Advocates hoping to swing the election by urging voters to elect “Anybody but Quinn” gathered across the street from the closed St. Vincent’s Hospital this evening for a get-out-the-vote rally they billed as an early “retirement party” for City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
The event–which included the presentation of a series of mock parting gifts in honor of Ms. Quinn’s desired departure, including a “term limit-less watch from Rolex, so that Quinn will be reminded that her time is up”–came just hours after the release of the latest mayoral poll, which cast Bill de Blasio as the clear front-runner in the mayor’s race, with 36 percent of the vote, versus just 21 percent for Ms. Quinn. Attendees greeted the news with glee.
“I got tears in my eyes,” said Brian Gari, 61, who was one of the more than 100 supporters who turned up for the event and cheered as the results were announced. “I’m thrilled beyond belief.”
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The campaign, run by a political committee called “New York City is Not for Sale” and founded by members of the anti-horse carriage group NYCLASS and other advocates, has already spent more than $770,000 on its anti-Quinn efforts–the largest independent expenditure of the mayor’s race, according to the city’s Campaign Finance Board.
And the group believes its efforts, including a negative ad campaign on television, are the primary reason why Ms. Quinn is no longer the front-runner in the race. “We are the single most important factor in her rise in negatives and her drop in the polls. There’s not a doubt in my mind,” said Scott Levenson, president of the Advance Group, which is running the campaign.
The "New York City is Not for Sale" folks launched the first negative ad of the campaign against Quinn back in April with a $250,000 ad buy.
That ad was memorable:
It was in March/April that Quinn's poll numbers began to slide.
"New York City is Not for Sale" continued to hammer Quinn from April onward.
You can make a pretty good argument that Quinn was never able to counter the "New York City is Not for Sale" ad and hasn't been able to recover since.
She has made a lot of enemies over the years.
Many of those ABQ people are former Quinn supporters who feel betrayed by her over various issues.
Quinn's arrogance blinded her to the danger that the ABQ people posed to her.
I'm not ready to declare her dead just yet, but she hasn't been able to get above 27% in the last 13 of 14 polls released, she's getting hammered in runoff matchups against either de Blasio or Thompson and all these newspaper endorsements and political endorsements and union endorsements haven't seemed to move the needle for her yet.
If Christine Quinn misses the runoff or makes the runoff but loses to either de Blasio or Thompson, we can thank "New York City is Not for Sale" for doing so much damage to her candidacy.
