just won't do it, not in the campaign and not in government. -

Q. Any candidate, by the way, can jump in . . .

MILLER. - And so it's going to take longer for us to be able to get that done. But you know, for those high school students that are having lunch at 9 o'clock in the morning, they're going to science labs where the science teachers are older than the - are younger than their science labs. We need to change that. And I've made the commitment on paper and in principle and in action to put the money into the budget to build more schools. When I'm mayor, that's how you know I'll do it again.

Q. Anyone else want to talk about this subject?

WEINER. Well, look, where you're going to get the money is a fundamental point of division between me and Mr. Ferrer. I'm a great fan of Mr. Ferrer, I think he's a good man. I think he's just wrongheaded in this idea. You know, the idea that we should put over a billion dollars of our own money to get back from Albany the money that a court has already said after a seven-year lawsuit that we have coming to us is a bad idea. And particularly when the stock transfer tax would be a tax that would cost middle-class New Yorkers, those trying to get into the middle class, their jobs.

You know, I read an article recently in The Chicago Tribune that talked about how traders in Chicago are watching very carefully this race because they get very interested any time we talk about doing a stock transfer tax in New York because that's going to mean more business and more jobs for Chicago.

I think we've got to fight a much tougher bargain. We can't bargain against ourselves. And here's what I've proposed - You know this is now seven years, we're in the home stretch of this lawsuit. Now is the time for us to really batten down the hatches and say, you know what Albany, this is the money we have coming to us. And the one thing Democrats shouldn't be saying is we want a large tax increase.

Q. Let me just move on to the education -

FERRER. I'd like to respond to that.

Q. Directly to the stock transfer tax -

FERRER. Absolutely. Absolutely. Look, earlier today, start of school, I was in front of Canarsie High School - 130-percent utilization. Their freshman class a couple of years ago was at 1,100. Their junior class two years later: 400. We know where those kids end up: on some street corner. Let me tell you something, the minute we give an inch in the fight to leverage $23 billion to improve our schools and to improve their lives, we give up on another generation of New Yorkers, and I won't be part of that failure.

Q. O.K., let me continue -

FIELDS. But I also want to comment.

Q. Yes, Ms. Fields.

FIELDS. That is, I would agree, actually, with the congressman. We must go to Albany and be very aggressive in our fight for the dollars on the campaign for fiscal equity because the reality is without those dollars we're not going to be able to respond to this young lady's complaint in terms of her concerns about overcrowding. So we must be active, we must be vigilant. And as mayor, I will make that a top priority as a public campaign involving parents, advocates and the general public. This is unfair. It has gone on too long. And a mayor can lead the way and as mayor I will do that.

MILLER. Bill, can I just . . .[speaking over moderator] Freddy for one second? Because, look, I don't agree with the stock transfer tax is the way to raise money, but the notion that kids care whether these are state dollars or city dollars, in the end these are our responsibility. When I'm mayor, I won't use excuses. I'll fight hard to get that money from Albany.

Q. O.K.

MILLER. But you just can't give the excuses that, you know, we have to keep waiting. Sometimes you have to step up to the plate and get it done.

Q. Let me - Mr. Miller, let me talk about something parents are very concerned about - so are students. It is a test determining whether a child advances, so-called social promotion. It's done in the third, fifth and soon in the seventh grade. It's very controversial. One parent we spoke to isn't so sure this is a good idea.

CHERITA ROSE. At the end of the year you have one test that's going to put an outlook on your education and it's sad. And it's scary, it's scary. For the children and, I think, and as well the parents, also.

Q. Mr. Weiner, I'd like to ask you, first of all, about this. If you were mayor, would you rescind Mike Bloomberg's decision to make one test the overall deciding factor as to whether that third, fifth and now a seventh grader would be promoted onto the second -

WEINER. You know, I don't - I support eliminating social promotion and I don't have a problem with giving tests to make sure we're moving people forward based on what they know not how old they are. But I'm -

Q. But should it be the deciding factor here?

WEINER. Well, here - even in the Bloomberg administration they still, after someone fails a test, they get to -

Q. There is no process.

WEINER. - go and get remedial attention. But here's what we have to do. You know, this whole debate has left out a whole group of New York students. What about the average student - the student who's not going to fail the test, but that average student like I was. I went to public schools my whole life - an average student who needs that push from a really attentive teacher? That good student who we want to make an Intel scholar at the end of the day or a scholarship winner.

You know, we have to get into the minds of those people who are leaving the school system right now and some of them are concerned about their failing child, but a lot more of them are concerned about the idea, you know, our schools are so focused in making sure that we get kids off that bubble - as we desperately need to do - we've lost sight of the fact that we need to pay teachers better so they stay in the system. You think students don't like those tests? Think about how teachers feel when there's so much obsession on the idea you better teach to this test from Day 1, that the kids that are somewhere in the middle of the range are not getting the attention they need.

Q. But would you do away with this process of having -

WEINER. No.

Q. You would not. You'd keep it as it is.

WEINER. No, I would not. But it would be entirely different focus in my administration. I would honor teachers by giving them a raise. I would honor teachers by giving them more flexibility for how they run their classroom. I would honor them by giving principals real authority over the discipline in those classes. You know, if we start hemorrhaging any more teachers, like my mother, a teacher for 31 years, we are not going to be able to repair even the most basic problems in our school system because the most senior teachers are leaving because they're not getting paid enough and the most junior teachers are leaving because those senior teachers aren't there to mentor them anymore.

Q. You don't want to address the - Fred.

FERRER. No one here is in favor of social promotion - the practice of moving a child one year ahead simply because they got a year older. And I think everybody wants and supports the idea of measures - measures to see how they're doing.

But that's not the same thing as saying - and most educators would agree with that mother - that's not the same thing as saying that should be the only measure of a child's achievement. Look, we've got to move away from a school system that merely teaches to a standardized test and move to a system that teaches to the highest standards. And here's the problem: While we obsess about a few test scores rising in the early grades in an election year, we're forgetting about a high school dropout rate of over 50 percent. That's the failure of this system and that's the responsibility of Mike Bloomberg.

Q. I do want to talk about - FIELDS. There has been too much emphasis on - I just want to comment on the test also -

Q. Very briefly though because we're already out of time on this subject. FIELDS. Because I think this administration has stressed the standardized tests far too much. And as a result we're not putting in the massive interventions earlier, making early assessments, providing the resources so that we can better prepare students as they move through the first, second, third and other grades.

MILLER. Can I give a clear - My clear answer is this: Yes, I'll repeal it. It's wrong for 8-year-olds to be given one test and told that's it for your entire year. And the way that we fix social promotion is by lowering class sizes. P.S. 7 in Elmhurst Queens opened today, 28 kids in the kindergarten class. Those are the same kids that are going to be failing in third grade. We shouldn't wait till third grade, we should intervene. Tests should only be one element of an overall assessment of student performance.

Q. Thank you all very much. Education obviously a hot topic. I am going to take - ask some questions in a little lightning round.

FERRER. We love these.

Q. Do you really?

FERRER. Yeah.

FIELDS. Sometimes.

Q. These are yes or no questions, so please don't extrapolate. FIELDS. But you know we don't answer yes or no anymore.

Q. I think we're asking that you do, Ms. Fields, this time. The first question: Should legal noncitizens be allowed to vote in New York City elections? We'll begin this way this time with Mr. Ferrer.

FERRER. Yes.

WEINER. No.

MILLER. No.

FIELDS. Yes.

Q. O.K. Two yes's and two no's. Should undocumented or illegal immigrants be allowed access to public health care and public education? Mr. Ferrer.

FERRER. Yes, it's the law.

WEINER. Yes, certainly. We all benefit from that.

MILLER. Absolutely.

FIELDS. Yes.

Q. O.K. Now a final question, Ms. Fields, I'll begin with you.

MILLER. Did Absolutely count? I'm sorry, I should have said yes.

Q. Absolutely does count as a yes, Mr. Miller. Do you ever give money to panhandlers on the street?

FIELDS. Yes.

MILLER. Yes.

WEINER. Yes.

FERRER. Yes.

Q. O.K. Thank you all for keeping the answers brief this time. We are going to go on to round three and we are back to timed questions and answers. The candidate who is asked the question has one minute to answer; the others will have 30 seconds for rebuttal, if they choose. To begin the questioning, The Daily News's Errol Lewis with a question for Mr. Weiner.

Q. Congressman, cutting waste and cutting taxes have been the cornerstone of your campaign, but in the past you've said - and I quote - the era of small government is over. And, quote, no one in my district is asking for tax cuts. You also get among the lowest ratings in Congress from business and anti-tax groups. Can you name some areas where you've actually cut government waste?

WEINER. Certainly. First of all, let's not lose sight of - you know, we, as Democrats, have lost the language game here. We're opposed to waste, too. I'm opposed to waste in programs throughout the budget that so many of my Republican brothers and sisters are not. We have a different view about what it is.

I'm going to tell you I made that comment about the era of big government being back talking about the year after Sept. 11. We're asking government to protect our ports, as we should; we're asking government to protect our food supply, as we should; our water supply, as we should. This is not the time for mega-tax cuts for the very best-off among us.

We, as Democrats, believe something else. We - if you believe my view of the party - believe in easing the burden on the middle class, honoring work in New York City, treasuring those people who work every single day to make it. That's why I want to cut taxes of those below $150,000 a year and a marginal, slight increase for those who make more than $1 million, to make the tax code more progressive.

