Mayor Bloomberg had some very nice things to say about City Council Speaker Christine Quinn yesterday on his radio show, but declined to offer an official endorsement of her for mayor just yet.
On Thursday the mayor said he won't be issuing an endorsement until the general election in the autumn.
All of this makes sense.
An endorsement of Quinn now while the Democratic primary is still going on would do little to help her and lots to hurt her.
We'll see where she is come autumn.
Giver her downward poll trajectory, the animosity and hostility she is engendering on the campaign trail, Weiner's potential entrance into the race and Liu's potential exit from the race post-campaign finance fraud trial, it's possible that she may not be standing come autumn as support solidifies around other candidates.
She's the "frontrunner" for now, be she's a paper tiger frontrunner and I think there are two or three scenarios where there is a Democratic runoff in September and Quinn is not a part of that.
Sure you can make a case for a Quinn/Weiner or Quinn/Thompson runoff in September.
But you can also make cases for Weiner/Thompson or Thompson/de Blasio too.
We'll see where her poll numbers are in the next round of polls.
De Blasio has been hitting her very hard lately and she's started to skip more and more mayoral forums.
And of course she still doesn't give out her schedule for fear her personal contingent of protesters will greet her at events.
These are all signs that she has a hard road ahead.
You make sense and I hope you are correct. I still wonder what the UFT will do with the endorsement. Could the UFT support Quinn? The UFT announced it would make an endorsement for the primary and I believe it will be Randi's call as Mulgrew is her hand picked successor. Remember there was much dissatisfaction with the endorsement of Hillary over Obama. Yet, that is how the UFT endorsed in 08. Still the vote in New York did not reflect the UFT position.
ReplyDeleteI am going to address the UFT endorsement in my next post - going up in a little while.
DeleteThe UFT can step up and mobilize voter turn-out.
ReplyDeleteThe UFT should have done this with the UFT officers election last month.
Instead, cynically, their colorful "I Vote" posters have been meant for the fall municipal elections.
Look what happened: the UFT president went to Florida to speak at a retiree luncheon. And he ducked any overtures to debate MORE's Cavanagh. Trying to hide from the election, Mulgrew got a majority retiree turnout in the election.
The p.r. the UFT engages makes me wonder how much dope they smoke before doling out the money for the ads. Many of these ads make little sense, do not get any coherent message across, or do not say anything meaningful.
DeleteMy sense is, they want to create ads that are warm and fuzzy and leave people with good feelings about teachers but not give them any real info about the issues.
In that sense, the ads the UFT makes are just another emblem of an isolated leadership bereft of ideas and soul.
The "I Vote" ads are silly and say nothing. How about ads that say exactly what we expect on education issues out of the next mayor?
(Please link to my new address at nyceye.blogspot.com As you notice, I've frozen adding new material to the old nycityeye.blogspot.com site.)
ReplyDeleteThanks for reminding me of the new address - I've linked to it.
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