NEW YORK — Joe Lhota, the Republican mayoral candidate whose leadership of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has been credited with helping to stave off calamity to the city's subway system during Hurricane Sandy last year, is often considered a seasoned manager of large, untidy bureaucracies. It is a well-deserved reputation. He held positions in the Rudy Giuliani administration, including as budget director and deputy mayor of operations. He was MTA chief from 2011 to 2012. During an interview with the Gotham Gazette at his campaign office near Grand Central Terminal, he responded to questions on various public policy issues, from the budget to the Community Safety Act (which he called the "Community Un-Safety Act"). 

GG: The City Council and mayor recently approved a new city budget, so that seems like a good place to start. Do you think the so-called “budget dance” is a distraction from actual debate about budget priorities?

LHOTA: See, I look at the dance as starting in January. When the public talks about the dance, they are really just talking about what they think is what happens in regards to the executive budget in connection with member items, which is just a minor, minor piece, about $300 to $400 million dollars. And quite honestly, that budget dance starts at the beginning. The city charter, the lowercase “c” constitution of the city, lays out the process for the dance.

GG: So you’re not critical of the budget dance?

LHOTA: I’m not critical of the budget process at all.

GG: What do you think of the way that discretionary funding is distributed to City Council members for their district?

LHOTA: Some members, some people running for mayor have actually called for the end of Council member items. I'm not at that level yet. I think it … needs to be open and transparent.

GG: The city’s open data law is a national model. What would you do to make sure that the city continues to be at the forefront of the open government movement, and how would you get agencies to comply with the law?

LHOTA: Originally the MTA was saying we will develop the app and I said no. Let us put the data out there, let other people develop the app and, if you go into the store where you can buy the apps on your smartphone, there are about 12 or 13 different app providers that will provide you that same level of data because we have let it out there. The MTA is not in the business of creating apps. The MTA is in the business of moving people from point A to point B and knowing exactly where the trains are, let us tell the world where the trains are and let them decide how we do it. That is this same thing with city government we are going to do.

What amazes me is that there still is a long, long way to go for the city to be technologically at the cutting edge because we are not near the cutting edge; there are other municipalities around the county who are much more advanced than we are. I encourage you to look at a magazine called Government Technology, which I used to get when I was deputy mayor.

GG: What would you do as mayor to get agency heads to promote technology innovation?

LHOTA: That’s an even broader question than the specific one you asked. How would I go about making sure I hire commissioners who are technologically savvy? It is going to be a component … I will no doubt have different task forces for dealing with the health commissioner and this commissioner, and that commissioner. But they need to be more than just an expert in that area. They also need to show some technological savvy. It is going to be a key component in the selection of any commissioner.

The one thing I will tell you about technology, technology brings out in government the phrase I hate the most which is, "We have never done it that way before." You hear it a lot and you would hear it a lot and that's exactly what you don't want. Of course, you have never done it that way before. That is why it is called technology.

GG: Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Department of Education received considerable financial and professional support from the private sector. What role should the private sector — either business people or companies — play in financing, shaping or steering the DOE and its policies?

LHOTA: It is interesting, I talked a lot about charter schools and some people automatically assume charter schools are subsidized. There is one charter school program, Uncommon Schools, it is called, where the private sector contributions started and then after that there are no more contributions. All they use to fund that operation is the money they receive from the city of New York. I think it is a very, very good model.

I don't want to do anything to discourage the private sector from philanthropic efforts, we need to continue that.

GG: How much control should the next mayor have over the city’s subways and buses? Should the city wrestle control over mass transit from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority?

LHOTA: The transportation world in this city balkanized. It truly is. You have major roads in New York City that are controlled by the sate. For example, the FDR drive, is not a city road. It is a state road and the state repairs and upkeeps it. You have the MTA, which has the subways and buses and the bridges and tunnels.

What I have been calling for, just as an aside, is that the bridges and tunnels need to be given back to the mayor. They were taken away from the mayor in 1968 by the Legislature at the request of Gov. Rockefeller. The Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority still exists; it is a subsidiary of the MTA. I have called as a candidate to have the mayor take over the TBTA again because that way they can control the tolls over there because tolls are going up for the purposes of subsidizing things unrelated to the bridges and tunnels.

I think what I would like to do, that existed pre-Mike Bloomberg is the Mayor’s Office of Transportation. It was a coordinating body between all of them. In fact Janette Sadik-Khan was the head of the Mayor’s Office of Transportation during the Dinkins administration.

Their role was to make sure the city was heard at every level within every one of those agencies, so much so that the mayor’s representatives on the MTA board would meet with the Mayor’s Office of Transportation before committee meetings, before board meetings, and understand what the committee and what the city wanted from the MTA, and so it was very important.

There really needs to be an overall effort to try to get everyone to work together. That is one of the reasons I want the bridges and tunnels — by the way, the bridges and tunnels only connect the five boroughs. They don't go to Nassau County, they don't go to Westchester County. They only connect one borough to another borough. In one case in the Rockaways, [a bridge] connects Queens to Queens.

So the people who want to go from one side of the borough to the other side of the borough have to pay a toll. It is amazing how inequitable that seems to be. I don't know any other place in the country where it costs you money to go in the same county from one side to the other side. The mayor and City Council should control all of the bridges and tunnels in the five boroughs. Then there will be the beginning of less balkanization going on because then you will be able to control the ability to get from one borough to another borough and have a cohesive or at least a coherent transportation policy and strategy, maybe strategy then policy.

GG: The bridges and tunnels, but not the subways.

LHOTA: Quite honestly the subsidy that is provided by the state to mass transit is voluminous and we can't lose that subsidy. The subsidy right now on the transit ride — about 50 percent of the cost for your subway ride, and I'm going to be off by a couple percentages, but it's about 50-50. Fifty percent of the cost of the subway ride comes from the fare and the other 50 percent comes from the state in the form of subsidies.

But those subsidies are different things, they can take the form of every time you get in a cab, 50 cents goes to the MTA. Every time you have a new mortgage, you have something called the mortgage recording tax, that goes to the MTA. Again, even the subsidies’ streams are balkanized.

Maybe I know too much because I'm wonkish on this issue. But you can't just say the mayor should take over the MTA without realizing the fiscal implications. It needs to be a much more comprehensive answer than we are just going to take it over.

GG: Sam Schwartz, the well known transportation policy expert, has come out with a new plan for how tolls can be priced, which some describe as “congestion pricing” but he does not. What do you think of the plan?

LHOTA: No question it's creative, no question it's innovative, and it would require all of these disparate governmental functions to sit at a table together and agree, that I'm going to charge less, you're going to charge more, you're going to pay me back, it's a swapping of money. That's because these revenue streams that are created by the Port Authority, by the MTA, by the city, by the state, anyone else is involved in this area, they already have dedicated uses to where this is going, they're going to say why.

GG: Is that where your plan for bringing back the Mayor’s Office of Transportation would come into play?

LHOTA: The Mayor’s Office of Transportation would never be that powerful. It will at least be able to try to have a cohesive, coherent policy coming from the mayors office, coming from the direction of the city. Look, Sam's idea is innovative and creative, but at the same point I think it's extremely controversial and how it will ever pass I just don't know. By the way, the other people sitting at the table are the New York State Assembly and the New York State Senate. They have a very big role in this and, quite honestly, their role through the Public Authority's Control board has what I call Security Council rules, anybody who says no and the entire issue falls. It's not a majority rule situation … which is what you have the Security Council at the United Nations. All you need is one member of the Security Council to say “nyet,” like they used to say during the Cold War, and it fails. It doesn't go forward. Those are the same rules you have in Albany.

GG: What do you think of the two public safety bills that were recently approved by the City Council under what is being called the Community Safety Act? One law would establish an independent inspector general to monitor the New York Police Department. The other gives individuals the right to sue for racial profiling by the NYPD.

LHOTA: I'm against the inspector general. I also think the Community Safety Act is misnamed, I think it's the “Community Un-safety Act.” I think it's going to do everything to make it more difficult for the police to do their job, handcuffing them in many ways. And I believe it makes us unsafe.

I encourage everybody, I really mean this, and this gets overly wonky. There is a court case called Terry v. Ohio, 1988, written by Earl Warren, the chief justice at the time, which gives permission for cops, police officers to stop anyone if they believe that person is doing anything suspicious. This was passed by the Supreme Court eight to one. It has been the guidelines for the police department here and around the country.

GG: Do you think the mayor's tactic of using his wealth to influence the passage of the bill is a good strategy?

LHOTA: Let me turn it on its head and ask you a theoretical question. Do you think it's a good idea for the governor to go out and raise money for something called a Committee to Save New York, to lobby the state Legislature on his proposals?

This has been going on since the beginning of time in democracy. The distinction is that Mike Bloomberg may be the only one funding it … I have no idea what it is like to be a billionaire, to be able to do these types of things. This concept of elected officials going outside asking to raise money to affect the legislative process is nothing new; it's just a continuation of what has been going on in this country for quite sometime.

Did you see the most recent Abraham Lincoln movie?

What is amazing is that I saw it in a theatre in lower Manhattan and, after it was all over, there were these two little ladies right in front of me and they were probably 70s, 80s and a major portion of the film was the fact that Lincoln asked his Secretary of State, that at the time was leading the charge for the 13th Amendment, to go out and hire lobbyists to lobby the Congress to be able to get the bill passed and these two little old ladies said, "Do you believe it, they had lobbyists back then?” And it was just like, “Lady, there have been lobbyists since the beginning.” There were lobbyists in Rome at the Roman Senate; there were people that did that.

So that the idea Mike Bloomberg is doing something new and different, he's not. Is it fair? We're a country where you're allowed to express your opinion. It's a First Amendment right and you can do it with money.

— Intern Daniel Stein-Sayles contributed research assistance.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Eliot Spitzer thrived as attorney general. He investigated Wall Street and took down white-collar crooks with such zeal and willfulness he was called “The Sheriff of Wall Street.”

As governor, Spitzer used the same brazen — some would say bullying — tactics against obstinate legislators. Unwilling to compromise or negotiate, he found his efforts frustrated until he had squandered his immense political capital and resigned amid a prostitution scandal in 2008.

After a five-year hiatus from the political scene, Spitzer re-emerged this week to announce a run for the comptroller’s office.

