In the two most important races for this city — city comptroller and mayor — New Yorkers used Tuesday’s primaries to squash Eliot Spitzer’s hopes for the former while setting up a clear choice between competing visions in the November election for mayor.
The defeat for Spitzer means the city dodges a huge bullet. In backing Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer over Client 9, voters picked up on the many warnings, particularly in The Post, about Spitzer’s plans to use the powers of that office not to safeguard the interests of New Yorkers, but to resurrect his own political career.
Stringer, a conventional liberal backed heavily by labor, will now take on a fresh-faced, African-American outsider — John Burnett — who’s running as a Republican.
It will be a heavy lift for Burnett, because he’s not well-known and because Democrats outnumber Republicans in this city 6 to 1. His attraction is that in overseeing the city’s $140 billion in pension funds he has the right priorities: value for taxpayer dollars.
In the race for mayor, meanwhile, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio leads handily, though it isn’t clear if he will top the 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff against Bill Thompson. What is clear is that the Democratic primary became a mad dash to the left, with de Blasio leading the way. He vows to hike taxes, keep failing schools open, kowtow to labor and crack down on cops.
And a runoff would be a fight over who’s more liberal. This massive Democratic lurch to the left creates an opening for the winner of Tuesday’s Republican mayoral primary, ex-MTA Chairman Joe Lhota.
Lhota can now concentrate on showing how the Dems’ plans will hurt job-seekers, sock taxpayers, put New Yorkers at greater risk of crime and cheat students of a decent education. Whatever else the primaries mean, it will make the choice for mayor come November a real one.