32 BJ President: Weiner Talks Progressive, Has Policies That Are Retrogressive

Some of the Democratic candidates for mayor may be getting ready to attack Weiner on two fronts - how ethically challenged he is and what a corporate sell out he is:

Hector Figueroa, president of 32BJ SEIU, which just endorsed Quinn, told the Daily News he viewed Weiner as her top threat.

"We [are] incredibly worried, totally worried about Anthony Weiner ... People are giving [him] the benefit of the doubt. I believe he's just out there for himself," Figueroa said.

"We need to stop Anthony, and I believe if progressive Democrats start to look at the race that way, they are going to come to the same conclusion."

A Weiner campaign spokeswoman declined to comment on Figueroa, who launched into the Weiner attack when asked about Quinn's sinking poll numbers.

Something to watch: The intensity of Figueroa's comments raise the question of whether unions and other surrogates will increasingly be charging -- and spending money -- to assail Weiner's character over the sexting scandal that harpooned his political career in 2011.

 A few candidates, including Republicans Joe Lhota and George McDonald, Democrat Sal Albanese and the Green Party's Tony Gronowicz, have made issue of Weiner's lewd texting and subsequent lies. But most of the field has either mentioned it obliquely or tried to avoid talking about it at all. 

Now that Quinn is undoubtedly feeling the effects of Weiner's attempted comeback (on top of the PAC ads), voters could hear that message get louder through the speaker's supporters.

That lets the candidates themselves to skirt what might be seen as a tawdry subject, yet do damage to Weiner over the character question.

Weiner "is the worst candidate in the Democratic primary," Figueroa raged.

"He's confusing the electorate with a rhetoric that appears to be progressive, but a program that is aboslutely retrogressive," he said. "The scandal itself is going to diminish himself in the eyes of voters. You have to go after him. We certainly want to put that out there," he said.

When you look at Quinn’s falling numbers, “the beneficiary of that is [Weiner,] someone who doesn’t have any kind of accountability,” Figueroa said. “It’s none of the opponents that are attacking Chris [and] were hoping to occupy that space...  He’s going to prevent a decent candidate from emerging in the Democratic primary.”

I agree that Weiner could possibly prevent a decent candidate from emerging from the Democratic primary.

That's why I have been saying for weeks that it's time to attack him on his two most vulnerable fronts - his ethics and his sell-out policies.

He talks a good progressive game, but he's even more of a Bloomberg Mach IV candidate than Quinn is.

Someone needs to get that message out there.

The candidates may want to have union surrogates do the attacks.

That will work just fine.

Look at what those independent attacks did to Quinn.

The point is, it's time to take Anthony and his powder blue pants down a few pegs in the polls.