While it’s impossible to forecast how Spitzer would act as comptroller, this much is clear: Spitzer in that office could prove especially troublesome for the next mayor. The comptroller’s office is tasked with monitoring city spending and analyzing contracts, and its work often rubs up against the mayor’s initiatives.

“I pity whoever is the next mayor because, with the powers of comptroller, this guy is going to be on the mayor’s case on a daily basis,” Baruch College political science professor Doug Muzzio said in an interview this week. “This office is a stepping stone and he’s gotta step on the mayor.”

Spitzer said on the Charlie Rose Show earlier today that he had changed. “I hope that I have become a bit more accepting of alternative views, desires to listen,” he said to guest host Mark Halperin. “A bit more reflective and empathetic.”

A look back at Spitzer’s record in Albany as both attorney general and governor shows that while he was able to build on his resume and attract attention, he also thrived on conflict and was unwilling or unable to compromise.

Those characteristics proved valuable when he was an attorney general and the goal was to prosecute cases; they became a liability when he was governor and when working with the Legislature required a more subtle form of negotiation.

Spitzer’s short tenure in the governor’s mansion from January 2007 to March 17, 2008, was typified by setbacks, personal conflict with legislators and an insistence that he get exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it. Threats were Spitzer’s favorite legislative tool.

Spitzer notoriously told Assemblyman Jim Tedisco after the lawmaker resisted his call to support him at a press conference on an ethics deal: “I’m a f---- steamroller and I will roll over you and anyone else! I’ve done more in three weeks than any governor in the history of the state.”

Spitzer’s failure to use the governor’s office was a surprise to many who saw Spitzer’s use of the attorney general’s office as masterful.

“During his time as AG he almost created a new paradigm for the attorney general’s office and for use of Martin Act,” Muzzio said, referring to the law that dates back to the 1920s and gives the attorney general expansive powers to investigate financial fraud — more power than almost any other public officer in the country.

Using the powers under the Act, Attorney General Spitzer battled securities fraud, brought cases against a myriad of investment banks like Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs, and charged Richard Grasso the chair of the NY Stock Exchange with violating his position as head of the then nonprofit by taking too large of a salary.

Those cases generated splashy headlines and earned Spitzer a reputation as a no-nonsense prosecutor in the people’s interest. He made sure the media had the pictures of alleged bad actors to splash all over front pages and evening news. That made Spitzer more than his share of enemies in the business world, but they were in no position to block his agenda. That situation changed when he became governor.

Spitzer only spent a year in office running the state. While he rammed through some reforms, he soon found himself repeatedly stymied by the leadership of powerful Republican state Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno.

Bruno blocked a number of issues that were important to Democrats, including Spitzer, for years on issues like same-sex marriage, Rockefeller Drug Law reform, and rent law reform. Bruno was all-powerful as head of the Senate and controlled his conference with great precision.

Spitzer and Bruno also battled over Spitzer’s budget, especially Spitzer’s plan to reduce healthcare spending. Bruno also steadfastly opposed Spitzer’s evangelical push for campaign finance reform.

In response, Spitzer poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a special election for a Republican-held senate seat through the state Democratic Party. The effort proved successful, and Spitzer began the trend that saw Democrats take the majority in the Senate in 2008. But Spitzer was not in power to reap the rewards.

Eventually, the Spitzer administration was caught using state police resources to try to track Bruno’s use of state aircraft for political ends. “Troopergate,” as the scandal came to be known, and the investigations that followed, bogged Spitzer down in a grueling battle with the Legislature and the press — until The New York Times reported that Spitzer had frequented high-priced prostitutes in other states and structured payments to avoid detection. Spitzer called a press conference in the city and, with his wife by his side, he resigned.

It was an especially shocking denouement given that Spitzer’s run for governor was less a political campaign and more a coronation. News outlets from around the world reported breathlessly about how the Sheriff of Wall Street would soon take to the governor’s mansion.

“He came in with such fanfare and hope that it made the plummet that much greater,” said Russ Haven of the New York Public Interest Research Group.

Haven said he saw Spitzer as being genuine in his push for real reform in Albany. Spitzer did launch a successful push for ethics reform and he noted that Spitzer’s ethics body — the Commission on Public Integrity — was a precursor to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s ethics panel.

But Haven said when the Troopergate scandal hit there were leaks from the CPI to the Spitzer administration. Those leaks and Spitzer’s insistence that he appoint the majority of members to the CPI have weighed heavy on legislators who are reluctant to allow anyone to police them. Spitzer’s meddling in ethics reform may have soured legislators on future proposals.

David Grandeau, who was ousted from his position as head of the state’s lobbying commission when Spitzer pushed through the new CPI, said that he feels Spitzer came to Albany with a “holier than thou attitude” and wanted Albany to do as he said, not do as he did.

He said Spitzer should not have the chance to return to politics. “I’m old fashioned,” Grandeau said. “Once you have squandered your public service you should go away. You have destroyed your honor and privilege.”

Grandeau also said he still thinks there are outstanding issues with Spitzer’s time in office that need to be dealt with, including whether the former governor violated the public officers law by using a state plane to travel to Washington, D.C., where he had arranged a meet-up at a hotel with a prostitute. “Let’s deal with that before he returns to public office,” he said.

So what about the comptroller’s office? Is it a good fit for Spitzer? Muzzio thinks so. “It suits his abilities like the attorney general’s office does,” he said. “The powers are delimited but it is an extremely powerful office.”

In other words, Spitzer would be his own boss again, would have subpoena power and have clear foils — Wall Street and the next mayor of New York City.

But he said that New Yorkers should get ready for war and gridlock between Spitzer and Weiner if both men are elected. “There is a potential thrilla in Manilla situation with Tyson biting off ears type of stuff,” he said, referring to the much-hyped third boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier and the boxing bout between Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield where Tyson bit off a bit of Holyfield’s ear.

“The reporters will love it, but for the rest of us it will mean gridlock,” Muzzio said.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Going to the polls this year could be like stepping back in time to another era when voters had to pull down on levers to make their ballots count.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation today allowing the New York City Board of Election to bring lever voting machines out of storage for the primary election and likely mayoral runoff. The city has been using electronic voting machines since 2010.

In an approval message, Cuomo called the plan a "poor solution" but also said not signing the bill could be worse.

"Preventing the use of lever voting machines through a veto could profoundly impact the integrity of this year’s elections," Cuomo wrote. He signed the law in private.

The measure also delays the runoff until Oct. 1, from Sept. 24.

Citing numbers from the latest Quinnipiac poll showing City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, former Congressman Anthony Weiner and former Comptroller Bill Thompson in a statistical three-way tie, BOE attorney Steve Richman defended the need for the lever machines at a public meeting earlier today.

"If the margin of victory is that close — and we can only look at the latest polls which show the three top candidates all within a point and a half of each other — that that's something to be done," Richman said before taking a jab at opponents to the BOE's lever solution. "I guess its more important to use, for some people, the scanners than to actually accurately count the votes."

Seven of the nine BOE commissioners approved a resolution on the plan to use the lever voting machines.

BOE Commissioner Naomi Barrera said the Legislature had "tied their hands," referring to efforts by the board to get state lawmakers to move the primary to an earlier date to allow for more time for a runoff.

"We have no choice but to go back in time," she added.

"Hopefully we're not in this position next time around," said Commissioner Simon Shamoun. "But going around the city and speaking to different groups and people — the support for lever machines among voters is overwhelming …I get almost nothing but positive reception."

Board President Frederic M. Umane and Secretary Gregory C. Soumas were absent and did not vote.

Good government groups had opposed bringing back the lever machines, arguing that deploying antiquated machinery would lead to confusion at the polls. They also argued that the lever machines were difficult for disabled voters to use.

They called the plan a "half-baked solution that seeks to absolve the responsibility of the Legislature in creating a crisis borne of their own failure to act."

But the BOE had argued that it would be unable to calculate the results from the Sept. 20 primary with its electronic voting machines and get them ready in time for a runoff election, initially arguing that the primary date be moved up to June. After failing to convince state lawmakers that the date change was necessary, the BOE asked the Legislature to empower them to use the lever voting machines.

The original Senate bill proposed by Republican Sen. Marty Golden, of Brooklyn, would have allowed for the use of the lever machines for any non-federal election. But good government groups said that could set a bad precedent that would allow for their return in the future under other circumstances. That provision was eventually killed.

The measure that was signed into law limits the use of the machines to the primary and runoff.

In his approval message, Cuomo listed a number of fixes the BOE could enact to prevent the need for lever voting machines Cuomo also suggested the BOE change it’s hand-count requirements and use high-speed scanners.

Elections Systems & Software, the maker of the city’s electronic voting machines, had offered the BOE faster electronic ballot counters for free if the BOE continued to use them for ballot printing or charge them $1.5 million for the counters outright.

The BOE rejected that offer, saying the counters would violate state law.

Sen. Adriano Espaillat, whose attempt at winning a seat to Congress was complicated by the messy handling of the 2012 election by the city BOE, slammed the approval of lever voting machines but said he agreed with Cuomo.

“I share Gov. Cuomo’s disappointment that the BOE pushed for this short-term tactic instead [of] pursuing meaningful reform. I stood with every good government group in New York City to oppose this plan,” Espaillat wrote. “The abandonment of federally compliant voting machines for the 2013 primary is a setback towards the goal of bringing sunlight and accountability to a troubled organization."

—

Soria contributed to this report from New York.

NEW YORK — Eliot Spitzer wants to get back into the political game. The former governor made the surprise announcement yesterday that he is running to be the city's chief financial officer.

Standing in his way and his ambitions: A few thousand signatures he needs to get on the ballot in less than a week, a frontrunner with little name recognition and a reputation marred by a pesky prostitution scandal that derailed his political career back in 2008.

Spitzer's bold attempt to return to the public sphere was immediately compared to disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner's bid for mayor. But, as top political reporters have pointed out, that comparison is rickety: Where Weiner's accomplishments  as a legislator have been dubious, Spitzer got results  — even if his aggressive tactics earned him the moniker of "steamroller" over the years.

The scandals that led to their departures from political life were also decidedly different.

"While Weiner’s crotch-picture scandal has a creepy factor, Spitzer’s involved the world’s oldest profession, and he did not exacerbate the personal damage by clinging to his office," Politico's Maggie Haberman wrote. "And unlike Weiner, Spitzer has a long list of accomplishments in office to point to."

