How'd That Ballot Line Thing Work Out For Students First?

The corporate education reform group Students First had their own ballot line this year - Joe Lhota was on it.

How many votes did Lhota get on the Students First line?

765 votes.

Not exactly a rousing success for either Students First or Joe Lhota.

Bill de Blasio was on the Working Families Party line as well as the Democratic ballot line.

De Blasio received 40,000 votes on the WFP line.

Vote De Blasio, James, No To Gambling

Let's go back to last April as Anthony Weiner was getting ready to enter the race for City Hall.

Christine Quinn was firmly in front of all other candidates, the Anybody But Quinn group had just launched their advertising campaign against Quinn but the ads had yet to do real damage to her, Thompson and de Blasio were well behind Quinn in low double digits.

Then Weiner jumped into the race, the ABQ ads did real damage to Quinn, and Weiner went in front in a couple of polls.

At that point, we were looking at a Quinn/Weiner runoff to take on Joe Lhota in the general election.

It was a nightmare if you were looking for some kind of break from the Bloomberg years - Quinn was Bloomberg Mach IV, Weiner's big platform was sticking it to the unions on health care and ratcheting up the suspensions in NYC schools, and Lhota bragged he would double the number of charter schools and add even more reforminess to an already over-reformy NYC school system.

And then came another Weiner scandal and suddenly he was destroyed as a viable candidate.

The race was wide open again - Quinn had been exposed as a Glass Tiger Frontrunner, Weiner had been exposed as a serial perv, and Thompson and de Blasio now had an actual shot to win the race.

De Blasio, having staked out the left positions in the race, particularly on stop-and-frisk and the economy, began to make headway in the race.

His ads helped a lot - especially the Dante ad.

But the weakness of the opposition helped too - Quinn had a dedicated following of protesters and negatives as big as her ego, Weiner had a sex addiction and Thompson had staked out the middle ground in the race like he was already the Dem nominee looking to win GOP votes in Staten Island.

Thompson's stance of stop-and-frisk was so muddled that Al Sharpton said he had no idea where Thompson stood on the issue - and that hurt Thompson badly and helped de Blasio as well.

De Blasio ran the best campaign by far - he staked out savvy positions that put him in opposition to Bloomberg  (a good place to be after three Bloomberg terms), he stuck to those positions, he didn't panic when he got little traction in the race through July, he used his family to great advantage in his ads, and he got a lot of help from the opposition.

And now Election Day is upon us and we look upon a de Blasio mayorality.

The polls have de Blasio up somewhere between 35 and 40 percentage points.

Go out and vote for Bill de Blasio anyway, just to run the score up as much as you can for de Blasio.

Let's see a 30+ percentage point win for de Blasio, the "progressive" candidate.

While you're at it, vote against Cuomo's gambling initiative, vote for Tish James the progressive public advocate candidate, and let's enjoy an Election Night like we haven't enjoyed in a long, long time.

Perhaps like we haven't enjoyed since 2008.

That "progressive" candidate we voted for in 2008 turned out to be a neo-liberal corporatist who talked a good progressive game but governed like a winger.

There are no guarantees that won't happen with de Blasio.

He did meet with anti-union, anti-teacher, pro-Satan Rahm Emanuel over the weekend to talk "transition and urban affairs," something that gives me pause to wonder just how de Blasio will govern post-Election.

But we'll hold him accountable if he turns out to govern like Obama or Emanuel and make him pay for that kind of betrayal.

For now, be happy that we got the very best candidate this election cycle, one we had no expectation we would get back in mid-July when the race looked like it was Weiner or Quinn to take on Lhota.

Happy Election Day - enjoy your PD, then enjoy the returns.

We'll be here for Election Night coverage, of course.

And we'll definitely be here for Inauguration Day and that last Bloomberg flight out of NYC to Bermuda.

