In a likely mayoral race between Joe Lhota and Bill “Two Cities” de Blasio, you’d think the furthest left-leaning candidate in the leftier-than-thou Democratic field would be the opponent offering Lhota his best, slim hope of winning. But in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 6-1, de Blasio is poised to eat Lhota’s lunch. Lhota must stop reciting old news like an MTA technocrat, get the cobwebs out of his throat and really start reminding voters what’s at stake.
If he isn’t up to delivering his message more passionately and impolitely than he’s done, he’s no more fit to be mayor than de Blasio is. So far, he’s played patty-cake when he needs to go brass-knuckles.
At a recent event, I heard Lhota plod through vague promises to be tough on crime and strong on education — the rote pablum of an MTA bureaucrat that’s fine for an adoring crowd but not for the unforgiving rough-and-tumble of a mayoral race.
Wake up, Lhota speechwriters: His message needs more urgency and detail — and instantly understandable sound bites which speak not only to the threat of crime, but to the city’s ominous fiscal plight.
Lhota must tell his story persuasively and passionately, especially in the debates scheduled for Oct. 22 and Oct. 29. He can learn from a zinger by otherwise hapless John Catsimaditis, “We can’t have public-sector workers working for 20 years and then retired for 49 years.”
De Blasio’s way-out stance should make him more vulnerable to a strong Lhota campaign than Christine Quinn or Bill Thompson would be. Neither is a polarizing figure. Both have been on the scene for so long as to seem unthreatening even to detractors. Either might whip Lhota on familiarity alone.
But de Blasio’s relative freshness after years of public advocate obscurity has galvanized novelty-seekers. They might overlook that New York City’s fortunes ride national and global winds beyond any mayor’s ability to influence, and de Blasio’s wealth-redistribution agenda lies outside the scope of a job whose mission is to keep the streets safe and the municipality from going broke. It’s only slightly less alarming that the office lacks authority to tax the “rich” in order to gift the 53% of households already spared having to pay state or city income taxes.
New York is a world city in competition with London and Shanghai, a fact that seems not to interest de Blasio in the least. Yet Lhota seems chicken to impress upon voters what de Blasio’s agenda would mean. Lhota has fear, legitimate fear, in his corner. He should send the beast snorting into the ring.
Yes, crime is at historic lows, viable new neighborhoods are popping up everywhere, tourism is booming and more people are moving into town than moving out for the first time in eons. Many hundreds fewer of lower-income New Yorkers die from violence each year than was the case not long ago, and a smaller percentage of the population lives below the poverty line than in 1991 (20% now versus 25% then).
But it should be a breeze to convey how fragile this is, and that a return to the old days would hurt the poor more than it would those better off. Lhota has yet to do that. His years working in Giuliani’s City Hall surely taught him a mayoral race is no MTA board meeting. It’s time for him to act like he knows it.