Spitzer made his announcement to the The New York Times. He told the paper he hoped that "there will be forgiveness."

"I love public service," he told the Daily News in a separate interview. "I believe in it and hope I will be given a second chance."  

Spitzer has only until Thursday to get 3,750 signatures from registered voters to get on the ballot.

He told the Times about 100 people to begin gathering signatures today. He also claimed that he would fund his own campaign out of his fortune rather than turn to the city's public financing system.

Spitzer's decision upends a sleepy race for the office of comptroller.  Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, facing no competition for the Democratic primary until now, was expected to take the race handily. The current comptroller, John Liu, is running for mayor.

Politicker posted this statement from Stringer's campaign manager:

“Scott Stringer has a proven record of results and integrity and entered this race to help New York’s middle class regain its footing … By contrast, Eliot Spitzer is going to spurn the campaign finance program to try and buy personal redemption with his family fortune. The voters will decide.”

Stringer's supporters took to social media to praise the candidate and bash Spitzer.

In his interview with the Times, Spitzer said he wants to transform the comptroller's office "into a robust agency that would not merely monitor and account for city spending, as it does now, but conduct regular inquiries into the effectiveness of government policies, in areas like education." That, said the Times, could put Spitzer "into conflict with the city’s next mayor."

To be fair, Liu has used the office to take on a broader array of subjects and to challenge Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration in a number of public policy areas. But Spitzer would likely bring his experience serving as state attorney general to bear in making over the comptroller's office into a more aggressive watchdog.

The city's official primary election debate for comptroller is Aug. 12. The comptroller earns a salary of $185,000 a year, according to the city's Campaign Finance Board.

NEW YORK — Bill de Blasio, the public advocate and Democratic mayoral candidate, first got elected to city government in 2001. Well known within political circles but not yet a household name, he is seen as the liberal choice in the mayoral race, angling to represent the increasingly assertive influencers living in the outer boroughs, especially in the "new Brooklyn," where he resides with his family in Park Slope. In a recent interview, he spoke to the Gotham Gazette about the city's budget, the role of the private sector in public education and the need to reform the public housing agency.

GG: The Department of Education has received considerable financial and professional support from the private sector. What role should the private sector — either business people or companies — play in financing, shaping or steering the DOE and its policies?

DE BLASIO: One, I want to continue the charitable support we get obviously. Two, I've said, not to the private sector, per se, but to folks who've done well financially — I've proposed a tax on the wealthiest New Yorkers, those who make a $500k and more for five years — I think that will be a game changer in our schools. The money would go to early childhood and afterschool programs at the middle school level. I think that will profoundly improve our school system and the rest of the resources will be better utilized because we are building a stronger foundation.

But in terms of the role of the business community in schools, I'd like to intensify it, first at the high school level on down to the middle school level to the maximum extent possible, linking individual businesses and or sectors, tech sector, film, TV, media etc., to specific schools.

GG: How does that work?

DE BLASIO: I think one of the things that's happening is that a lot of young people, aren't being given a sense of a pathway, after school. A lot of folks are going to have trouble affording higher education or completing it, because of the cost. Right now, our school system, including our approach to career and tech education, really doesn't key into the current economy and where the jobs are going to be, in the economic future.

But, if you link, a specific business to a school, that comes with internships, mentoring possibilities, that really changes our approach, and certainly what young people get to see as possible for their future. So I want the business community deeply involved.

And, in terms of strategy, when it comes to career and technical education, we should be regularly sitting with leaders of the business community to figure out what skills we should be teaching to help prepare our workforce of the future.

GG: Throughout much of the budget process, the mayor's Office of Management and Budget has been criticized by some observers because of what they see as a lack of transparency. As mayor, what will you do to make the OMB be more accountable to both the public and elected officials.?

DE BLASIO: A lot of what we do with the budget process can only be described as primitive, it's based on a lot of secrecy, not allowing the public to know what the real revenue projections are, you know, playing games with that.

I don't even need to go into the problem of member items in the City Council, which I've called for abolition of, the way that the budget process keys in on the mayor offering the Council, a very small amount of the budget, and using that as a tool of political control, how the Council speaker uses that same small allotment to control the members as opposed to actually having a larger public debate on our budgetary priorities and where the real money is.

The Council is arguing over that small amount of funding they get to work with. That is less than one percent of the overall budget. The big questions are, what are we doing with our major choices, like education, affordable housing, health care? Those are things we put a huge amount of money in.

I want to move us to a more mature, more transparent, more publicly involving approach, somewhat like what you see at the Congressional level. And I think the public needs to have a role from the beginning.

GG: I have to ask this. There's been some press and a lot of talk, in particular the mayor himself, about what some are calling New York's coming fiscal cliff. Some have put the figure owed at around $7.8 billion, and one of you is going to inherit that. Unions in the city haven't gotten any new raises in over four years [Editor's Note: Clarifies that there have been no new raises. Union members have received incremental salary increases under old contracts]. How do you foresee handling that?

DE BLASIO: Look, I have confidence that we can work our way through it. I think everyone knows they're going to have to make compromises in this process. The Bloomberg approach had two features that I think we really need to move away from. One was the irresponsibility of not dealing with the contracts as they came up. As mayor, well, I'm watching the Bloomberg example carefully to know what not to do. You have to deal with these things in real time. It's like any household budget, when you let stuff build and build it becomes insurmountable. But, two, is the mayor has often used his bully pulpit to attack municipal labor. And, interestingly, that has correlated with his inability to get realistic agreements including some of the productivity changes we need because the attacks have just hardened the position of municipal labor.

GG: So, as mayor, how would you engage municipal unions on this issue?

DE BLASIO: What I plan to do is sit at the table with union leaders and say look, here's our financial reality. We want to try and do that which we can for you. We can only do that with what we have and we can't surpass the resources we have — we are legally obliged to balance our budget. So, what I will ask of every union, is show me every kind of savings, every kind of productivity improvement, and tell me your priorities. And then I'll tell you what I have to work with. I'll tell you the different policies we can work together on to improve working conditions, etc. And we'll come to some kind of balance point.

And I'm convinced, even if it means, if it takes several years to resolve all the outstanding issues, and stretch out some of the payments, so we can afford them, we'll get through it.

But we'll only get through it if there's a cooperative atmosphere, and if we treat labor leaders like they're mature people, who know how to handle a difficult situation, certainly the experience in the 1970's fiscal crisis suggests that when treated as partners labor can be fair and balanced in their approach.

GG: On to real estate and climate change. In light of the widely held assumption that our sea levels are rising, what will be your specific approach to waterfront development. How will you work with the real estate community on construction issues related to climate change? Some say developers could stand to lose with stronger restrictions — then again, could they stand to profit from smarter building science?

DE BLASIO: I think more the latter. Look, I'm going to borrow a couple of pieces from Bloomberg, then an important piece from Cuomo. I think Bloomberg is right, we are a coastal city and we should not assume otherwise. There's climate change, we have rising sea levels and we're going to face greater challenges than before, but, that does not mean a retreat, it means changing how we build.

I think it's fair to say, even taking the extraordinary example of Sandy — and Sandy really was a quote unquote perfect storm — when you look at all the things that sort of happened simultaneously to make it have the impact it had, had we had in place the kind of building codes the mayor is proposing now, such as generators weren't in the basement, we would have had a very different outcomes.

So I don't think we have to retreat, but we have to build very differently. I think that will afford perfectly good opportunities to the real estate industry to continue to profit. They're doing very well right now. Values in this city are extraordinarily high and the appeal of this city is extraordinarily high and I don't think that's going to change.

I think the governor made the point that some of the low lying areas, even areas that are below sea level such as a few areas on Staten Island, we have to incentivize people to move from areas that are no longer sustainable for the long term. I think we have to see how far we can go with the incentivization, and hopefully get that to work. But, that's a fairly small number of areas. But even the Rockaways, which was hit so hard — I agree with the mayor's focus in his plans, for example, [for] dune restoration and wetlands restoration. These are approaches that have been working around the world.

But even in the real life example of the Rockaways during Sandy, some areas that had built up the dunes, did quite well; other areas, of course, were hit very hard. I'm optimistic we have of the tools and, thank God, we have a lot of the federal funding, not everything, but a lot, and we will find a way to make the right adjustments and continue to be a successful coastal city.

GG: This year, news came out that the city’s Housing Authority had yet to spend nearly $1 billion in federal money despite a backlog of complaints from residents seeking repairs and a growing waiting list of applicants. In June, NYCHA announced that it would cut back on services and lay off staff due to $205 million in budget cuts resulting from the federal sequestration. How do you make NYCHA more accountable to taxpayers and residents? And what would your administration do to address the agency’s ongoing budget problems?

DE BLASIO: To the first point, just about affordable housing in general, there's an affordability crisis in this city and it cannot be solved with business as usual. The Bloomberg administration was often very lenient to the real estate industry. And, when you look at the final figures on the Bloomberg years, and the affordable housing they created or preserved verses that which was lost because of loss of Mitchell Lama units, rent regulated units, we really didn't end up with much of a net of affordable housing.

So, the plan I put forward, 200,000 units, is based on a much more aggressive approach by the public sector towards the real estate industry demanding that affordable housing be a part of every major development and be required, mandatory inclusionary zoning. And a series of other steps, investing pension fund dollars etc.

The big point, I want to make, is that we have to change a lot of our approach to housing or a huge number of people will not be able to live here. We will not be an economically diverse city. And we have to continue to be an economically diverse city.

GG: And public housing?

DE BLASIO: The current Bloomberg plan I do not support because I think it was rushed, as so many other things the mayor has done lately. I don't think it makes clear to public housing residents that we will disallow privatization, I think residents worry its a first step towards privatization of public housing units, which would be fundamentally destructive and unacceptable. It didn't involve community members properly in the process and doesn't offer guarantees in terms of employment or where any resources from development will go to people in the surrounding areas.

I think its an ill conceived project that has to be stopped. I think the next mayor needs to look at the whole question of any available NYCHA land very differently, and start with the residents and what will benefit the residents of NYCHA and start with some of these huge repair backlogs.

GG: What about that billion dollars?