De Blasio Still Up Big

Joe Lhota never closed the gap:

Bill de Blasio is poised to win the race for mayor of New York City by a historically large margin, powered by optimism that he will bring about change and by overwhelming voter disapproval of the Republican Party. 

Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat who is currently the public advocate, leads his Republican opponent, Joseph J. Lhota, a former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, by 45 points among likely voters, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll. That lead, which has remained remarkably consistent in multiple polls over the last six weeks, suggests that Mr. de Blasio could win the most sweeping victory in a mayor’s race since 1985, when Edward I. Koch was re-elected to a third term with a crushing 68-point margin of victory over his opponents. 

Mr. de Blasio’s overwhelming lead in poll after poll has sent students of local politics scrambling for the history books. Although Mr. de Blasio is unlikely to surpass Mr. Koch’s re-election margin, he is flirting with a record win for a non-incumbent; that record is currently held by Abraham D. Beame, who won election in 1973 with a 40-point victory margin, the largest in an open race since five-borough elections began in 1897.

 A little more than three months ago, we were still looking at a Weiner/Quinn runoff.

My, how things changed.

Quinnipiac Poll: 53% Say Do Not Add More Charter Schools

Buried in the crosstabs of the Quinnipiac poll on the NYC mayoral race released tonight is this question:

As you may know, charter schools are operated by private or non-profit organizations.The schools are paid for with public funds and do not charge tuition. Do you think the next Mayor should increase the number of charter schools, decrease the number of charter schools, or keep the number of charter schools the same?

The response - 39% say increase charters, 18% say decrease charters, 35% say keep the number the same.

For those of you scoring at home, that would mean that 53% of those polled want the number of charter schools to either stay the same or decrease, 39% want to see the number increase.

On rent, we get this question:

Do you think charter schools should be required to pay rent when they are located in New York City public school buildings or not?

47% say yes, charter schools should pay rent, 43% say no, they shouldn't pay rent, 10% responded with don't know.

The NY Times had similar questions in their poll a while back and framed their story about that poll as "NYer's like de Blasio, don't like his stances on education and other issues."

From this Quinnipiac poll, you can see that a majority of NYers agree with de Blasio's position to halt the spread of charter schools in the system and a plurality agree that charters should pay rent.

Overall in the poll, de Blasio leads Lhota by 44 percentage points.

Election Day is in two weeks.

Lhota And De Blasio Agree - NYC Schools Should Be Closed On Muslim Holidays

From the Daily News:

No matter who is elected mayor next month, city kids will likely find two new vacation days on the school calendar: Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, the holiest days of the Muslim year.

Both Democrat Bill de Blasio and Republican Joe Lhota say schools should close on the two holidays, just as they do for major Jewish and Christian days.

It's a matter of "respect" for a religion practiced by an estimated 13 percent of city school kids, de Blasio said Wednesday at a campaign rally with Muslim groups in Brooklyn.

...

 

Lhota said he's been calling for to close schools on the two days throughout his campaign. "We have a growing Muslim community in the city of New York and their religion needs to be respected as all other religions are respected," he said Wednesday.

Lhota says the school year will be extended by two days to accommodate adding the Muslim holidays.

Bloomberg said he was opposed to adding thew Muslim holidays to the calendar because "the truth of the matter is we need more school days, not less."

Joe Lhota Says New Yorkers Will Die If Bill De Blasio Is Elected Mayor

No, seriously - that's what he says in a new ad:



So vote for Joe Lhota so we all can be safe - like back in the day.

This day, for example::


There, don't you feel safer already?

I know I do.

Lhota sounds a little like Benito, doesn't he?

He certainly puts out the propaganda like Il Duce, that's for sure.

De Blasio Has 44 Point Lead Over Lhota In Marist Poll

Still a blowout:

Democrat Bill de Blasio has a powerful 44-point lead over Republican Joe Lhota in the race for mayor, according to a Wall Street Journal-NBC 4-Marist poll released Thursday.

