Bill de Blasio claims his wide margin of victory in last year’s election gives him a “mandate” to raise taxes. Only one problem with this argument: Gov. Cuomo won more votes in the city while campaigning against tax hikes.
“I have a very clear mandate from the people,” de Blasio says. “I happened to win my election with 73 percent of the vote.” And higher taxes to pay for pre-k classes, he adds, “was my central platform plank.”
Yes, de Blasio did get 73 percent to vote for him after a campaign in which he vowed repeatedly to raise taxes on the wealthy. That worked out to 795,000 votes. But in his own election as governor, Andrew Cuomo won the votes of 1.1 million New York City residents after a campaign in which he declared taxes too high.
In this race, Cuomo was just as unequivocal for his position as de Blasio was for his. Here’s how Cuomo put it back then: “You have no great economic future if you’re the highest-taxed state in the nation. Period.”
Cuomo was particularly critical of taxing the rich: “At what point do the rich people say, ‘I’m moving’?” he asked.
Which leads us to ask the obvious: Who has the bigger mandate?
And if de Blasio wants to talk percentages, we have two more for him. First, Cuomo received 38 percent more New York City votes for governor than de Blasio did for mayor. Second, in last year’s mayoral contest, three out of four registered voters never went to the polls. That means more than 81 percent of New York City’s registered voters did not vote for de Blasio.
De Blasio insists that “the people” want the tax hike and that “the voice of the people matters.” We certainly agree with listening to the people.
But if you do the math on how Gotham voted, the governor has a much better claim to a mandate against raising taxes than the mayor has for raising them.