DE BLASIO: The billion dollars that has not been spent effectively is a huge problem but the bigger problem, in my opinion is that there's been a history of inefficiency at NYCHA and poor labor management relations. A lot was not done, with even the money we've had.

As public advocate, the number one complaint that I got, is from public housing residents calling about serious repairs, they needed health and safety oriented repairs, and not being able to get them, even after years of being on a wait list.

That showed me, and we've researched this extensively, that NYCHA is simply not professionally managed. And we have to go back and do some serious restructuring, not just at the board level, but on the whole managerial approach and the labor relations.

Beyond that, we have to find a way to change the federal government involvement which used to be much, much greater in NYCHA, that's going to take time, but it's something I believe ultimately can be achieved because of the importance of New York City to the future of the nation's economy.

So a lot of different pieces, but it starts with much deeper reorganization of NYCHA to make more efficient use of the money we have now.

“Talk is cheap,” Democratic mayoral candidate Christine Quinn said today during what was billed as a major speech. “Voters will decide based on actions. The greatest indication of what someone will be able to achieve can be found in what they’ve already accomplished. The record speaks for itself.”

The speech, delivered at the East Harlem Center for Asthma, was noteworthy for Quinn’s attacks on rivals and her emphatic support of the nearby East 91st Street waste transfer station.

In an attempt to create contrasts between her and the other Democrats up to replace Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Quinn said she was the only candidate with a record on the city budget as well as on the issues that New Yorkers need to grapple with the most: affordable housing, education reform, unemployment and income inequality.

“A record of results, and a vision for the future — that’s what I’ve been out here talking about for the last six months, and it’s what I’ll be talking about all the way to November,” Quinn said. “That’s what we need from the next mayor. Not just empty promises, silly press stunts, or nonstop criticism, but a real plan on how to deliver for New Yorkers.”

Quinn rarely mentioned public safety — which months ago seemed to be the dividing line between candidates — nor did she mention the paid sick leave legislation she allowed to a vote this spring after years of holding it back.

She was artfully vague in her attacks against her rivals, but managed to use choice words against them.

She said she offers comprehensive solutions to lead, not “4-year-old position papers dusted off for a comeback attempt,” an assumed jab at former Congressman Anthony Weiner, but applicable to most of the primary’s headliners.

While not known for being coy, Quinn launched her primary attack on former comptroller and 2009 Democratic candidate Bill Thompson without invoking his name but rather the issue of the East 91st Street marine transfer station.

Quinn hailed the site as the cornerstone of the city’s waste management plan, which was introduced in 2006. The 91st Street site was developed as a means to reduce pollution and traffic in neighborhoods already home to any of the 58 transfer sites, all but one in the outer boroughs.

“Some of my opponents in this race continue to pander to residents of the Upper East Side — or side with their lobbyist donors,” Quinn said in a thinly veiled reference to Thompson. “Some say they would take 91st Street out of the plan altogether, even though doing so would require opening up the entire plan, subjecting it to community and environmental review, requiring approval from the Council and from Albany all over again.”

After Quinn’s speech today, Thompson’s campaign responded in equal measure.

“Speaker Quinn has sided with rich Manhattan interests at the expense of the working people of the city,” the statement said. “But her attacks today won’t solve the challenges facing working New Yorkers.”

Like Quinn, Public Advocate and Democratic rival Bill de Blasio has come out in favor of the transfer site. That, however, didn’t stop de Blasio’s campaign manager Bill Hyers from laying out a less favorable record for Quinn.

“Speaker Quinn’s accomplishments include giving Mayor Bloomberg a third term, proposing to shower big developers with a billion dollar giveaway and blocking key progressive legislation for years to placate big business,” Hyers wrote. “This election is not a contrast in getting things done — it’s about who you are fighting for.”

Even former Councilman Sal Albanese went after Quinn’s record, which he called “nothing to write home about” and that her campaign has accepted more than $1.5 million from real estate developers.

“We’ve seen Christine Quinn’s New York: term limits overturned, hospitals and schools closed, and legislation watered down,” he wrote. “As the city grew more unaffordable for regular New Yorkers, she rolled out the red carpet for plutocrats. Now, they are repaying her loyalty.”

Quinn tried to preemptively fight back against criticism in her speech.

“I don’t worry about labels,” she said. “I don’t worry about fitting into a narrative. I’m not concerned with making it easy to describe me in 140 characters or less.”

Instead, Quinn used a long, non-tweet-length comparison to describe herself and her possible four-year stint as the city’s next mayor.

“You know, my wife Kim and I are huge Bruce Springsteen fans,” Quinn said. “And I think about something Jon Stewart said while honoring Bruce at the Kennedy Center last year. He said, ‘Whenever I see Bruce Springsteen do anything, he empties his tank every time.’

“And if I’m lucky enough to become our next mayor, that’s how I’ll spend every day: Delivering results for New Yorkers. Holding nothing back. Emptying my tank.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was among tens of thousands of New Yorkers marching in yesterday's Puerto Rican Day Parade, as were many of the candidates who hope to replace him in Januray.

Many of the mayoral hopefuls took to the Twittersphere to show their committment the Latino community.

#LatinosfordeBlasio are leading the way at the Puerto Rican Day Parade. #QueVivaPuertoRicotwitter.com/deBlasioNYC/st…

— Bill de Blasio (@deBlasioNYC) June 9, 2013

Joe salutes the Puerto Rican community at the National Puerto Rican Day Parade twitter.com/JoeLhota4Mayor…

— Joe Lhota for Mayor (@JoeLhota4Mayor) June 9, 2013

A great day on 5th Ave w/Gov @luisfortuno51 & New York's Puerto Rican Community. #PuertoRicanDayParade @prparadenyc twitter.com/JCats2013/stat…

— John Catsimatidis (@JCats2013) June 9, 2013

5th Ave is alive for the National Puerto Rican Day Parade!! vine.co/v/bLQDwgrImbx

— Adolfo Carrion, Jr (@AdolfoCarrion) June 9, 2013

Marching with @rubendiazjr at the Puerto Rican Day Parade. Proud to stand with NYC's Puerto Rican community today! twitter.com/BillThompsonNY…

— Thompson2013 (@BillThompsonNYC) June 9, 2013

Saluting Puerto Rican New Yorkers on a beautiful day @ #PRparadeNYC!#OneCitytwitter.com/JohnLiu2013/st…

— John C. Liu (@JohnLiu2013) June 9, 2013

Very happy to be participating the the PR Day Parade today! What a beautiful Sunday for a parade. twitter.com/SalAlbanese201…

— Sal Albanese (@SalAlbanese2013) June 9, 2013

One of the candidates left more to the imagination.

It was good to see so many of my fellow Puerto Ricans, & New Yorkers from other nationalities, as I marched in the Puerto Rican Day Parade.

— Erick Salgado (@ErickSalgadoNYC) June 10, 2013

While another marched in the parade not as a candidate but as an elected figure.

Happy National Puerto Rican Day! #PRParade w @markweprin @rjackson_nyc @cm_margaretchin @tishjames @mmviverito twitter.com/ChrisCQuinn/st…

— Christine C. Quinn (@ChrisCQuinn) June 9, 2013

And despite being one of Twitter's most infamous tweeters, at least one candidate relied on media to capture his moment.

.@anthonyweiner at the #puertoricandayparade vine.co/v/bLQKvbdjJEi

— Lisa Fleisher (@lisafleisher) June 9, 2013

NEW YORK — On a recent Sunday in April, state Sen. Gustavo Rivera and Democratic mayoral nominee Christine Quinn were standing in front of a Bronx bodega when they were approached by a father and his 10-year-old son.

The father, Javier Perez, knew the senator from his work in the neighborhood — and his son had even gone up to Albany to rally against school budget cuts. But Perez didn't know who Quinn was until Rivera told him.

"I want to introduce you to the next mayor," Rivera said to Perez in Spanish as the father then shook hands with Quinn, who was surrounded by her supporters carrying signs.

Perez praised Rivera's work in the Bronx and said he trusted the state senator's judgment. Seeing Quinn walk side-to-side with the Bronx leader convinced Perez that she would also look out for his and his family's needs.

"Very much so, of course." Perez said in Spanish. "She's a good candidate."

Quinn’s endorsement from Rivera was the opening salvo in what has become a string of endorsements from Latino politicians and community leaders north of the Harlem River. Last week, Herman Badillo, the first Puerto Rican to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, endorsed former Comptroller Bill Thompson as the candidate to replace Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio has the support of Bronx Assemblyman Luis Sepúlveda, and former Congressman Anthony Weiner wooed onlookers during this past weekend’s Puerto Rican Day Parade. In fact, all the candidates — Republican and Democratic — were out with flags and campaign signs down Fifth Avenue yesterday.

Related: Mayoral Candidates Atwitter Over Puerto Rican Day Parade

The city’s Latinos are an increasingly important voting bloc, accounting for almost 30 percent of registered voters. Mayoral candidates, and Democratic candidates vying for their party’s nomination in particular, know this — just as they know that they need the influence of political leaders in the Bronx to sway Latinos in their favor.

At least two candidates have already declared that the Latino vote is vital for their campaigns if they stand any chance of making it to City Hall. Democratic upstart Erick Salgado and independent candidate Adolfo Carrión are two Latino candidates who think they can break through to what may be their most natural base.

Their challenge is the same one that their fellow rivals face: how do they drive a divided Latino electorate to the primary, much less the general election without a clearly defined, signature issue the way immigration has been on the national level.

Without that singular issue, Latino leaders are divided on who they think can best address their community’s needs, making their endorsements all the more important as a means to turn out the vote.

"What you have now is a very disorganized, fragmented kind of political situation," Angelo Falcón of the National Institute for Latino Policy. "There seems to be no real coordination or strategic thinking about the role of the Latino vote."

A STILL-GROWING, DIVERSE BLOC

It's nearly impossible to separate the story of Latinos' political power from the Bronx's story. In 2010, the borough became the first to boast more than half of the population to identify as Latino or Hispanic.

The 2010 Census counted almost 1.4 million Bronxites. Of those, 740,000 are Latino — a 15 percent jump from just ten years earlier. Most of those residents — as well as registered voters — are Puerto Rican and Dominican, although of Central and Southern American immigrants are a growing percentage of the population.

On a national level, if talking heads and pollsters are to be believed, Latinos were integral to the 2012 election. Both the presidential campaigns vied desperately for votes from one of the fastest growing minority groups across the country.