"It's about as lopsided as you can envision," Marist's Lee Miringoff told the Journal. "Lhota is not a force at this point."

43% have an unfavorable view of Lhota, only 32% favorable.

De Blasio has a 65% favorable rating.

2/3rds of New Yorkers want the city to go in a different direction from where Bloomberg took it.

A bad poll for Bloomberg, a bad poll for the GOP.

The Wall Street and real estate criminals have given up sending money Lhota's way.

This poll won't change that.

The Charter School Question In The NY Times/Siena Poll

The NY Times is hawking a Siena poll today that shows Bill de Blaiso with a 50 percentage point lead over Joe Lhota, but says the poll shows notes of caution for de Blasio because some of his signature policy positions are in opposition to what a majority of New Yorkers feel about things.

One of those policy positions is on charter schools.

The Times asks "Do you support or oppose the creation of more charter schools?"

De Blasio Up 50 Percentage Points In Q Poll

I thought the race would tighten, especially after all the attacks on de Blasio.

Judging by thenumbers in the new Q-poll, I was wrong about that:

Democrat Bill de Blasio is leading Joe Lhota 71-21% among likely voters in a Quinnipiac Poll released Thursday morning, a stunning 50-point lead that could prove difficult to overcome with just weeks to go in the mayor's race.

De Blasio Very Skillfully Ties Lhota To The Tea Party

Last night I posed that I thought de Blasio should attack Joe Lhota for his temperament rather than his past allegiance to Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley Jr., saying that many New Yorkers may not care about Conservative icons from the past and what Lhota's allegiance to them says about his candidacy.

But de Blasio managed to hit Lhota over this yesterday very skillfully:

The Mayor's Race - Where It Stands In Early October

The last two polls taken in the mayor's race and released a few days after the primary election showed Bill de Blasio beating his GOP opponent Joe Lhota by 43 and 41 percentage points respectively.

Expect the next slate of mayoral polls that come out to show a bit of a closer race.

Teachers With Stockholm Syndrome

Lhota tells NYC teacher there's no $ for retroactive pay. Teacher thanks him for honesty, "convinces me more you are the man for the job"
— Mike Grynbaum (@grynbaum) September 30, 2013

Nothing to say here other than this unnamed teacher is one of the dumbest people on the planet.

Lhota says there's money for tax cuts for rich people.

But those years you teachers went without a contract because Boomberg refused to negotiate fairly?

Nope - no money for that.

Golly gee, Mr. Lhotta, thanks for your honesty!

Bet this teacher voted for Bloomberg three times running too.

Rudy Giuliani Loved To Call People Marxists Too

Jill Colvin at Politicker discovered that Joe Lhota's "De Blasio's A Marxist" campaign strategy is old hat for Lhota - his boss back in the 90's loved to do it too:

In the late 90s, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani–under whom Mr. Lhota served as budget director and deputy mayor–constantly made similar allegations, accusing those who opposed him of subscribing to dangerous, leftist ideologies, according to reports from the time.

“A decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall signaled the swift collapse of communism’s Evil Empire, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is still darkly wary of Marxist influence in the nooks and crannies of the city,” the New York Times wrote in a 1999 piece entitled “Giuliani’s Hunt for Red Menaces.” Mr. Giuliani reportedly “discerned a sinister Marxist tinge to a wide variety of enemies, from the paradoxically well-organized anarchists who sacked a Starbucks in Seattle to the gardeners who plant flowers in the city’s vacant lots.”

In one such instance, Mr. Giuliani, on the heels of reaching a tentative deal to prevent a strike by the Transport Workers Union, told those gathered at a City Hall press conference that, “a week ago I said that Marxism unfortunately is still alive in parts of New York City even in the latter part of this century even though it’s been disgraced all over the world.”

In another instance, Mr. Giuliani suggested that members of a group concerned about the city’s growing reliance on private funding to maintain city parks had been influenced by “a very, very extreme radical political outlook on the world.”