Don't believe the hype from some of these right-wing think tanks. They desperately don't want me to get elected because they know I'm going to shift our city to the place that we ease the burden on the middle class and where you do ask those who are wasting money in government to stop it.

Q. Well, here again, you've been in the City Council, you've been in the Congress. Where have you cut waste?

WEINER. Well, listen, I'll tell you I've put out - and, listen, I'm the only person up here who can say this - I've put out a list of $1.7 billion worth of cuts. You know, The New York Times identified 1.3 billion of waste in Medicaid alone. I've talked about taking some of these tax breaks we give for corporations that make no sense and eliminating them. Look, you can take a look at my Web site - anthonyweiner.com - to take a look at my whole financial plan that not only cuts waste, cuts taxes on middle-class New Yorkers, makes the tax code more progressive, but also has money left over.

Q. Anyone else want to deal with this question?

FERRER. Well, sure. Look, we've all had experiences within government - early, when I became borough president, a little after that in 1988. I teamed up with the state and city and voluntary hospitals and city hospitals in my borough to do two things: to go after the Medicaid mills, those clinics that fraudulently promoted that they were giving health care, because I understood that people in our neighborhoods wanted decent adequate health care - worked to enforce them out of existence, worked to bring voluntary hospitals and family practices into neighborhoods that hadn't seen a family doctor for 30 years and more. That saved money and that improved health care.

Q. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ferrer. Let me just remind you, in this round we're trying to get people to respond to the person who's asked questions. If you could respond directly to what Mr. Weiner said.

WEINER. I was trusting he was going to do that anyway.

MILLER. Look, I think the important thing for New Yorkers to ask themselves is if we're asking somebody to get elected mayor to make these tough choices, to - and I've over the past four years actually made these tough choices. I cut, with this mayor, more than $3 billion out of our budget over the last four years. But I stopped him from doing the kinds of cuts that went straight to the heart of the services and the values that New Yorkers depend upon. When this mayor wanted to close senior centers I said no, we're going to have to go somewhere else in order to get our savings. And so if you're looking for somebody who isn't just going to talk about it and isn't making a bunch of promises about how we're going to cut a lot of money without any pain, if you're looking for somebody who's made these tough choices and you want to trust to make the tough choices in the future, then you ought to choose somebody who's actually done it.

Q. All right, thank you Mr. Miller -

FIELDS. And when you talk about differences, and we've often been asked about differences among us as candidates, I'm the only candidate who's not talking about cutting taxes. And I am very proud to have had the Citizens Union give me their preferred status as a result of working to make sure that we eliminate debt, which is very important as it relates to our overall budget, and not increasing taxes at this time.

Q. O.K., thank you, Ms. Fields. Denisse, you have a question for Mr. Ferrer.

Q. Yes, I do. Mr. Ferrer, there's been some question about how much you really want to be mayor. There's been criticism that a feeling of inertia surrounds your campaign, that you don't have the fire in the belly, to put it bluntly, this time around. And in speaking about your third run for mayor you said, and I quote, I was not especially eager to do it because I happen to like the idea of coming home for dinner. I had a nice live - end of quote. Now, what do you tell viewers, voters, particularly those undecided, to absolutely convince them that you have what it takes to be the mayor of New York City?

FERRER. Well, first of all, Denisse, if anyone had as pretty a wife as I do, as good a cook as she is - she's up in the audience, I hope she's hearing my words - then I can tell you this: They'd understand completely those words. But I have enough fire in my belly to melt concrete. That's why I'm running for mayor.

Look, I'm running for mayor because I want to make this city work better for everybody. We've got to get serious about affordable homes and apartments; we've got to get serious about the dropout rate; we've got to get serious about the onset of crushing poverty in this city - 105,000 more New Yorkers sliding into poverty over the last year; one in five New Yorkers living in poverty; half a million children with hunger as their daily condition? A serious person has to do it. That's why I'm running for mayor, because I want to get serious about these problems.

Q. Does anyone want to respond directly to this?

MILLER. I think Freddy wants to be mayor too. And I also think that all of us want to be mayor. I think that the question here is not our desire to be mayor. The question is is are we going to respond to the desires of New Yorkers? Are we going to meet their needs? Do we lay out ideas that will move our city in a new direction and do we have a record of actually accomplishing them in the past? So I think that - I certainly - I've seen Freddy go to an awful lot of debates, work all over the city. I think he wants to be mayor.

Q. Briefly anyone - Mr. -

WEINER. I was going to say something similar. You know, I've been trying to keep up with Freddy Ferrer the last year and a half. No one hustles more than he does.

Q. O.K.

WEINER. And I can tell you, he doesn't fly off to Bermuda to take time off; he does it in South Queens and the Rockaways and the Bronx. He works very hard and he is going -

Q. Thank you.

WEINER. - and he is going to - I'll tell you what, he's going to show a new standard of fighting and hustling for the city -

FIELDS. There's no question.

WEINER. - if he gets to be mayor, but, of course, he's probably not going to. So I think [laughter obscures words]

FIELDS. There's no question of Mr. Ferrer's desire to be mayor. He would not be out here doing all this if not. And I can tell you, he's been on it.

Q. We all like to go home for dinner. There's nothing wrong with that.

FIELDS. Especially when somebody's a good cook.

Q. Lewis has a question for Mr. Miller. Errol Lewis. I'm sorry, Dave Evans

Q. Ms. Fields, I'd like to ask you, like all of the candidates you have made education a key element in your platform. And to pay for your proposals in regard to education you recently said, and I quote, A fourteen - and I think this was in a recent debate actually - A $14 billion budget will be our first area to redirect priorities to make sure that the use of these funds are there for the purpose of what we are proposing. I think someone might look at that and say translate that for me, give me some concrete areas of what you would redirect. What priorities?

FIELDS. I have said that there are three major areas that I would focus on in addition to class size, recruiting/retention of teachers, but I would focus on linking education with jobs and job growth - focus on vocational training as a way to help our students not drop out. We have a very large dropout rate among high school students. We must get their attention. We must keep them in our schools. So I will expand vocational training programs.

I will also expand career programs so that students in our middle schools will begin on a career path straight through high school into college in our city universities. And I will focus on expanding math and science classes. In order to pay for those within the existing budget my priorities will be to make sure that the dollars within that budget that it will take in order to accomplish that, you know, out of the budget. But it is not really more money. That's the point that I think is getting missed here.

Q. Thanks, Ms. Fields. I do want to move on -

FIELDS. But let me just finish because I don't think that he kind of -

Q. But I want to stick to our time and that was the time limit, Ms. Fields. FIELDS. Let me just finish this point and to simply say -

Q. Ever briefly.

FIELDS. Ever briefly - to simply say that I am not talking about increasing the budget, but focusing the dollars in those areas. Instead of 3 to 5 percent of dollars going into Tweed building, let's use those moneys for my programs.

Q. Thank you, Ms. Fields. Errol Lewis, a question for Mr. Miller.

Q. One of the most contentious issues of the last City Council session was New York's long-term sanitation plan. In 2002, you supported waterfront transfer stations to solve the city's garbage problems, but when the mayor announced locations more recently, the plan included reopening the transfer station in your Upper East Side district. At the time you said - and I quote - this proposal stinks of politics. What exactly where the politics the mayor was playing? And if not in your Upper East Side district, where would you support a waste transfer station?

MILLER. Well, look, first of all, I am very proud to have a very strong environmental record. I have fought very hard to turn this City Council into the most effective legislative body. I saved recycling when this mayor tried to eliminate it - along with my colleagues in the City Council - when he tried to eliminate it three years ago. And I believe that we do need to do a much better job of handling our sanitation problem and our trash problems.

And one of the effective ways that we can do it is using marine transfer stations. What I -

Q. Mr. Miller, the question was -

MILLER. But I'm going to get to -

Q. - what were the politics that you were referring to?

MILLER. Sure, so what I said was is that I support marine transfer stations. But I think that they ought to be located not in residential communities, but located in industrial areas along our waterfront. And I opposed the transfer station on 135th Street and the transfer station on 91st Street because both of them are located in the middle of residential communities - and laid out an alternative plan that included a transfer station on 38th Street in nonresidential areas, in commercial and industrial areas. What I said in that time, what I was saying was is that the mayor appropriately decided not to open a transfer station on 135th Street. It was the wrong place for it and it's still the wrong place for it. And I'm glad that he responded to my calls to not open it. He only decided to try to open a transfer station - a 24-hour commercial waste facility - in the middle of one of the densest residential neighborhoods -

Q. Mr. Miller, thank you.

MILLER. - in the city when there were alternatives because it was in my district.

Q. Anyone want to respond directly to that?

FIELDS. I agree with Mr. Miller that that is the wrong location for the marine transfer station. It is too close to the residential area and it violates the city's rules in terms of being within 400 feet of a residential or a playground area. So he's absolutely correct. And I believe that we must find an alternative.

Q. All right, thank you. Mr. Weiner.

WEINER. I have - I don't have any trouble buying the debate that it ignores some communities that perhaps are not as politically sophisticated and affluent. You know the waste transfer station in southwest Brooklyn was already ordered closed once by a court - $100 million they want to invest in reopening it. It's already been found to be in violation of environmental laws and frankly a hazard to the communities. One thing I'm going to do as mayor is not just look out the window of Gracie Mansion and say these are my constituents. I'm going to look at all five boroughs and realize, you know what, we're not just going to shift problems to places that perhaps not as politically affluent or sophisticated.