The Republican Party's inability to attract what it argued was a natural political base fascinated pollsters and politicians alike. Ultimately, Latinos went for Obama. Exit polls from the Pew Research Center found that Latinos favored the Democrat over Republican challenger Mitt Romney, 71 to 27 percent.

But Latinos certainly didn't vote in numbers proportionate to their size.

Census figures show that while Latinos represent almost 11 percent of voters during the presidential election, only about half of the currently eligible 23.7 million Latinos turned out in 2012. Among the five boroughs, the Bronx had the second lowest turnout for the presidential election. Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens each brought out over 450,000 votes for Obama, compared to the Bronx's 339,211.

Last year, the city's Campaign Finance Board released a report evaluating data from the local Board of Elections and the Census that found turnout in the Bronx was lower than in Manhattan and Staten Island.

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The report, titled "Who Votes? Voter Turnout in New York City," also reported that — unsurprisingly — areas across the city with larger numbers of naturalized citizens and low educational attainment showed up to the poll in lower numbers, as did voters younger than 30.

"What motivated the Latinos on a national level was a fear of the Republican party," Falcón said. "Here in New York, I'm not sure that there's going to be any major motivator."

However, Juan Cartagena, president of LatinoJustice PRLDEF seems the glimmer of a motivating issue.

"This is the first time that I can remember when police strategies are front and center of an election," he said. Cartagena specified that while NYPD's relationship with minority communities has often come up during elections, an "endemic and systemic practice" like stop-and-frisk has not.

In May, a Quinnipiac poll showed that 58 percent of Latinos asked disapprove of the controversial police tactic, compared to 38 who support it. Still, 54 percent of Latino respondents said that they approve of Mayor Bloomberg’s job as mayor.

Still, Cartagena argued that policing might become a galvanizing wild-card issue for undecided Latinos.

A NUMBERS GAME

The goal, as it is with any endorsement, is to draw the endorser's base into the political campaign, in which case early polling shows Quinn with a decent lead among Latino voters.

A separate Quinnipiac poll that reported a high number of undecided registered Democrats also revealed that that 25 percent of the Latino respondents said that they would vote for Quinn. A subsequent Marist College poll gave her a 35 percent favorability rating with Latinos.

After Sen. Rivera announced his endorsement for Quinn, the Council speaker told the Gotham Gazette that she recognized the Latino electorate's political heft. Quinn added that her campaign sees a great deal of diversity from within the community that calls for aggressive outreach.

"We're trying to spend as much time as we can in those communities," Quinn said, and that she understands the responsibility of making an impression on her political endorsers' constituents.

But endorsements don’t always play out in the poll. Former Congressman Anthony Weiner is rated by Latinos as their second pick in Quinnipiac’s poll, and has no formal endorsements — Latino or otherwise.

Qunnipiac also reported that it's not much better for Carrión. The only major poll that has measured Carrión's chances, it said that less than 6 percent of respondents would definitely vote for the Independence candidate, compared to the 60 percent said that they were unlikely to or would definitely not vote for him.

Soon after, Salgado was identified recently by a Marist College poll as least-known candidate with three out of five respondents either not knowing him or being unable to rate him.

The Republican ticket doesn't fare much better with Latinos. Only 10 percent of respondents said that they would vote for Lhota over any Democratic candidate.

And while Latinos have a historical inclination towards the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party's loyalty to them is less clear. Falcon argued that Democrats are taking Latino voters for granted.

"Look at Carrión — he has to run as an independent, and Salgado's not really a serious Democratic Party candidate," said Angelo Falcón of the National Institute for Latino Policy.

"I think that's a reflection of the irony that Latinos have been the most loyal to the Democratic Party, but the Democratic Party has not been responsive to the Latino community."

HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF?

Diversity of opinion is a hallmark in any political race, but Falcón said that the city's Latino leadership is more diffuse — even fractured — on its mayoral preferences now than it has been in previous races.

Falcón said that one would think the political leaders would see the value in combining their political clout, not unlike they have in the past. Falcón referred to Latino voters' relative cohesiveness on display during Fernando Ferrer's 2001 failed mayoral campaign.

Ferrer went from Bronx borough president to the first leading Latino mayoral candidate in 2001. Ferrer, who is of Puerto Rican descent, beat out most of his fellow challengers in the Democratic primary to in the unsuccessful bid to replace then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Ferrer declined to be interviewed for this story due to his current position as acting MTA chief after Republican candidate Lhota entered the race.

A 2001 report from the Center for Urban Research at the City University of New York revealed that Latino neighborhoods in the Bronx and parts of northern Manhattan not only went heavily for Ferrer in the Democratic primary, but also turned out in higher numbers.

It wasn't enough. Ferrer ultimately lost the ticket to Mark Green, who then eventually lost to then-Republican candidate Michael Bloomberg by two percentage points.

When Ferrer ran again in 2005, he secured the Democratic ballot line in the general election after Anthony Weiner dropped out of the primary. Despite massive institutional support, Ferrer lost again to Bloomberg.

Ferrer's second loss, this time by almost 20 percentage points, has since been blamed on a number of factors, including headlines about police violence, Bloomberg's $78 million in campaign spending and a fractured Democratic party.

But in the face of those variables, the Bronx still had Ferrer's back. It was the only borough Ferrer won, almost 60 percent to Bloomberg's 40 percent. Citywide, eight in 10 Latino New Yorkers supported Ferrer, even if Latinos turned out in low numbers.

"Ferrer had the opportunity to play the role of a Latino pioneer," Falcón said, adding that legitimate Latino candidates since Ferrer have been few and far between. "Everybody seems to be all over the place and maybe they haven't developed the kind of machinery to be successful for running."

Even non-Latino candidates with strong campaign machinery struggle with Latino turnout. It was low for Ferrer in 2005, and again in 2009 when Bill Thompson ran as the Democratic candidate against Bloomberg's bid for a third term. Still, despite the close margin — Bloomberg's 50.7 percent to Thompson's 46.3 percent — Thompson did sweep the minority vote.

Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz, Jr. stood with Thompson in 2009, and did so again this year, standing with the former comptroller in front of City Hall four months before the Democratic primary. Surrounded by Thompson's supporters, Díaz said it was important for Latino leaders to speak out early in the race.

"It's incumbent upon me and some of the elections in the Bronx to make sure that we have the Latino community vote in bigger numbers than ever," Díaz said.

When a Spanish-language reporter asked him why he wouldn't endorse either of the Latino candidates in the race, Díaz doubled down on his alliance with Thompson.

"The reality is that this is my candidate, and I'll support him without fear," he said in Spanish. "Especially when you're comparing him with other candidates who are Latino."

AN HEIR APPARENT

In many ways, Adolfo Carrión's career exemplifies the rise of a Latino politician in New York.

The Manhattan-born, Bronx-raised Carrión was brought up in an observant Protestant family. With a bachelor's degree from downtown Manhattan's King's College and a master's from Hunter College, Carrión focused his educational energies on urban city planning.

He eventually serving as a community board manager and one term on City Council before his eye turned to the Bronx borough presidency, taking over the seat from Ferrer.

After two terms in the office, Carrión left the Bronx for Washington D.C., presiding over the Office of Urban Affairs and later as a regional director for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Carrión remained a Democrat all throughout his time in the Bronx and Washington D.C. That changed when he announced his candidacy for mayor in 2012. Running on the Independence Party ticket, Carrión said he wants to be the city's first Latino mayor.

"My job between now and November is to convince my community that I want to be a mayor for all New Yorkers but, by God, I understand the historic opportunity we have," he said.

Carrión describes himself as a socially liberal yet fiscally conservative independent, which he figures falls in line with both many Latinos and New Yorkers at large.

It's not an unreasonable conclusion, given the last three terms of the candidate that bested Ferrer. Bloomberg, a former Democrat himself, aligned with the Republican Party in his first campaign. Bloomberg also handily defeated the first ever Latino Bronx borough president, Herman Badillo, for the GOP's nod in 2001.

Carrión — who has so-far raised about $1 million with about half still in the bank — breaks away from the mayor on a few issues, most notably stop-and-frisk. If elected mayor, he said that he'd tweak the controversial program. Otherwise, Carrión doesn't seem to mind comparisons to Bloomberg, especially if it indicates a streak of independence among Latinos.

"I think that they respect the fact that he calls it as he sees it," he said. "That's the genius that I see in the electorate. People have been voting out of their comfort zones for some time."

The ease with which voters are electing people outside of party loyalty, Carrión added, applies just as much to Latinos in 2013. His campaign knows it, and is trying to make the case that Latinos can jump to the Independence Party ballot line.

The Independence Party is a mainstay of New York City politics, helping a then-Republican-backed Bloomberg secure a second spot on the 2001 ballot. The city's rule on fusion voting lets candidates appear on the ballot more than once and still have the aggregate between lines go towards their total vote counts, which Carrión will also try to repeat.

Earlier this year, Carrión tried to get the support from GOP county leaders that he would have needed to get a ballot line, being that he's not a registered Republican. He failed to do so, but he's taken it in stride and said he's focused his energies on turning out Latinos to the polls.

The move didn’t settle well with many of his fellow colleagues, including two his borough presidency predecessors Badillo and Diaz. And the candidate’s campaign has also been marred by accusations of unethical, pay-for-play behavior during his time as borough president, charges that Carrión has denied as "pure fabrication."

Carrión is only looking forward.

"In 2009, we had a turnout of less than 30 percent," Carrión said as he did the math. "So total voters were about 1.78 million. Of that, 16 percent were Hispanic. So we're punching below our weight right now."

Carrión continued to add up his prospects, saying that he's banking on 125,000 votes from independents and about 75 percent of the Latino vote to take the mayor's race. To that end, his campaign has made some effort to reach out specifically to Latinos. The same week that Carrión spent an extended weekend in Puerto Rico meeting with local leaders, he released his first campaign web ad.

Titled "Waking the Sleeping Giant," the minute-long ad cuts between stock video and clips of Carrión on the campaign. Releasing both an English and Spanish version, the videos have been watched more than 9,000 times.

"People always ask me what will it mean to be New York's first Latino mayor," Carrión reads in a voice-over. "My response is always the same: If I'm elected mayor it means we have awakened the sleeping giant — hemos despertado al gigante dormido."

