Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota, right, garnered the endorsement of Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro this week. Photo Courtesy Joe Lhota/Facebook
Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota’s campaign got a boost this week with an endorsement from Staten Island’s borough president – as well as with a recently released poll that reported 25 percent of Democrats who cast their ballot for City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) in the primary expect to back the former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
“Then and now, Joe Lhota has the experience, the leadership skills, and the common sense judgment to lead our City forward and continue to help Staten Island prosper,” Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro said Friday.
Lhota said it meant “a great deal to me to accept Jim Molinaro’s endorsement,” citing the borough president’s work to increase transportation, improve schools and create good-paying jobs.
Lhota’s campaign also welcomed this week’s news that, in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 6:1 margin, a poll conducted on behalf of the nonprofit Transportation Alternatives found that about one-quarter of voters who supported Quinn in September’s primary will not be casting ballots for the Democratic mayoral candidate, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. Instead, the poll, conducted by Penn Schoen Berland and first reported by Crain’s, documented that those individuals expect to throw their support behind Lhota.
Quinn landed about 15 percent of the approximate 700,000 Democrats who voted in the primary – and 25 percent of that is not a number which, if secured by Lhota, guarantees the Republican a victory. Additionally, de Blasio, according to a Marist poll released last week, is leading Lhota 65 percent to 22 percent.
Still, the Transportation Alternatives poll landed smiles from Lhota’s campaign, representatives from which have long said they believe they will receive support from middle-of-the-road Democrats in the general election.
“We always knew we’d be the underdog in this race and once New Yorkers learn more about Bill’s radical policies, they will be looking for a more practical alternative,” Lhota spokeswoman Jessica Proud said following the publication of the Marist poll. “Joe’s experienced leadership and solutions to expand the middle class will resonate with everyday New Yorkers in all five boroughs.”
Lhota has continued to emphasize what he argues are de Blasio’s “radical policies” this week, slamming his Democratic opponent after a front page New York Times piece came out documenting the public advocate’s support for Sandinista revolutionaries – leftist rebels who were denounced in the 1980s by the Reagan administration as Communists but who progressives praised for fighting what they said was a repressive Central American dictatorship. The Times piece reported on how de Blasio’s time in Nicaragua as a 26-year-old – when he helped to distribute food and medicine to the war-torn nation – went on to shape his political leanings. After helping the revolutionaries in the 1980s, de Blasio said he has gone on to criticize the Sandinistas for cracking down on dissenters.
In the article, the reporter says de Blasio identified himself as a “Democratic socialist.”
“Bill de Blasio needs to explain himself – and explain himself now – to the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who escaped Marxist tyranny in Asia, Central America, and from behind the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe,” Lhota said in an emailed statement. “Mr. de Blasio’s involvement with the Sandinistas didn’t happen in 1917; it happened 70 years later when the cruelty and intrinsic failure of Communism had become crystal clear to anyone with a modicum of reason. Mr. de Blasio’s class warfare strategy in New York City is directly out of the Marxist playbook. Now we know why.”
At a press conference outside Queens Borough Hall on Monday, de Blasio railed against Lhota’s accusations.
“Fighting for equality to me…is my life’s work,” de Blasio said. “I’m not surprised my opponent will throw labels and call names. That’s a Republican tactic. That’s a right-wing tactic.”
By Anna Gustafson