You know, we should revisit this plan. It doesn't have a commercial element that's proper. And the southwest Brooklyn plan also is something that's - There've already been orders to be closed once.

Q. Mr. Ferrer, you want to jump in I see.

FERRER. Yeah. There are communities in this city that have an unacceptably high rate of asthma. One of the significant reasons is the high rate of transfer stations in their areas. Look, when I was borough president of the Bronx for nearly 15 years, we put our belief in borough self-sufficiency into action - being the first borough to come out with a plan after they closed the Fresh Kills landfill. Not only because I believe it, but because we all generate garbage and we all have to do our part. Let's do it fairly, let's do it equitably and let's all do our share.

Q. O.K. Thank you, candidates. In this round, each candidate is going to have 30 seconds to respond. I'm going to ask the first question. It's of Mr. Ferrer. We have just conducted a new Eyewitness News poll. It came out today. It shows that 55 percent of Democrats - Democrats in New York City approve of the job Mayor Bloomberg is doing. If you should win the primary, Mr. Ferrer, why would they vote for you over Mr. Bloomberg with that kind of rating?

FERRER. Well I'll tell you this: Mike Bloomberg is a Republican; he supports Republican policies that have hurt this city. But Mike Bloomberg's own policies as a Republican have hurt this city. Look, he hasn't gotten serious about - despite his promises - affordable houses and apartments in this city. He hasn't gotten serious about the dropout rate in this city that brings us all down. He hasn't gotten serious about chronic unemployment in this city: 40 percent among black men; 33 percent among Latino men. He hasn't gotten serious about poverty in this city. That's a failure of his. That's a failure I intend to debate with him once I'm the Democratic nominee.

Q. That question to Ms. Fields now.

FIELDS. Mike Bloomberg is a Republican. And this is the same Republican who supported George Bush for reelection and said that George Bush would be the best person for this city, and we all know that that simply is not true. But he also is the mayor who violated the rights of protesters during the Republican Convention. Aside from that he has not moved to create opportunities for the chronically unemployed - they're still unemployed; to make sure that affordable housing is available. And all of these are important in the lives of people in this city.

Q. Thank you, Ms. Fields. Mr. Miller.

MILLER. You know, I think all of my colleagues on this stage have done a good job over the last four months of explaining why it is that this mayor has been making mistakes and why it is that he's completely out of ideas as to where he wants to go over the next future - but I'm the candidate who spent the last four years actually fighting the tough battles with this mayor and winning: stopping him from closing senior centers and child health clinics; stopping him from preventing sexual assault victims from having access to emergency contraception; stopping him from and overriding his veto of legislation to protect children from the dangers of lead paint. If we want to choose somebody who's going to take this mayor on and take him on and win, we ought to chose the person who's been doing it for the last four years and winning.

Q. Thank you. I'm going to ask each candidate to stick to 30 seconds. We want to get a lot of questions in. Mr. Weiner?

WEINER. Well, listen, I just hope my fellow Democrats give me the chance to stand on the stage with Mike Bloomberg. I'm going to look at him and say, Listen, you say that New Yorkers are undertaxed? I think they're overtaxed. Talk about my tax cut plan versus his plan that has increased taxes more than 40 percent. I'm going to say, You think Mike Bloomberg is so good on economic development? Go visit Ground Zero not far from my campaign office. You see tourists gathering around looking at a fallow pit. And I'm also going to look at him and say, Do you know, Mr. Mayor, that we have 20 percent of New Yorkers, one in five, live below the poverty line. Over 500,000 children turn to a soup kitchen, a church basement or the city for a meal. If - I am eager to have that debate and unlike other Democrats in the past, I'm not going to come into a knife fight carrying library books. I'm going to fight to win.

Q. Thank you, Mr. Weiner. Our next question for Ms. Fields comes from Denisse Oller.

Q. Ms. Fields, what would be your first official act as mayor? FIELDS. My first official act as mayor would be to appoint my deputy mayor for full employment. And I'll tell you why: Because again, we are looking at math - we are looking at chronically unemployment among African-American men and Latinos and it has not been addressed. And we must put people back to work. There's a report that recently came out that shows that New York City has increased in terms of poverty. The best way to address poverty is to put people to work. It was the late Adam Clayton Powell Jr. who said, When you put some green in a person's pocket, that's when you begin to eliminate poverty. So I will work on jobs.

Q. O.K. Mr. Miller.

MILLER. Cancel the tax cut that's coming Jan. 1 for people making more than $500,000 a year, and taking that $380 million and devoting it directly to reducing class sizes.

We can do this. And there is nothing that's stopping us except the will and the vision to do so. There is no excuse for having 550,000 kids failing in our schools. There's no excuse for having 28 kids in a kindergarten class. If we take that money and devote it, we can hire the teachers, we can make sure that we build the schools over the long run in order to create the capacity, and we can actually transform our schools so that we can finally say to ourselves we're giving our kids the education they deserve.

Q. O.K. Mr. Weiner.

WEINER. Do you want to know another reason why last year in this city of plenty we had over a half a million children turn to a soup kitchen for a meal? We are one of the last major cities that requires mothers applying for food stamps to be fingerprinted as if they're criminals. We do everything possible to put barriers in their way of providing food for their children. You know, we should never lose sight of the fact that for so many New Yorkers, their life isn't about politics, their life is figuring out a way to feed their children. And I -

Q. Excuse Mr. Weiner, your first act as mayor -

WEINER. I'm answering the question. So the first thing that I would do is remove those obstacles by eliminating that fingerprint requirement. Feed those children first. Don't let politics get in the way.

Q. O.K., thank you. Mr. Ferrer, your first act as mayor.

FERRER. I'd appoint a chancellor who's an educator, who agrees with me that we've got to improve teaching and learning in every grade; we've got to bring down the unconscionably high dropout rate; we've got to fight shoulder to shoulder to get the $23 billion that will improve our public schools at every grade and improve the lives of 1.1 million school kids as they face a future in New York, a future that will require them to be economically self-sufficient.

Q. O.K., thank you for all sticking with the time limits, as well. Errol Lewis, a question for Mr. Miller.

Q. Parks advocates have pushed for New York to follow the practice of other cities, notably Chicago, and set aside 1 percent of the overall budget for parks and recreation. Only one of you, Virginia Fields, has taken a pledge to do so. I'm wondering why for you and for Congressman Weiner and Mr. Ferrer, why not spend 1 percent of the budget on parks and recreation?

MILLER. Let me, first of all, thank the congressman for mentioning the food stamp issue because in the City Council we just passed legislation, over the mayor's veto, to do just that: remove the obstacles to people getting food stamps in this city. It's an important issue and another example of not just talking about doing something about it but doing something about it.

We can't afford 1 percent because that's more than doubling our Parks Department's budget. But we do need to increase our Parks Department budget. We need to make it more effective, the maintenance. We need to provide more recreation opportunities. I think we should work towards 1 percent. But to sit here and promise that we're going to get to $450, $500 million when we're currently still at around $150, $160 doesn't make sense. We just don't have that ability to more than double our Parks Department budget. But I certainly have increased the budget for the Parks Department -

Q. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Miller. Mr. Weiner, 1 percent.

WEINER. Well first I want to thank the speaker for adopting something I proposed in one of my first policy speeches on the campaign trail. Look, here's my view, my view is that you don't draw line items in the budget here in the context of the campaign. The one thing I'm not going to do is what we've done - allowed to have happen now. We really have a tale of two cities as it relates to parks. If you're in an affluent community that can put a active parks group together to raise money, you do a lot better than a lot of the neighborhood parks. I'm going to try to end that imbalance by always focusing not just on the good - the quality communities that have really nice active parks groups, but also trying to get the services where they're needed in the less affluent communities as well.

Q. Thank you. Mr. Ferrer.

FERRER. Look, I believe in safe and well-maintained parks in every community. But I do not believe in standing here or anywhere else and promising something that you can't fund because you have no funds to do it. Now I believe that we've got to increase funds for parks. In fact I made a specific proposal in response to that, and that was allow the Parks Department to keep the $15 million it currently generates in concession fees and reinvest it in parks. That I believe is a way to go toward getting to that 1 percent. We can't do it in the next four years. I hope we can do it in the next eight. But I'm not going to promise it now because it wouldn't be right.

Q. Ms. Fields.

FIELDS. I'm realistic for the parks advocates to ask each one of us to make a commitment to work toward this funding. And because of my commitment in terms of funding parks and make sure that the resources are there, it is something that I believe in and I will certainly work toward making that happen. And I'm sorry that you guys don't agree.

Q. You are alone in the 1 percent apparently. We would ask for the next round of this next question, to get everything in, please limit it - I'm sorry - to 20 seconds. And it's for Dave Evans to Mr. Weiner.

Q. Mr. Weiner, civil rights advocates have asked us during this campaign the issue of discrimination in civil rights has not been talked about a lot. For example, they point to the lawsuit over the Fire Department being 91 percent white. Why has this not been an issue in this campaign?

WEINER. Well, frankly, I believe civil rights has been something of an issue because of the rights of so many people trying to achieve gay marriage, something that I support and supported since my campaign in 1998. I agree with you, we haven't had that kind of a big high-minded debate in this city and we should have it. Too much has been focused on - what's been focused to your polls and who believes what about whom. We should use elections as a chance to have a full-throated debate about the difference in Democrats and Republicans. Republicans like Mike Bloomberg have done everything to stand in the way; Democrats like all of us - some of us - are the living -

Q. Thank you.

WEINER. - embodiment of it, have done everything to advance it.