But observers say Carrión hasn’t been able to stir much of anything. Cartagena noted that Carrión has so far acted like a non-entity in the race.

"He'll only start taking votes if he becomes more physical in the race," Cartagena said. "The sooner he does it, the better for him."

The fact that Erick Salgado, who Cartagena predicts will play little to no role in the election, seems to be getting just as much if not more media attention than Carrión should worry the former borough president.

"That speaks more about Carrión's campaign than about Salgado," he said.

MINISTER FOR MAYOR

Erick Salgado has never served in political office, and he thinks it's his ace-in-the-hole.

Salgado often makes it a point to declare himself as the only candidate who isn't a career politician. A reverend by trade, he lives with his wife and children in Staten Island and operates two primarily Latino churches in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. That said, he's also still a Bronxite.

Born in the borough to Puerto Rican parents, Salgado's family moved back to the Caribbean when he began to suffer from asthma as a child. He returned to the city in his late teens, focusing his studies on theological work. Salgado eventually opened the doors to two Latino churches in Brooklyn, and has taken his messaging to the airwaves, eventually purchasing a radio frequency for his ministry.

If Carrión is a social liberal and fiscal conservative, Salgado is in some ways his ideological opposite.

Despite a few odd answers to questions about what he would do on certain issues as mayor, such as increasing access to firearms for women as a way to decrease domestic violence, Salgado has come out in favor of hiring more police, providing undocumented immigrants with a municipal ID card and increasing financial support for programs that help immigrants, who he often calls the city's "most vulnerable."

During his debut appearance on a televised mayoral forum on NY1, Salgado also floated the idea of Rudy Giuliani as his potential police commissioner. The only Latino on stage at the time, he also told the audience about how he was randomly stopped — but not frisked — a few weeks before.

"Nothing good comes from stop-and-frisk when you're Latino," Salgado said in Spanish before the live audience laughed when moderator Errol Louis offered him sympathy.

Those laughs don't faze Salgado. He takes the laughs about his thick accent and unconventional politics as a Democratic candidate in stride, perfectly aware that some people aren't taking his campaign seriously.

"When we finish up fixing the city," he said in Spanish during a recent fundraiser in the Bronx, "they are going to love my accent."

However, one of his platform issues seems to have caught the attention of at least one rival.

When Bill de Blasio pushed the idea of a municipal ID card in a mid-May Daily News editorial, Salgado sent out a press release thanking his rivals for backing his idea, even if they didn’t give him credit, before questioning their motives.

"As elected officials they had the opportunity to introduce legislation that would create these cards long before campaign season," he wrote. "Could this just be a tactic to get the Hispanic vote?"

As far as his own targeting of the Hispanic vote, Salgado is bucking the conventional wisdom. Salgado refused to believe that Latinos are as liberal as the recent polls paint them to be. He thinks that the Latino community is as traditional as some Republican pundits allege, and that a less intrusive government combined with the preservation of family is just what New York City needs.

His opposition to abortion rights and gay marriage, though, has helped him find his base. When introducing the candidate to a crowd of Latino ministers at a campaign event, Sen. Rubén Díaz, Sr. — Salgado’s most ardent political ally — made it clear why they should donate to the campaign.

"He is only one who will bring Christianity to City Hall," Díaz shouted over applause as the candidate walked through the crowd. Díaz went on to tell the crowd that the Latino voters were key to Salgado's campaign, but that a growing coalition of conservative voters behind Salgado was already in the works.

In addition to help from Díaz's faith-based machine, Salgado has a fan in fellow Bensonhurst radio host Gregory Davidzon. Widely regarded in political circles as a leading voice for South Brooklyn's Russian and Jewish communities, Davidzon has praised Salgado's faith-driven initiatives on air, helping connect the candidate to the borough's Orthodox and religious leaders.

The candidate has channeled more than $50,000 in campaign funds to Davidzon and his radio station for advertising, office space and campaign consultations. Overall, Salgado’s latest campaign filing show that he managed to raise more than $200,000, but has an outstanding balance of almost $35,000.

Salgado’s conservative credentials resurfaced again during a mayoral forum hosted by the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition in early June. The candidate defended the Orthodox community from government intervention on religious practices.

"They are marching here every year in the New York gay pride parade, they're marching over here, trying to band together," Salgado said tangentially, but to the crowd's applause.

When deBlasio — a favorite among progressive circles — said that he would defend both LGBT and Orthodox communities, a handful of Orthodox audience members responded by chanting "shame."

Even so, Salgado said that his conservative beliefs don't make him any less of a candidate for the Democratic ticket.

"I'm a Democrat," Salgado said, "and I'm still standing for most of what Democrats stand for."

NEOYORQUINOS SPEAK

The Latino electorate can be as ideological diverse any other, but both Carrión and Salgado admit that any likelihood of either of them becoming mayor hinges on Latino voters turning out the vote. And it might be for naught if the last three elections since are any indication.

New Census figures revealed in May that fewer Latinos actually voted in 2012 than in the last presidential election. While Obama did win with the wide margin of Latino votes, the Census attributed a spike in registration to expected population growth.

Getting them out to vote may mean connecting with Latinos on the issues. And, for the most part, the issues that matter to them are what matter to just about everyone else.

Back on West Fordham Road, Billy Gonzalez stood in front of his deli store's counter. Gonzalez said that whoever replaces Mayor Bloomberg needs to focus on bringing jobs to the neighborhood.

After operating the deli for 15 years, Gonzalez said that he's seen neighbors who used to come as regular customers ask for food. While Gonzalez said that he does what he can for those who ask, he wants to see them do the same thing: "help the people."

As a small business owner, he said he's not worried about things like paid sick leave or the city's Health Department overreaching with its policies. Gonzalez said that one thing above all else can help fellow New Yorkers get ahead.

"Education is the number one thing in life," Gonzalez said. "I have six kids, and they're all in public school."

Marisol Ventura has lived in New York since 1985. Having gone through bout of unemployment and homelessness, recently finding a room in an apartment off of Creston Avenue and a factory job to help pay her $450 in monthly rent.

"I wish I had money only so that I don't have to ask for it from the city," Ventura said, before asking that the city prioritize help for the poorest New Yorkers.

"And my struggle isn't just mine,” she said. “Others are in much worse shape.”

She emphasized the need for affordable housing and well-paying jobs that help people get off social programs, and how the challenges in front of the Latino community aren’t so different from anybody else.

"The Hispanic family is the same as the American family," Ventura said.

NEW YORK — Once again in 2013, the leading candidate for mayor is a woman: Christine Quinn as Bella Abzug was in 1977.

Quinn has become one of the most powerful woman politicians in the city through her role as City Council speaker. Abzug was a lieutenant to US House Speaker Tip O’Neill. Both had roots in community organizing.

While supporters of both acknowledge they are very different politicians for very different times, once again the most negative articles in the press are about the woman frontrunner.

Abzug was cast in the media as shrill, strident and loud — with one reporter calling her the “Muhammad Ali of feminist politicians” — and portrayed, at least once, as a witch on a broomstick in a cartoon.

While the New York Times has done some soft features on Quinn — showing her at her weekend home with her wife, Kim Catullo, and exchanging ideas with Holland Taylor who is playing Texas woman trailblazer Ann Richards on stage — in March it ran a front-page report on the trouble she has controlling her temper and how she has used her power as speaker to punish Council members who do not accede to her wishes. Some of her supporters have called the story a hit job.

In the first part of our look back at the 1977 race — and what lessons may be drawn from it for this year’s race — we showed how the specific social backdrop of that year shaped a tumultuous field of contenders, while the New York Post as a newly conservative voice in the city worked successfully to shape the outcome. In the end, though, predicting the race before the primary was a gamble.

In this part, we look in particular at Quinn as the frontrunner in the Democratic field, which was complicated in recent days with the entry of former Congressman Anthony Weiner. We also look at the LGBT vote then and now; the Post’s diminished role in the election; the gender gap; and race and the mayoralty.

As Quinn seeks to become the first woman mayor, Quinn owes a debt to Abzug who was the first serious woman candidate to run. But Quinn has governed and run her campaign more as what Ed Koch pitched himself as in 1977 — a “liberal with sanity.” And she surely does not want to end up as Abzug did: fourth in a crowded field.

And with no one issue as yet proving transformative in the race, the 2013 election outcome may prove to be even more unpredictable than the race in 1977.

QUINN AND KOCH

While Quinn is an out lesbian and has been endorsed by national gay rights organizations, Koch’s sexuality was a topic of rumors and innuendo throughout his political career — including the infamous “Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo” poster campaign run by Cuomo supporters in conservative districts.

A lifelong bachelor, Koch did his best during the 1977 campaign to imply that he was heterosexual, making sure to be photographed holding hands with former Miss America Bess Myerson.

Once in his mayoralty he told an interviewer that he was heterosexual, a proclamation that made the front page of Newsday and was derided by his critics, especially by ACT UP, the then-radical direct action organization that was working to call attention to the plight of people with HIV/AIDS.

Thereafter, Koch resolutely refused to answer questions about his sexual orientation and when confronted with evidence of his homosexuality by the makers of the documentary “Outrage!” walked off the set spewing a barnyard epithet. At his death, even his closest gay friend acknowledged it would have been better if Koch had come out about who he was.

Quinn so identifies with Koch that she led a successful campaign in the City Council to rename the Queensborough Bridge for him—over the objections of some Queens Council Members such as Peter Vallone, Jr., who said they wouldn’t even think of renaming the Brooklyn Bridge.

Koch endorsed Quinn for mayor back in December 2011, telling The New York Times: “I believe that she is center-left, which is what I am. Of all the candidates, Christine is the best able to follow in the steps of Mayor Bloomberg and myself.”

When Koch did pass away earlier this year, Quinn said: “I can remember seeing him on TV when I was a little girl and thinking to myself, ‘If I could ever meet him it would be a dream come true.’ Years later when I was working at the Anti-Violence Project, I was in the midst of a very public battle with City Hall. Mayor Koch called me out of the blue. I had never spoken to him in my life. He told me, ‘You’re doing the right thing. Don’t back down, and call me if I can do anything.’”

