Did Joe Lhota And Republicans Poll To See If They Can Use De Blasio's Interracial Marriage Against Him?

The allegation that the Lhota campaign poll-tested a negative message against Bill de Blasio for being married to a black woman first showed up in a Christian Science Monitor article yesterday.

The writer wrote that a GOP operative not affiliated with the campaign but privy to the campaign polling was claiming this was so.

This GOP operative denied he told the CSM reporter anything of the sort, but the CSM reporter stood by his story.

The Christian Science Monitor added two paragraphs to the article after publication that it said were needed for clarification:

The Lhota campaign says there is no truth in Johnson's statement, and expressed outrage on Thursday that the Monitor did not seek to confirm it before publishing such an assertion. "I can say with 100 percent certainty that this question was never polled by our campaign, and this guy has never seen any of our polls," said spokeswoman Jessica Proud, who contacted the Monitor on Thursday after Johnson's claim about internal campaign polling drew attention in the press. "I don’t even know who he is. No one on our campaign knows who he is.”

In three separate followup conversations with the Monitor on Thursday, Johnson affirmed that he was quoted accurately and in the correct context. He did, however, say that he "misspoke" about his sources inside the Lhota campaign and that he had meant to say he "wouldn't be surprised" if there were internal polling about attitudes toward de Blasio's multicultural marriage.]

De Blasio responded to the mess on Al Sharpton's radio show:

I know who Joe Lhota worked for. He worked for Rudy Giuliani. He was the top deputy for Rudy Giuliani when Rudy was dividing this city as a matter of political strategy." De Blasio added, "Let’s face it, you and I went through every minute of the Rudy Giuliani era. We saw the worst appeals to racial bias and division."

Giuliani is a vile racist, make no bones about that.

And Lhota did work for Giuliani.

That said, I don't see how the Lhota campaign could use de Blasio's interracial marriage to their advantage.

Sure, maybe some older voters, especially some older ethnic voters, might be uncomfortable with de Blasio's marriage to a black woman.

I grew up in Irish Rockaway Beach and worked in Italian Mill Basin in the 70's and 80's - I know some of those kinds of folks.

But many of them vote reflexively Republican already anyway - there's no reason to try and use some race-baiting thing against de Blasio with them.

And I just don't buy that anybody in the Lhota campaign would be so stupid as to think this kind of push polling would help them in a general election in 2013.

I'm not saying there aren't racists in the Lhota campaign or the NYC GOP or that Joe Lhota isn't a racist.

I just think they're strategically savvy enough to know they have to get more subtle with their racist messages than to push poll "Did you know Bill de Blasio is married to a black woman and has biracial kids..."

The kind of racism Giuliani got away with in the 1990's Lhota would not get away with in 2013.

You have to work with more subtlety these days - like Bloomberg does.

Still, the fact that we're even talking about this story goes to show you how Lhota's past in the Giuliani administration is a double-edged sword.

Sure, in some ways that listing on his resume helps him.

But in some ways, that listing on his resume hurts him too.