Q. Thank you, Congressman. Mr. Ferrer.

FERRER. That's right. In the Fire Department that inequity exists not only among the ranks of firefighters but all the way up levels of the department. It's wrong. In fact, it was the very first topic I discussed with Mayor-elect Bloomberg in 2001. Showing a picture in The Times and saying, What's wrong with this picture. We have to make every department of our city reflect the entirety of this city.

Q. O.K. Thank you. Ms. Fields.

FIELDS. I have talked about it. As a matter of fact, I joined firefighters last week at a press conference on the steps of City Hall to talk about the unfairness and the inequities. I have talked about health care disparities that exist in communities primarily of color. I have talked about the disparities with respect to women and men with contracts, making sure that more women and more people of color get contracts for the city.

Q. Thank you, Ms. Fields. Thank you. Mr. Miller.

MILLER. Well this is something I haven't just talked about during this campaign, it's something I've done something about over the last four years. I passed the first racial profiling ban in the history of our country for a municipality - legislation that actually the former borough president worked on originally. I passed legislation over the mayor's veto to provide that all New Yorkers regardless of their sexual orientation should be able to access health benefits. I've spent the last four years working on this and that's how you know that over the next four years I'll remain committed to it.

Q. Thank you, Mr. Miller. Before we get to the closing arguments, I do have a question about public transportation. I'd like a very brief answer, we only have about 30 seconds for total. I'm going to start with Ms. Fields. How often do you take public transportation around the city per week?

FIELDS. Not per week, but probably twice a month.

Q. O.K., Mr. Miller.

MILLER. Yeah, I've been riding subways all my life, but as speaker of the Council I end up taking the subways once or twice a week.

Q. O.K., Mr. WEINER.

WEINER. About once or twice a week; the other times I'm in my hybrid car.

Q. O.K.

MILLER. Showoff.

Q. Mr. Ferrer.

FERRER. Used to take it every day. Now I take it about five or six times a week.

Q. O.K. Thank you all candidates. We are now going to give each of the candidates one minute to make a closing statement. The order of the closing, like all of this, was drawn and conceived randomly. Mr. Weiner is first. You have 60 seconds, sir.

WEINER. Well thank you very much. You know, I grew up in New York, not a political family, a middle-class family in Brooklyn. My mother was a schoolteacher for 31 years. Went to work for Sen. Chuck Schumer, my mentor, before I had the honor of serving in Congress.

I have a different approach than some of my colleagues in this race. I believe we as Democrats don't deserve to win after losing three straight municipal elections, two gut-wrenching presidential elections, unless we start to talk about real ideas to address what Democrats and frankly all New Yorkers are thinking.

One, we need to reduce taxes on those - in the middle class on those who are striving to make it there. If you make less than $150,000 a year I'm going to give you a 10 percent tax cut.

But I pay for it as well by making the tax code more progressive, a new seven tax bracket on those that make more than a million dollars a year. And we're also going to cut waste - at least 5 percent every year. With the money left over we're going to honor the teachers in our city by giving them a raise. We're going to do what we can to provide health insurance for the 1.8 million New Yorkers.

These are the ideas that are at my Web site: anthonyweiner.com. And I hope you take a look at it and take a look at all four of us. Any of the three on this stage, including myself, would be better than this mayor. Please get out and vote.

Q. Thank you, Mr. Weiner. Mr. Ferrer, you're next.

FERRER. Well, I grew up in the South Bronx in a five-story walkup raised by my mother and grandmother. Every opportunity I got in life - the reason I'm here tonight at this debate is because of Democratic policies they successfully pursued. The reason I'm a Democrat is to pass on opportunities to the next generation of New Yorkers. Now to those who argue that the Democratic Party somehow has to reinvent itself to become more popular, to them I say they're dead wrong. Democrats always stand up for opportunity, for fairness, for hope. That's what Democrats do. Democrats get serious about affordable homes; serious about improving education so we have schools that represent equity and excellence in every neighborhood; serious about oncoming poverty in too many of our neighborhoods for too many New Yorkers; serious about chronic unemployment. Look, that's what we're not getting from Mike Bloomberg. That's why I'm running to replace him: to make this city work better for every New Yorker. For me that's more than a slogan; it's a cause I have fought for all my life. It's a cause still worth fighting for. That's why I'm running for mayor.

Q. Thank you, Mr. Ferrer. Mr. Miller.

MILLER. You know, Bill, I've heard some people suggest that it doesn't matter who wins the Democratic nomination in this election. And I would ask them to talk to the parents who left school today that I spoke with whose kids are in fourth-grade classes with 31 kids in them. It matters. And if you think it matters, then when you go to the polls on Tuesday, I ask you to stand with me. I've stood up for New Yorkers for the past four years - stopping this mayor over and over again when he was trying to do the wrong thing and standing up for our principles and our values. And now we have a chance to elect a mayor who's going to do the right thing right from Day 1. We need to reduce class sizes so we can really improve our kids' education; give teachers a competitive contract so that we can retain them. We need to make sure we preserve and create affordable housing because families are struggling to be able to put a roof over their heads. We need to make sure we cut taxes for small businesses so we can create growth. We need to give renters a tax credit so they can afford to stay in the city. And we've got to fix our subways so that our blood pressure doesn't go through the roof. If you give me the chance to be that mayor, I promise you I'll work every day to transform this city into a better place.

Q. Thank you, Mr. Miller. Ms. Fields, you have the last word tonight.

FIELDS. Indeed we have some real challenges in this city. Not only affordable housing, jobs, the need to provide quality education for all of our children, but also to provide opportunities for seniors to grow old with dignity and independence. We need a mayor who cares. We need a mayor who will bring the right kind of experience and background in order to address these challenges on behalf of the people of the City of New York. My experience is as a civil rights activist, community leader, social worker and elected official. I will bring all of those experiences to work on behalf of the people of the City of New York. I will make this the best city in which to raise a child, to live, to work and to grow old with dignity and independence. It matters on Tuesday, the 13th. Come out, vote. It is your obligation, it is your responsibility because this city needs to move in a different direction.

Q. Ms. Fields, thank you. And on that note, that will end tonight's Democratic mayoral debate - the last debate between these candidates before next Tuesday's primary election. We do hope sincerely, and this is the goal, that we have shed some light on this very important election. Is it important to the candidates? Of course it is. It's very important of course also to the eight million people who live in New York City. If you'd like more information on the primary election on Tuesday you can call the League of Women Voters of the City of New York, 212-725-3541 on your screen right there. You could also go to their Web site, www.lwvnyc.org.

We'd also like to thank the candidates for being articulate and for sticking to the time limits: Fernando Ferrer, Anthony Weiner, Gifford Miller and C. Virginia Fields. Thank you for tonight's debate and for an interesting campaign and your time devoted to it.

Good to be with you.

Q. And our panel, thank you our panel: Denisse Oller from Univision, Errol Lewis from The Daily News and my colleague from Eyewitness News, our political reporter, Dave Evans.

I'm Bill Ritter. And for all of us here tonight, for all of us here at Channel 7, thank you for watching. We hope you've been informed. Please, remember to vote next Tuesday. Good evening.

 

Get The Picture, Governor?


Daily News (New York)

June 24, 2005 Friday

SPORTS FINAL EDITION<br? SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 48
HEADLINE: GET THE PICTURE, GOVERNOR?

We have nothing against silly, self-important, half-baked pieces of "political art" per se. If someone of the "political artist" persuasion chooses to believe that a drawing of a jetliner dive-bombing a naked, spread-legged woman constitutes a sagacious 9/11 statement - "Homeland Security," this specimen is titled - then fine, draw away, and let the product freely hang in whatever private gallery chooses to display the thing, and let all who would admire it come around and do so all they please.

But not at Ground Zero..

Works such as "Homeland Security" belong nowhere near the sobering pit where the twin towers stood, but the prospect of such a sacrilege arises because Gov. Pataki and his lower Manhattan minions have given space there to a SoHo art gallery called The Drawing Center. What were they thinking? Did they even take two minutes to glance through The Drawing Center's catalogue, which, besides "Homeland Security," also features such artistic creations as: .

. The infamous hooded Abu Ghraib figure, the wires falling from his wrists to arrange themselves into the word "Liberty." .

. A connect-the-dots organizational chart fancifully linking George W. Bush to Osama Bin Laden and former Texas Gov. John Connally and some oilman here and some financier there. .

And so on and so forth. In short, it's plain as day that The Drawing Center does not bring to the downtown planning a single-minded respect for the memories of the dead - which is, after all, the point of a Ground Zero memorial, we would think. .

Need more evidence? Try this on, Governor. The following wackobabble, co-authored by The Drawing Center's executive director, is from an introduction to an exhibit staged two years ago: .

"Mobilizing the nation by portraying it as a guardian of family and home, the U.S. government has embarked on a campaign to protect the innocent through the benevolent 'liberation' of 'evil' nations." .

And: "Governmental crusades, such as the recent 'Patriot Act,' that impinge on our private lives through increased surveillance underscore that the threat lies within as well." .

And: "Global capitalism levels out difference, effectively eliminating barriers while producing abstract space. It works similarly to the paradigm of the nation-stage, which demands an assimilation of difference, suggestive of a death of otherness in some current circles of thought." .

There's a place in the world for informed political dissent. For that matter, there's a place for uninformed dissent. There's even a place for deep thinkers who can say things like "a death of otherness" with straight faces. But Ground Zero isn't that place. And The Drawing Center doesn't belong there. .