“It probably comes out of spending some time in school in the 40′s or 50′s studying Marxism or something,” he said, according to the paper.

When Mr. Giuliani criticized Seattle’s anti-World Trade Organization demonstrations, he further bemoaned “the remaining damage that Marxism has done to the thinking of people.” Asked later about his remarks, the former mayor said the comments had to do with “the whole notion of class warfare, which really comes out of the teaching of Karl Marx, trying to divide people into different classes.”

The charges continued as Mr. Giuliani was running for president in 2008, when he labeled the Democratic candidates’ health care plans “heavily influenced by Marxism,” according to the New York Post.

Smear and fear, smear and fear, smear and fear...

It's a classic Republican tactic, dating back to McCarthy and Nixon in the 40's and 50's:

 Baruch College professor Doug Muzzio said the strategy reminded him very much of Mr. Giuliani.

“It’s part of the playbook. It’s the fear mongering and the aliens are going to take over,” Mr. Muzzio explained, slamming the tactic as “dumb” and ineffective. “He shouldn’t be using it at all.”

We'll see in the next slate of polls if it helped Lhota, helped de Blasio or made no difference.

The NY Post And The Lhota Campaign - Selling Fear And Lies

The Rupert Murdoch-owned NY Post has been hammering away at Bill de Blasio for a few weeks now ever since he won the primary vote.

Every day they run two, three, four, sometimes five negative stories about him.

He once asked Joel Klein to add TM to the DOE.

He honeymooned in Cuba.

He worked for a Jesuit group that brought food and medical supplies to Nicaragua at the same time the Reagan administration was arming the Contras with weapons.

He will rule NYC like Raul Castro rules Cuba.

On and on it goes, the Post smearing de Blasio as leftwing commie pinko who will turn the city into Cuba, taking away private property and turning the public parks into re-education centers.

It's silly and I don't know how many people outside of the couple of hundred people who actually buy and read the Post will believe any of this stuff (the Post loses over $100 million a year and their "circulation numbers are about as believable as Rupert Murdoch's claims he didn't know his reporters were hacking into people's phones and bribing cops for stories in Britain.)

Still, it's gets tiresome after a while.

You couple the Post stories with Joe Lhota's "De Blasio is a Marxist" campaign strategy and you see two more examples of how the Republicans have run their campaigns since Nixon - divide and conquer, Southern strategy, appeal to the worst in people, sell fear, etc.

Smear, smear, smear, lie, lie, lie.

Today the Posties get a picture of de Blasio from his NYU yearbook and use it to, again, smear him as a left wing commie pinko.

Ooooh, look at the radical Sixties man.

He protested Three Mile Island and nuclear power man.

He's freaky, man...

This stuff just shows how vacuous the right wing is - bereft of policies that will appeal to people, they use fear and smear, fear and smear.

Fear and smear.

When Does The NY Times Do The Hit Piece On Joe Lhota?

They did one on Quinn.

Did one on Weiner.

Did one on Thompson.

Now they've done one on de Blasio.

When do they do one on Lhota?

As I have blogged over and over and over, this guy's got anger management issues.

He challenged a 77 year old man to a fight last year at an MTA board meeting he was chairing.

No, really.

Back during the Giuliani administration, he got into a shoving match with a reporter right outside City Hall.

Those are the two stories we know about.

I bet there are more.

Wouldn't it be nice if the Times looked into it?

They've done their hit pieces on every other candidate.

Isn't it time Joe Lhota gets his 15 minutes?

Michael Powell: Lhota Has Jumped The Shark

Michael Powell in the Times:

“Mr. de Blasio’s involvement with the Sandinistas didn’t happen in 1917” — This is a reference to the Bolsheviks’ storming of the Winter Palace and not the last time the Jets won the Super Bowl — “it happened 70 years later when the cruelty and intrinsic failure of Communism became 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.”



With this statement, Mr. Lhota not only jumped the shark, he rode a Great White bareback through New York harbor.

