It looks like Mayor Bloomberg is in for a very long campaign year.
The mayor got battered last night at a forum in the East New York section of Brooklyn that featured Republican contender Joe Lhota in his first appearance with other candidates.
The former MTA chairman offered carefully constructed responses to questions that focused on affordable housing before a packed audience at the St. Paul Community Baptist Church.
But most of his Democratic rivals, as well as Republican hopeful Tom Allon, unloaded at just about every opportunity at Bloomberg.
“It’s quite possible Mayor Bloomberg does not know what mold is,” mocked Comptroller John Liu when the questioning turned to the city’s response to super-storm Sandy.
All six candidates agreed the city hasn’t done enough to help residents still struggling to recover.
“This is a city administration that wanted to run a marathon while people were just moving into shelters and unfortunately bodies were still being found,” said former Comptroller Bill Thompson.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is closest the the mayor of all those running, said mold removal should have been included in the “rapid repairs” program initiated by the city after a homeowner from Gerritsen Beach said hundreds of homes there might be lost due to spreading contamination.
Bloomberg has said that he doesn’t intend to respond to every single issue raised by his would-be successors.
But Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson felt compelled to tweet last night, “Reality check– Bloomberg at 65-23 (per cent in polls) on Hurricane Sandy performance.”
The harshest attacks on the mayor came during a discussion of the Housing Authority and its embattled chairman, John Rhea.
Public Advocate Bill de Blasio charged that the agency can’t function well “if the mayor doesn’t care about people who live in public housing. There’s an old colorful Sicilian expression that says the fish stinks from the head down.”
Longshot GOP hopeful Tom Allon went him one better by describing Rhea as the “Cathie Black” of housing, a stinging reference to the schools chancellor appointed by the mayor who lasted 96 days.
There’s not much political downside for the Democratic candidates hammering away at Bloomberg before the primary, where the electorate tends to lean to the left and the mayor is an easy target.
The one place where Bloomberg got some credit was his ambitious program to build or rehabilitate 165,000 housing units before he leaves office, the largest such project in the nation.
Every candidate pledged to keep that pace of 15,000 added apartments a year. None explained how they’d paid for them.