The group is one of four cultural organizations that were designated for places on the 16-acre site in the thinking that they would bring life to the area. The plans put The Drawing Center at the heart of the site, in a building that would also be occupied by the International Freedom Center, a museum designed to commemorate man's march toward liberty. .

Some 9/11 families are urging Pataki to remove the Freedom Center from Ground Zero, arguing that it's destined to become a venue for contentious political debate. We have pressed the Freedom Center's organizers to quickly clarify how they intend to fulfill the mission of creating inspirational, appropriate exhibitions. Pending further information, and hopeful that they succeed, we've withheld judgment on whether that museum belongs in the memorial. .

We need no further information to reach a conclusion regarding The Drawing Center. The works it displays are already a matter of record. You've made a mistake, Governor. Fix it, please. Show these people the door.

 

Ballot Proposal (And Candidate Suggestions) 30 Years After Near-Bankruptcy


New York almost went bankrupt thirty years ago, they say, because neither the city’s politicians nor its business leaders squarely faced tough budget realities.

This year offers a sharp contrast. The five leading candidates for mayor have made tangible proposals to address the city’s future multi-billion-dollar annual deficits. And there was an unusually provocative and high level of discussion during the public hearings of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Charter Revision Commission, as the transcripts of those meetings should make clear.

In the end, the commission embraced just one relatively minor fiscal change to place on the ballot in November. It will be Question 4. At the same time, though, the commission’s August 2 final report has very useful sections devoted to issues that deserve future action

Referendum Question 4

When the Financial Emergency Act was enacted in the late 1970s, it was in response to the city’s 1975 fiscal crisis. The law, which strictly dictates city budget practices, is due to expire in 2008, and one question facing the charter commission was what parts of this state law should be transferred to the city charter.

The city has for more than 25 years followed very specific state rules about what kinds of information must be provided to the state and what budget-balancing goals must be achieved. It’s this information that fiscal monitors such as the city comptroller and the state deputy comptroller for New York City, as well as the city’s Independent Budget Office – all three representing the public interest -- use for their important budget reports.

Until 1986, the state had to approve the city’s budget before it could go into effect. Since then the city sets its budget without such approvals, but the state – through the governor-controlled Financial Control Board -- has remained a year-round monitor of the city budget, holding the power to demand budget information from the city. And should the city’s budget be out of balance by more than $100 million at fiscal year end, the Financial Control Board would re-instate a “control period” and again make the city budget subject to state approval.

The mayor, not surprisingly, thinks that after almost 25 years of balancing the budget every year, the city has earned the right to more independence. But there are at least two big cautions. One is the fear that mayors may start limiting access to information that the state required. This would keep the fiscal monitors – and the public – from fully understanding the fiscal picture.

The second caution is that future mayors might use their new independence to repeat some of the bad habits -- like borrowing money for operational expenses -- that precipitated the 1975 near-bankruptcy in the first place. In fact, in his July 2005 report on the city’s financial plan, the state deputy comptroller bluntly recommends that the Financial Emergency Act “should remain in effect indefinitely….The prospect of a control period provides the city with an added incentive to adopt its budget on time and to maintain fiscal discipline.”

So Question 4 will be far from the end of the story. As 2008 approaches, the state deputy comptroller will not be the only one likely to push for maintenance of the current state controls. As it stands, however, Question 4 on the ballot will dodge these cautions and simply require:

  • Preparation of a balanced budget and ending the year without a deficit
  • Maintenance of the current four-year financial plan and quarterly modifications
  • A general reserve of at least $100 million to cover shortfalls
  • More restrictions on short-term city borrowing
  • More conditions on the annual audit of city finances mandated by the charter

 

Issues Deferred

In its final report, the commission detailed three “Issues of Fiscal Stability for Future Consideration.”

The first is the old suggestion of a rainy day fund. Such a fund would set aside one year’s budget surplus for use, under specific circumstances, in future years. The topic, however, has yet to receive serious analysis.

As things stand now, the city must spend any surplus in the year of the surplus – which the city does by pre-paying expenses for the next year. The most recent criticism of this practice is the state deputy comptroller’s report, in which he points out that the city’s $3.5 billion surplus from fiscal year 2005 is the major part of some $4.6 billion in non-recurring (“one-shot”) revenues in the current 2006 budget. (One-shot revenues that exceed $1 billion have long been attacked by the state financial control board.) However, the commission found the topic too complex to tackle.

The second issue was to consider strengthening the link between local legislation and the budget – to pay the cost of any new law. Currently, the city charter requires that any local law contain a fiscal impact statement, but there is no requirement to pay for the impact.

The third issue, raised by several individuals and organizations, is increasing linkages between programs and the budget (and a suggestion of this writer, one of some 100 persons interviewed by the commission chair and senior staff). One of the commissioners described the current problem as “insufficient articulation of planning for programmatic priorities in the current process.” As the report says, the present charter does not preclude presenting a “program budget,” one that links specific program goals to specific dollars spent.

Unfortunately, the commission’s suggestion in this third area is tepid, urging interested organizations to work with the Office of Management and Budget to “resolve obstacles to a programmatic restatement” of budget information – a goal that OMB has shown no interest in over the past decade.

Accountability Deferred

Another section of the final commission report, “Agency Efficiency, Effectiveness and Accountability,” tells the story of the commission’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt to be “accountable about accountability.” This admirable goal was perhaps fatally dogged by the inherent contradictions in a commission named by the mayor and staffed by the mayor’s employees.

The commission itself -- the most representative and distinguished commission since the charter revision commissions in the late 1980s – seemed uncomfortable with the idea that a mayoral-dominated commission on public reporting would review and judge the effectiveness of some 33 charter-mandated reports that presumably provide information about government effectiveness.

To the credit of the commission and its staff, they amended the proposal in the face of widespread criticism. More to their credit, after further criticism, the commission abandoned the proposal altogether at its penultimate public meeting, on August 1.

The Candidates Progressive Revenue Proposals

While the interesting summer-long work of the charter revision commission had an air of abstract and esoteric musing about the city budget, mayoral candidates were slugging away at real budget decisions, as can be seen in Gotham Gazette’s Campaign 2005 coverage. With most discussions of federal and state politics dominated by tax cutting and diminished government spending, their focus on revenues is refreshing.

One way of looking at revenues in the mayoral campaign is to start with Mayor Bloomberg’s 18.5 percent increase in the city’s average property tax rate (approved by the City Council) in November 2002. In retrospect, two things are striking about that action. One, it was done quickly, in less than three weeks, with essentially no public debate; and second, so far that nearly $2 billion increase does not seem to have affected the mayor’s re-election prospects. It may be that tax increases carefully explained are more acceptable to residents than often assumed.

The mayor, of course, softened criticism of his property tax hike (and deflected attention from ancient inequities in the city’s property tax system) by giving homeowners an annual $400 rebate. Council Speaker Gifford Miller has countered with the interesting idea of a renter’s tax credit: currently renters pay a substantial part of their landlord’s property taxes in their rent, but get no rebate. Since the average renter makes less money than the average homeowner, this would have a progressive impact. Miller would also double the city’s earned-income-tax-credit, which would provide additional relief for lower-income workers.

Miller and Congressman Anthony Weiner would also keep or raise higher taxes for higher-income New Yorkers, another progressive move. For instance, the State Deputy Comptroller’s July report gives the latest estimate on the full-year (in fiscal 2007) loss of revenues from the expiring higher-income tax rates at the end of this calendar year: $600 million.

Former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer has proposed another progressive tax to raise $1 billion for education, a stock transfer tax, at a much smaller rate than the transfer tax that was eliminated in 1981.

With the exception of the renter’s tax credit, all of these progressive suggestions have been in place at one time or another. Elected officials, however, have rarely stuck with them, content to increase or lower taxes with a shifting political climate. They generally increase taxes, as Mayor Bloomberg did in November 2002, only when forced to. Thus the several months of open discussion about all of these tax options is a welcome phenomenon, one that might better address long-term budget stability than did the charter revision commission.

Glenn Pasanen, who teaches political science at Lehman College, has been in charge of Gotham Gazette's finance topic page since 2001. 

Key Endorsements: Fernando Ferrer


The following is a list of endorsements for Fernando Ferrer for the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City from newspapers, civic groups, unions and other labor organizations and politicians. It was culled largely from his Web site, but also from newspaper accounts and Internet searches. This is not intended to be comprehensive. It is also a work in progress. If you know of any additional endorsements, please email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

 

NEWPAPERS

Carib News

The New York Times
After ruling out Weiner and Fields, the Times editorial said: "Gifford Miller, the City Council speaker, and Fernando Ferrer, the former Bronx borough president, are the strongest contenders, but their qualifications are very different. Mr. Miller has been more forceful in the current campaign, but then, inanimate objects have been as dynamic as Mr. Ferrer, who made a few gaffes early on and then retreated into a cocoon of sound bites. Both men have a wide understanding of the city's problems, but you would never know it from listening to Mr. Ferrer mechanically repeat the same meaningless catchphrases.

"Mr. Ferrer, however, has demonstrated a willingness to treat the financial challenges facing the city as something more than an invitation to dodge the issue. We disagree with his proposal for a temporary tax on stock trades to finance education, but we appreciate the fact that he is, at least, willing to take the heat for a hard choice....