It’s hard to know where to start.

As a resident of haute bourgeois Park Slope and the owner of a rapidly appreciating row house, the middle-aged Mr. de Blasio seems unlikely to embrace property expropriation. As a former Little League coach, he also seems not likely to turn Prospect Park’s baseball fields into collective farms, although if he does, organic kale might be found on every plate in the city.

His children, it’s true, appear to have attended the Park Slope Child Care Collective. But the tykes favored “Baby Beluga” over the Red Army anthem.

He is a Boston Red Sox fan, which may or may not be in that Marxist playbook but is perhaps cause for immediate suspicion by Yankee fans. He once self-identified as a democratic socialist, which would put him in the same ideological column as Golda Meir, Moishe Dayan, Willie Brandt and François Mitterrand.

And more or less all of those social democrats stood up to and argued vociferously with the hard left, including Communists.

Lastly, as to those Sandinistas: This was a complicated revolutionary movement. A remarkably diverse coalition at first, it overthrew a cruel dictator. The leadership included some Communists, as well as social democrats and priests.

Some of its key leaders harbored unfortunate authoritarian tendencies. They stood – a touch reluctantly – for two elections deemed fair by many foreign observers. After it was defeated in that second election, in 1990, the movement shifted into the democratic opposition. Whatever their failings, the Sandinistas did not impose a repressive regime on their impoverished Central American nation. There was no mass jailing of opponents nor mass execution of opposing soldiers.

Quite a few liberal-left students and young people in the 1980s supported revolutionary movements in Central America. They may have been more than a touch naïve about the nature of these movements, but they at least realized that these nations had suffered terribly at the hands of United States-supported dictators.

As Powell notes in the Times column, Lhota has a whole 178 words devoted to policy on his website.

NYC Educator wrote in a comment:

 Wow. 178 words is maybe a blog. How often do you and I come up with something like that?

More than Lhota does, that's for sure.

Unless he's accusing de Blasio of being a Red, that is.

Then he finds it easy to hit his 178+ word count.

De Blasio - 74 Page Policy Document; Joe Lhota - 178 Words On Policy

Lhota is so busy refighting the 80's Contra Wars he can't be bothered to give any details about how he would govern as mayor:

On the radio Wednesday morning, Republican mayoral candidate Joseph Lhota kept up his attack on Democratic rival Bill de Blasio's youthful dalliances as a pro-Sandinista leftist.

"It's about your inner-core feelings. It's about your personal philosophy," he said on WOR's "The John Gambling Show". "We need to understand how people think, especially if we're going to put our children in their hands."

Voters who are considering putting their children in Mr. Lhota's hands would be hard-pressed, though, to figure out what the Republican candidate thinks about transit, education, economic development or taxes, let alone 1980s-era Central American conflicts.

Unlike Mr. de Blasio, who in June released a 74-page policy book packed with ideas big (tax increases) and small (protecting pet-owning seniors), Mr. Lhota's campaign has yet to lay out his ideas and policy prescriptions for New York. He regularly cites his service as deputy mayor for operations under Rudy Giuliani as his biggest selling point, but his campaign website is practically bare.

Mr. Lhota lists four headings under the "priorities" tab of his site: jobs and the economy, education, public safety, and government efficiency and fiscal responsibility. Each is described with bullet points of roughly 40 words, for a grand total of 178 words.

"Diversify our economy and provide an environment conducive to job creation and the elevation of the standard of living in all five boroughs," it reads under the jobs-and-economy heading.

(New York Times columnist Michael Powell noted Tuesday that Mr. Lhota's denouncement of Mr. de Blasio's leftist past is "notably longer and more detailed than the sections of his website devoted to public safety, education and the police.")

In contrast, Mr. Lhota's main rival in the GOP primary, grocery magnate John Catsimatidis—who was not known for his expert command of municipal issues—posted two six-page policy papers on his website, one on education and the other on small-business development.