“New Yorkers want Daddy as their mayor,” my co-host on “Gay USA,” Ann Northrop, has hypothesized. “They just want someone to take care of them so they don’t have to —and tell them what to do and to give the illusion of strength against everything they fear.”

That may explain some of the tolerance New Yorkers have for zealous policing, like stop-and-frisk that has only now become a serious political issue.

(It may also be why, even this late in the race, there is unabated interest in some quarters for Ray Kelly for mayor — who gets high marks for his performance as police commissioner but is a virtual unknown on the many other issues a mayor has to deal with.)

But it is unclear yet who is wearing the pants in this race — Quinn or one of her opponents — or if the tough stance this year will be about who will keep order or who will restore some balance to the city’s treatment of the middle class and poor.

Allen Roskoff, a gay activist who has been involved in city politics since the era of Mayor John Lindsay and is now president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, a left-leaning citywide LGBT outfit, derides Quinn as “the Abe Beame” of this race. “She has effectively been deputy mayor for the last eight years and people want change,” he said.

Mike Morey, spokesman for the Quinn campaign, told the Gotham Gazette that Quinn sees herself as someone in the mold of both Abzug and Koch.

"The passion and fire of Bella Abzug and the everyman common-sense of Ed Koch have both had strong and lasting influences on Christine Quinn's approach to public service," Morey wrote in an email. "She believes in telling the truth, standing by principle, and pushing hard to get things done and she believes that's what New Yorkers want in a mayor."

Quinn has also dedicated a good part of her campaign to trying to distance herself from the mayor she has worked closely with, while not alienating the voters who approve of him.

In particular, she has backed legislation that would create an inspector general for the police department — an idea Bloomberg has decried — and made more pro-union education proposals, such as making school closings a “last resort”--that have been attacked by Bloomberg’s schools chancellor, Dennis Walcott.

Much is different this year, however. Quinn did indeed give Bloomberg the opportunity for a third term in 2009 by extending term limits for him — and herself and her fellow Council members.

But Bloomberg is not nearly as unpopular as Beame was nor has he presided over the same kind of catastrophes as Beame, unless you are looking at how unaffordable the city has become for the middle class and poor — themes being hammered by several of Quinn’s opponents.

Indeed, Quinn herself says “middle class” as often as she can while campaigning. Anthony Weiner got in the race last week touting his middle-class roots and was quickly attacked by Bill De Blasio, the public advocate who also hopes to mayor, for living on Park Avenue now. After 12 years of being ruled by the wealthiest person in the city, the candidates all seem to be banking on the populace wanting someone more like them to govern now.

THE LGBT VOTE THEN AND NOW

While both Koch and Abzug had represented liberal Manhattan Congressional districts and were the lead sponsors of the federal gay rights bill, Abzug was seen as the darling of gay and lesbian voters in 1977.

When a national blow was dealt to gay rights in June of that year with the overturning of a gay rights ordinance in a Miami referendum, thousands of shocked and angry demonstrators in New York marched to Abzug’s home in Greenwich Village as if asking mama to make it better.

Koch appeared at a raucous gay rally in the Village the night of that setback amidst boos for politicians, but his refusal to be dissuaded by that impressed me enough as a 23-year old activist to vote for him that year.

(By 1989, Koch was such a target of anger for AIDS activists that he was shouted down by hundreds of them when he tried to dedicate Stonewall Place in the Village.)

Koch also worked behind the scenes for the gay vote, becoming one of the first major politicians to court the emerging constituency. At that time, most gay and lesbian New Yorkers were not living openly in the workplace and may have identified with Koch’s approach to his sexuality.

This year, Quinn — out, proud, and married to attorney Kim Catullo — enjoys the support of most LGBT groups and donors including the national Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, but she also is supported by many of the rank-and-file LGBT voters who are looking for the validation of an out lesbian winning such a high office.

The rest of the Democratic candidates also have strong records on LGBT rights.

Albanese cast a critical vote for the 1986 gay rights bill from his conservative Bay Ridge district. Thompson and Liu used the comptroller’s shareholder power to get corporations to adopt non-discrimination policies. Weiner championed LGBT rights in Congress. And de Blasio has a solid record of support and the distinction of having married a woman who was once a leading lesbian writer, Chirlane McCray.

None of the candidates for the Republican nomination profess to be anything but pro-LGBT rights, though George McDonald and Joe Lhota marched in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade that most all Democrats have been boycotting since it excludes Irish LGBT contingents.

THE GENDER GAP

Quinn is holding on to some major feminist support, including from Abzug’s daughter Liz and former Councilwoman Ronnie Eldridge, a liberal lion who was a protégé of Bobby Kennedy, once a special assistant to Lindsay and now hosts “Eldridge & Co.” on CUNY-TV.

Gloria Steinem held out on Quinn until she let the sick leave bill onto the floor of the Council, albeit in a watered-down form after a three-year hold up.

“I wish it could have been faster,” Steinem told The New York Times, while praising Quinn as someone who “has lived a life that allows her to understand the lives of most New Yorkers.”

But Steinem added, “I wish Bella Abzug had been mayor.”

Her daughter, Liz Abzug, said that a Times story on Quinn’s temper reminds her of some of the negative press coverage that her mother Bella endured in 1977, also as “the one woman in the race.”

Veteran Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, who has endorsed Quinn, said: “I thought that the Times front-page piece on Chris [about her temper] had an underlying element of sexism for sure. I am always entertained by young women reporters who say there isn’t sexism. I do think there was an element of it. There are a number of men in office who yell and who threaten and I just found it mind-boggling the level of uneven application of scrutiny.”

Lincoln historian Harold Holzer, who served as Bella Abzug’s press spokesman in Congress, said he was concerned that Quinn was facing the same treatment as Abzug.

“I have never seen so many assaults so concentrated on [Abzug] by so many people in the establishment, including the newspapers,” he said. “The Post would do anything they could to beat her down and make her seem responsible for the Son of Sam, the riots in Brooklyn and the blackout.”

He said Koch attacked her for her “leniency” and belief in a right to strike and the death penalty.

“She and Mario did not believe in a life for a life, and were excoriated for it,” Holzer said. “She went from 36 percent to 16 percent. I’m not ready to play the historian’s role, but I do see Christine Quinn enduring an unfair expectation of having to be everything to everybody and the men and straight candidates are not” burdened with those expectation.

Which brings us to the gender gap, a term, Liz Abzug said, that wasn’t used or polled for until her mother wrote a book about it in 1983.

“Before that,” she said, “the differences in the way women voted was not a discussion point.” Now, the gap between how women and men vote is regularly polled for and marked differences have emerged. The 2012 presidential election saw the biggest national gender gap in history, with Barack Obama winning women by 12 percent and Romney winning men by 8 percent. Obama won the war for women, successfully tarring the national Republican Party as conducting a war on women.

To Liz Abzug, a lot has changed since her mother ran.

“I think a woman — as we’ve seen in many cities — can be a person who is strong enough to break down the violence in an environment,” she said. “I don’t know if it is a better atmosphere for a woman. We’ve seen women in key positions as opposed to ’77 — Speaker of the House, mayoralties in cities big like Houston and small — presidencies internationally. It is more accepted that women can govern from strength, toughness, passion — and heart — and still be commander-in-chief. It is just less of an issue.”

Still, we’ve never had a woman mayor. Carol Bellamy ran on the Liberal line against Ed Koch in 1985, and got beaten badly; former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger was the Democratic nominee in 1997 against Rudy Giuliani and got bested by a 12-point margin. We have had a woman comptroller, Liz Holtzman, Bellamy as Council president, and Betsy Gotbaum as public advocate.

While early polls showed no gender gap for Quinn, the April 15-18 Quinnipiac poll had her leading with 31 percent of women and 24 percent of men with Anthony Weiner polling at 12 percent of women and 20 percent of men, a gap most would attribute to his fame for sending erotic pictures of himself to women strangers. A gap had emerged.

But by the May 22 Quinnipiac poll, Quinn had less of a gap with 23 percent men for her and 26 percent of women, while Thompson fared better with men by six points (14-8 percent) and Weiner with men by four (17-13 percent). John Liu, who faded to 6 percent overall in the current poll has the support of twice as many women (8 percent) as men (4 percent).

THE NEW YORK POST

While Koch would tell you that Rupert Murdoch made him mayor along with his campaign manager David Garth, it is unclear if Murdoch’s New York Post still has that kind of power even though it has already attacked Quinn, labeling her as “Mayor Dracula” based on a vampish New York magazine cover.

One headline says she is going for the “the Bella donna look” in what may have supposed to have been a reference to Bela Lugosi who played Dracula in the 1930s, but also summoned up the memory of Bella Abzug.

The paper has also gone after de Blasio for revelations that his wife had been a lesbian and Liu for the misdeeds of his aides. And they never tire of making front-page Weiner sex jokes.

In 1977, the Post aggressively went after Abzug over her pro-labor stances. According to historian Chris McNicle, Abzug sealed her fate when she backed the right of police and firefighters to strike just days before the city was blacked out and riots terrified whole neighborhoods. “That was bad politics in a city preoccupied with law and order,” McNicle wrote in “To Be Mayor of New York: Ethnic Politics in the City.”

It is hard to tell yet who Murdoch or the rest of the city’s more establishment sectors (real estate and finance) want for mayor, but they have ways of letting their thoughts be known through attacks in the media and by where they spread their donations.

A big difference this year is that Murdoch is losing his grip on his media empire due to scandals in Britain.

And money will play less of a role with most of the candidates in the campaign finance system that matches the donations they get 6-to-1 but limits their spending at each stage of the race. No one but billionaire John Catsimatidas is self-financing.

So far the biggest independent expenditures have come from left-leaning labor and animal rights activists www.NYCityisNot4Sale.com doing their best to define Quinn in a negative way before she can run ads defining herself. The strategy has echoes in the way independent supporters of Obama painted Romney as an out-of-touch vulture capitalist while Romney was tied up fighting for the Republican nomination last year and unable to free up the funds to answer those attacks.

RACE AND THE MAYORALTY

While we did get a one-term black mayor in David Dinkins at a time of great racial unrest in 1989 after what was perceived as an era of racial polarization under Koch, Dinkins lost to Giuliani in 1993 partly because Dinkins was seen as not being able to control the racial unrest in Crown Heights that year.