"When it comes to experience, Mr. Miller has a generally good, if spotty, record in his current job. Mr. Ferrer presided in the Bronx during the borough's greatest resurgence. Although other officials deserve much of the credit for the Bronx's comeback, Mr. Ferrer can count his work there as a considerable achievement. Mr. Ferrer has made his way in politics in a borough that has always been troubled by bossism, and issues of corruption and the waves of dubious political activity have sometimes washed close. The Times recently reported that a friend of Mr. Ferrer's, someone who was jailed for soliciting payoffs on behalf of a powerful state senator, had been overheard in wiretaps promising that contributions to Mr. Ferrer would be rewarded with government contracts. (A spokesman for the candidate said Mr. Ferrer had no knowledge of the calls, which occurred when he was borough president.)

"If Mr. Ferrer is going to be a decent candidate in the fall, he's going to have to start talking like the intelligent public servant he used to be. Mr. Miller, on the other hand, would have to learn how to resist the temptation to take ethical shortcuts just because money is tight. If we're going to make a leap of faith, we prefer to do it with Mr. Ferrer. He gets our endorsement in the Democratic primary."

El Diario
Fernando Ferrer has the ability to energize and inspire us, and to remind us that the prosperity that is being enjoyed by some New Yorkers must be available to all New Yorkers. Ferrer has the experience and the track record to get things done. As a Puerto Rican in a city that is 27 percent Hispanic and growing, he represents the city's present and its future. For all these reasons we endorse Fernando Ferrer for the Democratic nomination for Mayor.

CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS

ACORN
(The New York branch of the national community action group) "We believe in Freddy Ferrer because he believes in our people. He has stood with us on housing, on education and for living wage jobs. He understands us. We are fighters - and so is Freddy Ferrer," said Bertha Lewis, executive director of New York ACORN. "We look forward to working shoulder to shoulder with Freddy, door-to-door in neighborhoods across our city.

UNIONS AND OTHER LABOR GROUPS

100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care

Comunication Workers of America
Represents workers in a variety of fields including telecommunications, health care, printing, manufacturing, higher education and government

Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA), Local 1000 of AFSCME
State's largest state employees union, representing correction, social service, health care and other workers

Organization of Staff Analysts
Represents some professional workers in more than 50 city agencies

Transit Workers Union

Principals
(Council of School Supervisors and Administrators)

NYPD Guardians
An African-American organization within the police department that works to recruit, hire and promote more black in the department and to combat police brutality.

POLITICIANS

City Comptroller William Thompson
"[Ferrer] understands the challenges many New Yorkers face because he has lived them. That is why he is fighting to build a city where every New Yorker has access to hope and opportunity - that includes the opportunity to get a good job and earn a living wage, the opportunity to live in housing that an average family can afford, and the opportunity for all of our children to gain equal access to the benefits of an excellent education."

Former presidential candidate Al Sharpton, who waited to make this endorsement until two days before the primary. "I wanted to support someone that I felt was strong enough to face a 9/11 attack but also compassionate enough to make sure poor people wouldn't suffer if we had a natural disaster like Katrina," he said. "I'm still very, very disappointed with Freddy's remarks on [Amadou] Diallo."

Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion

Former Manhattan Borough President - and former Democratic mayoral candidate Ruth Messinger

Representative Joe Crowley

Representative Gregory Meeks

Representative Major Owens

Representative Jose Serrano

Representative Edolphus Towns

Representative Nydia Velazquez
"Freddy Ferrer's track record is extraordinary from 66,000 units of affordable housing in the Bronx, to helping create the Civilian Complaint Review Board, to championing a law banning racial profiling, he has delivered real results to New Yorkers throughout his career."

Former Representative - and Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro

State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer

Former State Comptroller Carl McCall

State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver

State Senate Minority Leader David Paterson

State Senator Efrain Gonzalez

State Senator Jeffrey Klein

State Senator Carl Kruger

State Senator Velmanette Montgomery

State Senator Kevin Parker

State Senator Jose Serrano

State Senator John Sabini

State Assemblymember Carmen Arroyo

StateAssemblymember Michael Benedetto

State Assemblymember James Brennan

State Assemblymember Luis Diaz

State Assembylmembet Ruben Diaz Jr.

StateAssemblymemberAdriano Espaillat

StateAssemblymember Deborah Glick
"Freddy's dedication to progressive principals is not just a matter of lip-service. His record reflects a consistent commitment of putting his words into action. I remember being quite impressed when, in the mid-1980s as a young, thirty-something Latino Councilmember from the Bronx, Freddy showed great courage and dedication to civil rights for everyone when he cast a crucial vote that moved the Gay Rights Bill out of committee and on to eventual adoption by the full City Council. More recently, I was impressed by Freddy's repeated efforts, along with NARAL, to reach out to the Latino community on the issue of choice."

State Assemblymember Roger Green

StateAssemblymember Carl Heastie

StateAssemblymember Ivan Lafayette

State Assemblymember John Lavelle

State Assemblymember Jimmy Meng

State Assemblymember Cathy Nolan

State Assemblymember Felix Oritz

StateAssemblymember Jose Peralta

State Assemblymember Nick Perry

State Assemblymember Jose Rivera

StateAssemblymember Naomi Rivera

StateAssemblymember Peter Rivera

State Assemblymember Steven Sanders

State Assemblymember Darryl Towns

City Councilmember Hiram Monserrate

City Councilmember Carmen Arroyo

City Councilmember Maria Baez

City Councilmember Bill de Blasio

City Councilmember Lew Fidler

City Councilmember Letitia James

City Councilmember Miguel Martinez

City Councilmember Annabel Palma

City Councilmember Joel Rivera

 

9/11 Plus Four


Jim Dwyer, co-author of 102 Minutes: The Untold Story to Survive Inside the Twin Towers, joined Gotham Gazette's Reading NYC Book Club on August 31, 2005 for an online discussion about 9/11 four years after the attack on the Twin Towers.

Gotham Gazette: Four years after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, there is still much left to be resolved.

  • The country continues to debate the best national response to the threat of terrorism.
  • New Yorkers in particular are still figuring out how to build safe skyscrapers -- the Freedom Tower had to be redesigned earlier this year to respond to safety concerns -- and grappling with how to handle the possibility of a future attack.
  • There is a continuing debate over what cultural expressions are appropriate on the site -- the future of the cultural centers planned for Ground Zero is uncertain.
  • And the redevelopment of Ground Zero has slowed so much that many fear it will never happen.
  •  

    Even our picture of what went on in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 continues to shift over time. With us is Jim Dwyer, one of the authors of 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers, a book about that morning.

    Thank you for being with us, Mr. Dwyer.

    Jim Dwyer: Thanks for having me.

    FOUR YEARS LATER

    Gotham Gazette: On the fourth anniversary, why do you think so little connected to 9/11 has yet to be resolved?

    Jim Dwyer: Some of it hasn't been fully resolved because the public and the government were reluctant to ask probing questions in the months afterwards -- about national security, about emergency response, and for us here in NYC, about the safety of tall buildings.

    But then there is the question of the big hole where the trade center used to be and where 2,749 people died. And while people have complained about the leadership, it is not clear to me yet that the right solution has emerged, that we know what ought to be there. At least not yet.

    Gotham Gazette: Are we still too close to the event to be able to assess what would be best for the site?

    Jim Dwyer: That's how it looks to me.

    Gotham Gazette: Why not? It's been four years -- more time than it took World War II to be fought (as Fred Siegel said during our last book conversation)

    Jim Dwyer: We've actually fought two wars since the trade center fell.

    It took the better part of a year to get the site cleared. The bodies were still being identified. And people have been fighting about real estate in lower Manhattan for four centuries.

    Who knows how we're going to want to see that area four years from now, or 14? And I think it has taken people a while to build with an eye on our future selves, rather than the grieving, angry, distraught, lost, and numb selves in the time right after the loss.

    I guess I'm too ambivalent about what should be there myself to find fault with others for not knowing what to do. But I agree that it's high time something got started.

    A CHANGING HISTORY

    Gotham Gazette: Your book gives a pretty wrenching account of what people went through in the Twin Towers, which it is hard to imagine most people being able to handle a few years ago. How far have people come in terms of being prepared to deal with this story than they were previously?

    Jim Dwyer: I think they didn't handle it because no one told them what happened. When the survivors of the Titanic were brought to Chelsea Piers on the Carpathia, the chairman of a Senate committee was waiting for them with subpoenas. The morning after they landed, he began hearings at the Waldorf Astoria that lasted 18 days.

    All the famous lore and fact about the Titanic were established in those hearings -- the wrenching separations of families, the people floating away in the icy sea, the unanswered calls for help from the California.

    We encased the 9/11 events in a glaze of mythology. The mayor went to funerals and said the firefighters saved 25,000 people. Sometimes he said it was 50,000. He said that the firefighters knew what danger they were in and continued to rescue people. People like Fred Siegel wrote books declaring it a triumph of emergency management.

    None of that -- not a syllable -- is true.

    Meanwhile, in real life, here's what happened: the people who could get out rescued themselves. They walked down the stairs. They carried each other. They broke down doors. The firefighters came to help, but they were carrying 100 pounds of gear, and if the people in the building had to wait for them, they'd all have died.

    Gotham Gazette: You mention this in the book, actually, writing in the epilogue that "in the first telling of the story of the trade center rescue, civilians played little role, except as helpless victims who were saved by the police and firefighters"; your book portrays those in the towers as being much more active in their own escapes. Why had this story gone untold?