That may change next week, when the campaign says it will release, in great detail, Mr. Lhota's vision for the city.

"We are in the process of compiling all of Joe's ideas and policy proposals into a user-friendly book that New Yorkers can go to, to learn how he will move the city forward," a spokeswoman said. "We will be unveiling it to the public in the coming days. Voters will have a clear choice in the philosophies and positions laid forth by the candidates and Joe's message of job growth and common-sense change that will resonate in all five boroughs."

Next week?

How long has Lhota been running?

He announced his candidacy last January.

That's nine months ago.

And all he has is bullet points on website that cover his policy ideas - a total of 178 words?

Gee, don't rush or anything getting those policy ideas together, Mr. Lhota.

I mean, there are so many more important things to do, like smear your opponent as a Marxist over and over and over...

Bill De Blasio Explains His Work In Nicaragua Back In The 80's

Dana Rubenstein at Capital NY:

De Blasio has stood by his support for the Sandinistas, but he hadn't gone into particular depth about it until today, at an appearance with fire union leader Steve Cassidy, who had just endorsed him.

"A lot of us in this country believe that the United States policies towards Central America in the 1980s were wrong," said de Blasio. "By the way, the organization I worked with was founded by Jesuits. As you may know, a lot of the work being done on the ground to help needy people in Central America was done by leaders in the Catholic Church, it was done by nuns. And the sense of injustice that was so obvious in terms of United States policies supporting regimes that were in many cases very unfair to their own people. That’s why I got involved because I thought our policies were wrong."

"The organization I worked with that is talked about in that article literally collected medical supplies, clothing, and sent it to a non-profit in Nicaragua to get it to needy people who were obviously affected by the environment of war surrounding their country that was being supported by the U.S. government," he continued. "So, I think it was the right thing to do. I am very proud of that work. And by the way, over time, the majority of the United States people came to believe that our policies were wrong and that finally is what changed our policies."

Given his activism on the Nicaragua issue, his welcoming of Robert Mugabe to City Hall back in 2002 (something he has since apologized for) and his participation in a recent press conference denouncing Iran, I asked him what role he thinks the mayor of New York City should play in foreign policy debates.

"I think we are an international city by definition, and the most diverse, or one of the most diverse, cities on earth," he said. "The United Nations happens to be located here. There’s a lot of reasons why it’s natural, but it pales in comparison to the work we have to do here at home in our neighborhoods. So from time to time it will be pertinent, especially during U.N. week for example. But no, I think the singular focus of the next mayor has to be to addressing inequalities of the city and that goes right down to the grassroots, neighborhood by neighborhood."

That's a good response from de Blasio. 

Frankly, it should have come yesterday, but I'll take it today too.

For two days the de Blasio campaign has been off message while the Lhota campaign and the three corporatist newspapers in this city hammered him as "Sandanista Bill."

This explanation should put the whole Nicaragua thing to rest.

If I were de Blasio, I might have added one thing:

I was bringing food, clothing and medical aid to people suffering while the CIA and Reagan administration were bringing guns and other weapons to murder people.

Which side would you have been on?

I think I was on the right side.

Which side do you think Joe Lhota would have helped?

Bloomberg Red-Baited Mark Green Back In 2001

Republicans are calling Bill de Blasio "Sandanista Bill" and likening him to an "ACORN project" Manchurian-style candidate.

Odd that we're talking about 1982 foreign policy in a 2103 NYC mayoral race.

Odder still that we're talking about a 1962 Frank Sinatra movie in a 2013 NYC mayoral race.

But 2013 would not be the first time that a GOP mayoral candidate red-baited a Democratic opponent who was leading in the polls.