We have never had a Latino mayor, despite Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer coming close to winning the Democratic nomination in 2001 against Mark Green, who went on to lose a squeaker to Bloomberg in the chaotic aftermath of 9-11. Ferrer came back to win the Democratic nomination in 2005, but lost to Bloomberg big.

The people of color in this year’s race are Thompson, who came within 4.4 points of knocking off Bloomberg in 2009 despite being up against another $100 million Bloomberg campaign; and Liu, who despite the shadow of convictions of some of his top campaign aides, has a solid base in Asian communities and deep ties to other communities of color and labor. (Thompson also enjoys close ties to the city’s Orthodox Jewish community.) And there is Carrion, who left the Democratic Party and sees a path to victory as a Republican and as the Independence Party nominee where the current Quinnipiac poll has him pulling 12 percent on that line—obviously not enough to win but more than enough to be a factor in the fall.

So far, the biggest racial issue in the contest is where the candidates stand on the stopping and frisking of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers each year, most of them youth of color. Positions vary from Liu, who wants it banned, to Lhota who wants it maintained with the others on a scale in between.

AN UPREDICTABLE RACE

Veteran Times reporter Sam Roberts wrote last week about how the current mayoral race puts him in mind not just of the 1977 contest, but the one in 1973 when there was no incumbent, calling them all “heavily contested” and “unpredictable.”

While this year Anthony Weiner has gotten in two years after a scandal, Roberts noted that, in 1973, Congressman Mario Biaggi was the frontrunner until it was revealed that he had taken the Fifth Amendment in a corruption trial. That let Beame get into a runoff with Badillo who undid himself by referring to Beame as “a malicious little man” — the kind of misstep in a long campaign that can derail one’s prospects.

Roberts wrote that Beame was supposed to sit out the 1977 race after presiding over the fiscal crisis and endorse Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton, an African American. And he credits Gov. Hugh Carey with getting Cuomo the Liberal line to the great consternation of Beame.

Political consultant Hank Sheinkopf told the Times regarding this year’s race: “Now we have everybody splitting in a non-ideological environment, and that means anything can happen.”

The biggest lesson from 1977 is that this 2013 race, with all its permutations and combinations, is indeed impossible to predict. A large field makes it harder for voters to focus on what their choice is. And New York City polls have a history of being notoriously wrong.

The primaries are especially unpredictable, but on the Democratic side — unless Quinn or a rival pulls down 40 percent — it will be followed by a one-on-one runoff. The polls currently have her vanquishing her chief rivals in such a runoff, but it is early and the electorate has not focused on the alternatives.

If 1977 is an indicator, no matter who is on what line, the voters of New York City in the end won’t be looking at party affiliation but at the two candidates who have proved themselves most viable and choosing between them.

Right now, the relatively unknown Lhota loses 13 to 61 percent against “the Democratic candidate” according to the latest Quinnipiac poll. But let’s remember that the eventual 1977 winner, Ed Koch, was at about 4 percent in the polls at this stage. And, in 2001, Mike Bloomberg, the eventual winner, was polling at about 25 percent in the early stages.

And the candidates are mostly arguing about policing (the merits of stop-and-frisk), education (keep mayoral control or share governance more), affordable and public housing, and term limits (right or wrong to have extended them).

It may be that the issue that will define the candidates for the voters may not have come to the fore.

Andy Humm is the co-host of the weekly Gay USA cable TV show, a contributor to Gay City News, and a former city Human Rights commissioner.

NEW YORK — With Vito Lopez having unceremoniously resigned from the state Assembly where he once lorded over the powerful housing committee, the career politician has turned his attention to getting elected to the City Council. And he just might succeed.

That’s because the two other candidates in the race for the 34th district — one of whom is being backed by Council Speaker Christine Quinn — could end up appealing to the same pool of voters, potentially splitting them and handing Lopez a victory.

Perhaps more importantly, the disgraced former assemblyman, who is accused of sexually harassing several women, will undoubtedly call on his deep, established base of neighborhood support in the district to get out the vote on Election Day.

“He’s a wonderful man, a wonderful politician,” said Lalo Burgos, 73, who lives in the district and runs a barbershop near Maria Hernandez Park in Bushwick. And he said Lopez takes care of residents. "That’s all that matters.”

John Mollenkopf, a professor at the Center for Urban Research of the CUNY Graduate Center, said that community support could make all the difference for Lopez.

"He runs an old-fashioned type of operation that’s very much based on loyalty," Mollenkopf said. "This will be a test of that loyalty.”

It also doesn’t take many votes to win in a Council primary: Diana Reyna, the term-limited Councilwoman who holds the seat, won in 2009 when there was no mayoral race, with 3,865 votes.

Last week’s release of an embarrassing state ethics report detailing allegations of Lopez’s misbehavior with female staffers led the 71-year-old legislator to announce his retirement at the end of the legislative session in June while also proclaiming his innocence.

The announcement was met with cries for an immediate resignation and movement within the Assembly to push him out of office.

Lopez then sped up his timeline. By Monday morning, his nameplate was taken from his office door and his Assembly web page was taken offline.

A second investigation, led by Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan as a special prosecutor, could find no basis for bringing criminal charges against Lopez. It did, however, call into question Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s role in a secret taxpayer-funded settlement for two of Lopez’s former staffers.

“I have maintained my innocence throughout this matter and I believe no criminal investigation should ever have been conducted,” Lopez said in his statement on May 17 announcing his resignation at the end of June before he was faced with the possibility of expulsion and resigned on Monday.

He said that he would focus on the Council race. “I expect to run a vigorous campaign on the issues facing the citizens of my community and hope to continue to serve them as a member of the City Council,” he said. “I believe that the voters of the community should decide who should represent them.”

Lopez and his representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story.

The longtime politician’s deep ties to the Bushwick, Ridgewood and Williamsburg neighborhoods are rooted in his years as chair of the Assembly’s housing committee, through which he steered state money to his district for low-income housing and a popular senior center he created.

Founded in 1973, the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, was one of the main beneficiaries of the money that Lopez made sure flowed from Albany to his district.

“He’s got a base of support through his social services that’s going to vote for him no matter what,” said Doug Muzzio, a political science professor at Baruch College.

And that, Muzzio says, could make the difference in how much the sexual harassment scandal plays into the Council race.

“In the ‘should’ world, this should kill him," Muzzio said. "But the ‘is’ world is another story.”

Muzzio said a split between the other two candidates could hand Lopez the spot on the Democratic ticket, tantamount to election in November. “It’s politics 101. If you want to win — split the competition,” Muzzio said.

Lopez lost some of his support when news leaked last year that Lopez had been accused of sexual harassment by several former female employees. Lopez, who had represented the 53rd Assembly District since 1984, was censured and stripped of his housing committee chairmanship — the very seat of power which he used to funnel funding to his constituents.

He also lost his seat as the Kings County Democratic Party chair, which he took over in 2006 from disgraced former Assemblyman Clarence Norman Jr., after he was convicted of taking illegal campaign contributions.

Well before the ethics commission report was released, anti-Lopez protesters gathered on a soggy April afternoon around the corner from a posh Williamsburg restaurant on the water.

Organized by local members of the National Organization for Women and a progressive Democratic club, the New Kings Democrats, 20 or so protesters shouted from the sidewalk as cars drove in for Lopez’s first fundraiser for the Council race.

“It’s outrageous that someone who’s been accused of sexual harassment has the chutzpah to run for City Council,” said Lincoln Restler, a New Kings Democrats member and former Brooklyn district leader. Created in 2008, the reform club has spent years organizing against Lopez and endorsing candidates to subvert his influence across the borough.

One of those candidates is Antonio Reynoso, who is also a member of the New Kings Democrats. But he’ll also have to face Tommy Torres, 40, in the district’s Democratic primary.

Reynoso is the chief of staff to the 34th district's term-limited Councilwoman Diana Reyna, a former top aide to Lopez turned bitter foe. The 30-year-old Brooklyn native grew up in Williamsburg’s South Side before leaving for college upstate.

By the time Reynoso came back to Brooklyn, he knew he wanted to be in politics even if he didn’t know where to start. He said he went out one day with two resumes: one for Reyna and one for Lopez.

Lopez’s office was closed that day; Reyna hired him. “God steered me in the right direction,” Reynoso said.

Reynoso makes no effort to hide his disdain for Lopez, especially in the wake of last week’s report. “He should resign immediately and step away from serving public office,” he said. “There’s no remorse. There’s no realistic understanding of what he’s done. And that’s the biggest crime.”

Reynoso isn’t the only one upset by Lopez’s bid for City Council, and he’s already received powerful backing for his run. Speaker Christine Quinn launched a “Women for Reynoso” campaign, naming Reynoso as the only viable option for the 34th District.

“We must ensure that Vito Lopez never sets foot in City Hall,” Quinn said in a statement.

Reynoso has also been endorsed by another Democratic progressive in the mayoral race, Bill de Blasio, and has gained the support of major unions — which Muzzio said will be a key factor in the race. To beat Vito, he said, “You need organizational muscle.”

To date, Reynoso has raised around $86,000 for the race. While Lopez has managed to net approximately $38,000 for his City Council run, The New York Post has already reported that Lopez might be able to roll over some of the more than $1 million he has in state campaign coffers.

Meanwhile, Torres, the third candidate for the Council seat, has raised close to $23,000. A public school teacher and athletic coach, Torres grew up in Cooper Park Houses, one of Greenpoint’s public housing developments.

Torres stayed in the borough for college, going to St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights on a baseball scholarship. He followed that up with a master’s degree in education from Mercy College in Westchester County, which Torres said wouldn’t have been possible without the city’s public education program.

“I took advantage of the public schools,” said Torres over the phone after coaching a baseball game. “I came back to continue the good work.”

For either Reynoso or Torres to come out on top, they need to beat Vito’s ongoing popularity around the district. Throughout Bushwick, Lopez’s current constituents still say that they care more about his generosity than the allegations against him.

Caesar Bettencourt, 72, stood near a stoop along St. Nicholas Avenue as he defended Lopez.

“I think certain people are trying to make trouble for him,” said Bettencourt, a regular at the local senior center. “I think it’s all a setup. It’s politics.”

An earlier version of this article originally appeared in a NYCity News Service multimedia project entitled "Bushwick Beyond the Brand," which examines continuing changes in the neighborhood as the Bloomberg era comes to an end.