    Jim Dwyer: Because we needed heroes and "firefighters" was much catchier than "office workers." Because the firefighters made such sacrifices. Because what went on inside the towers was invisible, and fragmented. It took place across 110 floors, and two buildings -- that's 220 acres, and you couldn't see from one acre to the next, so you didn't know, for instance, that two ordinary guys in the north tower, Frank DeMartini and Pablo Ortiz, freed people on the 88th, 89th, 90th, 86th, 83rd and 78th floors. All of them would have been trapped had it not been for these two little-known men. It took us months to piece together their story - neither man escaped.

    Angai: Although the the firefighters might not have physically carried those that were trapped, didn't they still assist by directing those to the exit and clearing obstacles in the way?

    Jim Dwyer: The firefighters cleared exits in the final minutes, absolutely, and they also helped get the remaining people out when the first tower collapsed. Also very important in this same role were the trade center security guards, most of whom stood their ground to the end.

    STORIES OF SURVIVORS AND VICTIMS

    Gotham Gazette: Over the course of your reporting, you've obviously come in contact with many people who have been deeply affected by both the 1993 and 2001 attacks on a personal level. Is the story of these two men the single one that sticks out? Are there any others that particularly affected you?

    Jim Dwyer: Many, many others. About 18 people escaped from above the crash zone in the south tower; each of them has a powerful story to tell.

    Gotham Gazette: Is there one in particular that comes to mind right now?

    Jim Dwyer: Tom Kelly, who worked on the towers as a young steamfitter, ran the one working elevator in that tower, and brought Chief Palmer up to the 40th floor.

    The efforts of Orio Palmer, a fire chief, and Tom Kelly, a firefighter, in the south tower, are especially striking. Chief Palmer got to the impact zone in the south tower in the final minutes.

    Robert Gabriel Martinez, a young security guard, was on the 78th floor of the south tower when Chief Palmer arrived there. That was a place of devastation -- a sky lobby where people had been waiting for express elevators when the second plane hit.

    We also sued the city and got a tape of Chief Palmer narrating his own ascent through the building. He actually picked up speed as he climbed -- you could time his transmissions and figure out how fast he was going.

    Then there's the story of Jan Demczur, the window-washer, who was trapped in an elevator in the north tower with five other men. He was in an express elevator, and when they pried open the doors, they were facing a sheetrock wall, because the elevator didn't stop at that floor. The men had one tool -- Jan's squeegee. And they used it to cut through the sheetrock, eventually hitting tiles in a bathroom, and kicked them out to get onto the 50th floor. They made it out of the building wtih minutes to spare.

    SENSITIVITY ABOUT DEPICTIONS OF 9/11

    Gotham Gazette: The stories you tell are very dramatic. Maybe that's one reason why 102 Minutes is being made into a movie. There are other 9/11 movies in the hopper as well. Has there been any reaction to these projects that it's turning something sacred into entertainment?

    Jim Dwyer: I don't know if 102 Minutes is going to be made into a movie. That's not up to me. But if it does get made, I'm hoping that it will have the fidelity to facts of Apollo 13.

    Jocelyn_Rudell: Do you think that the contempt many feel for the financial sector and its employees (or at least lack of admiration for it) compound the lack of attention to stories from people other than firefighters and police? (even though it's a key part of NYC's identity and wellbeing)

    Jim Dwyer:I don't think people's feelings about the financial sector really caused the blackout of information about what happened in the towers. Having done the research to figure out what did happen, I can tell you it is an extremely arduous, complicated puzzle, and I think that, more than any feelings about the financial sector, probably made it easy to default to the firefighters and police as the only heroes of the day.

    Gotham Gazette: There's a lot of sensitivity about depictions of 9/11. Artists, news organizations and politicians have all at times been accused of being insensitive to the attacks or outright exploiting what some see as sacred. During the Republican National Convention, the president was shamed out of even visiting the site; today, some families of the attack's victims are trying to limit what the cultural institutions on the site can display. Have you run into this and what do you think explains it?

    Jim Dwyer: People don't want to see this event manipulated for political or commercial gain. I haven't really run into it with regard to 102 Minutes.

    WHAT WENT WRONG?

    Gotham Gazette: You've been covering this story, in a sense, for more than a decade. You were also a co-author of Two Seconds Under The World, about the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. You now write about it for the NY Times, which recently got a judge to release more oral histories on the day of 9/11. So, the big question -- could 9/11 have been avoided, or, if not avoided, minimized? In other words -- what went wrong?

    Jim Dwyer: Islamic fundamentalists killed Meir Kahane in November 1990. The same group tried to knock over the trade center in February 1993.

    The mastermind of the 93 plot then wanted to blow up jets all over the world.

    In 1998, bin Laden blew up two American embassies in Africa and announced that no American was safe.

    In 2000, members of his outfit attacked the USS Cole.

    In 2001, bin Laden's crowd killed 2,749 people in NYC, more in Washington and in Shanksbille, Pa.

    We did not pay enough attention to this threat, not to make a "duh" remark.

    We should not ignore what was exposed about building safety at the trade center. It could be relevant to next catastrophe, whether it is the doing of Mother Nature or some malignant hands. More than 1,000 people survived the plane crashes at the trade center, but could not get out of the buildings because there were so few exits. The towers were the first major skyscrapers built under a code that permitted building owners to cut their exits in half, creating more rentable space.

    Gotham Gazette: Much of what you have written in the Times since the publication of your book has been about the debate over building code reform which, you write "hardly makes for gripping drama." Has 9/11 managed to create a constituency for building code reform that didn’t exist previously? Has anything changed?

    Jim Dwyer: Not to pay attention to that is like ignoring the lifeboat count on the Titanic: the boats only had space for half the passengers. As for change -- some elements of the building code have been changed, but the industry apparently has persuaded the city that it does not need to expand the amount of exit space. One of the most interesting points is that when you don't have elevators in a building, it takes hours for rescuers to reach people on high floors. A federal agency recently issued a 10,000 page report on the trade center, and made calls for changes in national building codes. But building codes don't see any difference in risk between a person on the eighth floor or the 108th. There are no more exits for the twin towers than any ten story building -- no more fire resistance, no more impact resistance, no required refuges.

    Gotham Gazette: Have we missed the chance to learn from the mistakes of 9/11?

    Jim Dwyer: There's always another chance.

    RELATED
    Gotham Gazette's Rebuilding NYC, a subsite that offered the most comprehensive coverage of the rebuilding effort from September 11, 2001 to September 11, 2004.

    Three Years Of Rebuilding (September 6, 2004)

    Future book club events at http://www.gothamgazette.com/books

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Endorsements Explained


    Campaign 2005 Mayoral Endorsements

    In the fall of 2001, the New York Times endorsed Democrat Mark Green for mayor, saying he has "demonstrated a deep understanding of the issues, a sensible approach to public policy, and the soul of a fighter." Unions representing teachers, health care workers and civil servants eventually lined up behind Green's candidacy, as did 50 members of the State Assembly, Newsday and Crain's. And to cap it off just a few days before the election, former President Bill Clinton stumped across Harlem with Green at his side.

    But on Election Day, none of that mattered. Neither did Green's lengthy political experience or the overwhelming political advantage Democrats have in the city. Republican Michael Bloomberg won anyway - due largely, most experts agree, to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's endorsement. Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, Giuliani had turned "from a moderately popular mayor into a demigod," Mark Mellman, a polling consultant for Green, said after the election. "That demigod status enabled him to be effective in a wonderful endorsement commercial," which Bloomberg had the money to air over and over and over again.

    Four years later, candidates seeking endorsements can learn a number of lessons from the 2001 campaign. Some endorsements matter more than others; a campaign's use of an endorsement can be as important as the endorsement itself; the endorsements you do not get may matter as much as the ones you do.

    But, despite that, candidates this year are once again courting newspaper editorial boards, issue groups, union leaders and politicians, all in the hopes of gaining a nod they can trumpet on flyers, in ads and on the steps of City Hall. Winning the endorsement can take time and energy - and force candidates into deals that go against their own best judgment, or against the best interests of the city, and that voters might not know about.

    There is ample evidence that most endorsements do not matter at all.

    Candidates pursue them anyway, just in case. Some bring press coverage, which candidates always welcome. And this year, with turnout likely to be small, they reason, who knows what will sway the few votes that could make a difference?

    Among the mayoral candidates this year, Bloomberg and Democrats Fernando Ferrer and Gifford Miller lead in endorsements. On their Web sites, both the Democrats have long lists of endorsements, mostly from politicians largely unknown outside their immediate communities. Most are specifically for the Democratic primary on September 13th. If none of the Democratic candidates win 40 percent of the vote, and a runoff is secheduled for September 27th, the endorsers may change sides, as they may do once again for the General Election in November.

    NEWSPAPERS

    Newspapers offer endorsements -- not just the major English-language metropolitan dailies, but a wide range of the hundreds of community and ethnic newspapers in the city, and not just for mayor but other citywide and borough offices, City Council and judgeship races as well.

    Ferrer snatched the gold ring of a New York Times endorsement in the Democratic primary over Labor Day weekend, though it was hardly a ringing one, emphasizing less what was positive about him than what was negative about his Democratic rivals: "If we're going to make a leap of faith, we prefer to do it with Mr. Ferrer."

    Nationally, many experts dismiss the value of editorial endorsements. "Editorial endorsements are dinosaurs. The vast majority of the public don't read editorials," Larry Sabato, head of the university of Virginia's Center for Politics, told a reporter during the 2004 presidential race (in which, by the way, John Kerry got more endorsements than George W. Bush).