Bloomberg did it in 2001 - only he went back beyond the 1980's and the Contra Wars:

In 2001, Bloomberg campaign, down in polls, accused Mark Green of defending Stalin. h/t @MichaelHwrdSaul http://t.co/7NOXWWi6Zs
— Kate Taylor (@katetaylornyt) September 24, 2013

And indeed, here is that story from the Daily News back in 2001:

Mayoral candidate Michael Bloomberg is shifting tactics, going on the attack by branding Mark Green as anti-cop, anti-business and - in an unexpected throwback to the 1950s - a defender of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Bloomberg's offensive began when the Democratic Party united behind Green, and it reached new heights yesterday, when a top Bloomberg aide shadowed the public advocate at a forum and repeatedly trashed him afterward. "He once tried to denigrate Ronald Reagan by praising Joseph Stalin," aide Bill Cunningham told reporters. Green aide Joe DePlasco called the attacks a sign of desperation, adding, "This is complete crap and they know it.

" Bloomberg's shift comes as the campaign's dynamics are working against him. The election is in two weeks, and voters' preoccupation with anthrax, Afghanistan and the Yankees makes it hard for him to grab their attention and overcome Green's double-digit lead in the polls. Trading barbs And any lift Mayor Giuliani could provide does not seem imminent. Asked when he will endorse the media mogul, Giuliani said yesterday, "Obviously, not right now. . . . That is not at the center of what I am doing every day.

" The focus of Bloomberg's offensive is to question Green's move to the political center and paint him as a pol who will say anything to win. "Mark is a very liberal, leftist kind of guy," the GOP candidate said yesterday. "He has never been pro-business, and he has never been pro-law enforcement, and the record shows that and he may be trying to reinvent himself to something he isn't.

" Cunningham trashed Green after the public advocate spoke to 300 business and civic leaders at a Crain's New York breakfast. Cunningham cited a passage from Green's 1982 book, "Winning Back America," that he said "applauded Joseph Stalin.

" Green wrote that then-President Reagan had a tendency to "rewrite history" for political purposes. "Reagan said he knew of 'no leader of the Soviet Union since the revolution' whose aim was not world revolution, a view which ignores a Soviet leader named Joseph Stalin, who pushed for 'socialism in one country' instead of Leon Trotsky's approach of 'world revolution.

' " Green responded yesterday, "I have no memory of writing that, and it is irrelevant.

They keep going back to the same old well when they're down in the polls - smear, smear, smear, red-bait, red-bait, red-bait.

Hard to know what effect this stuff will have on the race, but it does have de Blasio on the defensive and it goes right at his "Tale of Two Cities" campaign rhetoric.  

Now when de Blasio says this campaign is about a "Tale of Two Cities," Republicans are hoping the two cities voters think about are Washington and Managua.

Lhota Criticizes De Blasio As A Socialist

Well, if you can't run on issues, you can always red bait:

Bill de Blasio’s not ready to overthrow capitalism just yet.

Asked to respond to Republican mayoral rival Joe Lhota’s “Democratic socialist” hit, Mr. de Blasio wasted no time firing back, accusing Mr. Lhota of running a typical right-wing smear campaign.

“I am not surprised that my opponents will throw labels and call names. That’s a Republican tactic. That’s a right-wing tactic. We’ve all seen it plenty of times,” said Mr. de Blasio, flanked by Queens Democrats at an endorsement event this afternoon.

“I’m very proud to be a progressive,” he added. “I’m very proud to be a Democrat.”

Mr. Lhota’s charge stemmed from today’s front-page New York Times story, in which one of Mr. de Blasio’s former associates recalled that the public advocate once described his political views as “Democratic socialist.” Mr. Lhota called Mr. de Blasio’s alleged views “really unfortunate” and criticized him for supporting Nicaraguan revolutionaries and traveling to Cuba.

Lhota also criticized de Blasio for enjoying The Clash's Sandanista album over London Calling or Combat Rock, stating "Everybody knows Sandanista was bloated.  It should have been a single album, but they made it into a triple album.  I mean, for God sakes, having the roadie's kid sing "Career Opportunities?  What the hell is that?"

The de Blasio campaign had no comment.