    On a local level, said John Mollenkopf, professor of political science at the CUNY Graduate Center, "newspaper editorials mostly help when they confirm what someone is thinking of doing anyway."

    An exception may be the New York Times, in races "in affluent, Times-reading neighborhoods," as the New York Observer put it recently in an article on the power of the Times's endorsements, which singled out a Times editorial board member, Carolyn Curiel, who leads the board’s subcommittee on local politics, and whose "blessing can mean the difference between winning and losing local elections, especially in Manhattan." When the Times endorsed Scott Stringer for Manhattan borough president, Ben Smith of the Observer wrote: "The dozen or so candidates will all be gunning for Stringer now, but they've got a tough job. This race is the classic case of New York Times power: it's too small a job for ordinary people to pay much attention, but too big an electorate for a candidate to win based on energy, shaken hands, and a personal network alone." The Times endorsement of Leslie Crocker Snyder, some say, will change the dynamic in her challenge of longtime Manhattan incumbent district attorney Robert Morgenthau.

    And on Staten Island, the Advance's endorsements carry great weight, according to Richard Flanagan, a political science professor at the College of Staten Island.

    CIVIC GROUPS AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS

    Groups representing various causes and positions also look at candidates' positions on issues of concern to that group — be it good government, gay rights, abortion rights or the environment. Some of these groups carefully research the candidates, ask them to fill out questionnaires, interview them. Others take a less methodical approach.

    Bloomberg has fared well with these organizations this year, garnering endorsements from groups that back causes generally associated with Democrats, such as abortion rights. Miller has picked up several such endorsements. The community group ACORN endorsed Ferrer. Fields has won support from a few women's groups, but also received the "preference" of Citizens Union, the good government group affiliated with Citizens Union Foundation, which publishes Gotham Gazette.

    Generally, the backing of issue groups tends chiefly to underscore - for better or worse - the candidates' stand on a particular set of issues. In a study (.pdf) of endorsements in gubernatorial elections in six states (not including New York), Rachael Cobb, a political scientist at MIT, found, "Groups often demand commitments from candidates in exchange for an endorsement."

    LABOR UNIONS

    For decades, nationally and locally, unions provided key support for Democratic candidates. But this year, Bloomberg, a billionaire and nominal Republican who in the past has had his house picketed by some city workers, has racked up a number of union endorsements, including that of District Council 37, the largest union representing city employees. According to the National Journal's "Hotline," this was the first time the union, which backed Ferrer four years ago, ever made a general election endorsement before the primary. Bloomberg aides told reporters the union imprimatur could help deflect accusations that Bloomberg is out of touch with working New Yorkers. Perhaps more importantly it will deprive Ferrer - or any other Democrat — of ground troops to get out the vote on Election Day.

    Other unions, including a number of those representing construction workers, have joined District Council 37 in endorsing the mayor. A smattering of unions have gone to each of the Democrats, except for Fields.

    The United Federation of Teachers has sat out the race so far. Some cynics attribute this to the fact that the teachers, who have been working without a contract, hope to win a new agreement with the city before the election. Others say that after a losing streak in the 2001 election -- when the union backed unsuccessful candidates in the primary, runoff and general elections -- it makes sense for it to lie low. The Working Families Party, which has ties to many unions, also has not yet endorsed.

    While the Working Families Party seems to have some clout, almost everyone agrees that traditional union backing matters less than it once did. "Union endorsements have a significant impact on what members do, [but] less on their families and others," said Mollenkopf.

    And union endorsements, like others, can have a price. In 2002, Republican Governor George Pataki won the endorsement of District 1199, the large and powerful union representing health-care workers. At the same time, Pataki gave the health-care workers a raise, an increase that many of his critics said the state could not afford.

    POLITICIANS

    For much of the spring and into the summer, politicians, many fairly obscure, flocked to the steps of City Hall or issued press releases announcing their support for a candidate in the mayor's race - most for Miller or Ferrer.

    Few seemed likely to have much of an impact, although people who follow such things sought to find significance in some. Would, for example, the endorsements of a few Bronx politicians for Anthony Weiner, including U.S. Representative Eliot Engel, indicate a major shift of support to Weiner in Ferrer's home borough of the Bronx?

    And a couple intrigued reporters, if not voters, by running counter to type. For instance, look at former U.S. Representative Geraldine Ferraro's support for Ferrer. Although Joseph Mercurio, then a consultant to the Fields campaign, dismissed Ferraro's importance -- "I had to spend a few minutes remembering who she was," he told the Times -- it did not escape notice that the first woman to run on a major party's presidential ticket had chosen to endorse a man, rather than the person seeking to become New York's first woman mayor.

    An endorsement by an individual often does more for the endorser than the endorsee. This may explain why so many endorsement statements seem to be more about the person making the endorsement than the one receiving it.

    Take, for example, U.S. Representative Joseph Crowley's endorsement of Ferrer. "I've known Freddy Ferrer for 20 years, during which we fought side by side on issues, from health care to housing, issues that matter to New Yorkers," Crowley said. "I work every day in Washington fighting the Republican agenda of Bush, Pataki, and Bloomberg, fighting for New Yorkers' security, access to health care, and to make New York accessible and livable for average New Yorkers, not just the rich. I know that Freddy is the only candidate who really engages with these issues."

    Of course, endorsements can backfire for endorsers too. Democrats in the city have been trying to use Bloomberg's endorsement of President George W. Bush against the mayor.

    Sometimes endorsements can reflect one politician's honest enthusiasm for a colleague. But often they result from horse-trading: Back me, and I'll back you, give you a job in my administration or push your favorite cause.

    Many political insiders in Brooklyn were intrigued by Councilmember David Yassky's endorsement of State Senator John Sampson for Brooklyn district attorney. While Yassky is often viewed as a reformer, Sampson has the unofficial support of indicted Brooklyn Democratic Party leader Clarence Norman, a nemesis of most reformers. On the other hand Yassky, who is white, is mulling a run for Congress in a largely black district and could profit from an affiliation with a black politician like Sampson.

    "If Yassky endorsed Sampson, whether Sampson wins or loses, one would think Yassky would have some claim on Sampson's endorsement," Baruch College Professor Douglas Muzzio told the Daily News. "Clearly, there's a quid pro quo element to this."

    A 2003 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (in pdf format) people said endorsements had little effect on their vote. Asked whether they would be swayed by the endorsement of specific individuals, most people said no. In many cases, an endorsement could harm a candidate just as easily as help him. For example, three percent of those responding said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate backed by Tonight Show host Jay Leno, while 10 percent said Leno's endorsement would make them less likely to vote for a candidate. Bill Clinton had the biggest positive effect of any individual - 19 percent - but the exact same percentage said they would be deterred from voting for a candidate by Clinton's backing.

    In New York, Reverend Al Sharpton may have a similar effect. The 2001 election offers a convoluted case study of the complications Sharpton poses. As Ferrer and Green eagerly sought his support Sharpton remained "maddeningly neutral", inviting Green and Ferrer to vie for his support. Shortly before the primary, Sharpton finally endorsed Ferrer, prompting Ferrer partisans to announce a black-Latino coalition that, they said, would bring the Bronx borough president to victory.

    Others said the opposite would be true. "In welcoming a warm endorsement from the Rev. Al Sharpton, the controversial black leader, Mr. Ferrer may have scared away the vast bulk of Jewish voters who were once a core element in any big-city liberal coalition," Rachel Donadio wrote in the Forward.

    After Ferrer lost to Green in a runoff election marked by attempts by some Green supporters to tag Ferrer as a racially divisive politician, Sharpton made his displeasure with Green known and sat out the general election. Some say this contributed to Bloomberg's narrow victory in November.

    For better or worse, Sharpton has not endorsed anyone so far this year, although when the primary was less than two weeks away, the New York Times reported that he and Dennis Rivera, president of the District 1199 union, were weighing a joint endorsement of Ferrer.

    But most endorsements do not involve anybody with such potential influence. They come from members of the state legislature, district leaders or council members, and their value is questionable. "Most people don't care very much about which City Council members are going to back Gifford Miller or whoever," Mollenkopf told the New York Observer.

    Endorsements can "serve as proxies for someone's character," Flanagan said, noting they can make a difference, particularly in races where turnout is small.

    Candidates also seek out celebrity endorsements, although it is unclear whether Madonna's support for Wesley Clarke won the former general any votes in the 2004 presidential race. But celebrities can help with fundraising. John Kerry capitalized on his support from Bruce Springsteen and other singers to have them hold concerts raising money for his campaign. And locally, Manhattan borough president candidate Brian Ellner has had prominent people in the fashion industry, including Diane von Furstenberg, raise funds for his campaign.

    But every once in a while, someone comes around whose endorsement unquestionably makes a difference. Giuliani in 2001 was one. And, according to Flanagan, in 1961 when Manhattan liberals saw incumbent Mayor Robert Wagner as too close to the Tammany Hall Democratic machine, he was saved with the endorsement of former Senator Herbert Lehman.

    "That really made the difference for Wagner," Flanagan said. "Lehman was seen as having this connection with the New Deal" and so the liberals forgave Wagner his transgressions and elected him to a third term.

    But, said Flanagan, nothing similar is likely to happen this time around. "There is, he said, "no bigger-than-life political personality to point a finger and make someone anointed."

     



    Print Friendly and PDF

    Editor's Choice


    Gotham Gazette: New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
    New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
    Gotham Gazette: 
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
    New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
    Gotham Gazette: 
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
    Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
    Gotham Gazette: 
City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years