Gop mayoral hopeful Joe Lhota blasted rival John Catsimatidis on Sunday for having a “disturbing relationship with the truth’’ after the billionaire businessman said the former deputy mayor bungled the city’s preparations for a terror attack before 9/11.
Catsimatidis said Lhota never should have allowed New York’s emergency command center to be relocated to 7 World Trade Center, where, he said, fuel was stored on a “high floor.’’
Lhota shot back that the building, which was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, was good enough for the CIA and Secret Service, which also had offices there.
The ex-MTA chief, who served under Rudy Giuliani, added that the fuel for the tower was located on the third floor, which isn’t all that high.
The exchange came during the final Republican mayoral debate, televised on WNBC/Channel 4.
The debate took place two hours after Giuliani joined Lhota at his campaign headquarters.
“This is the man who helped me and the city get through Sept. 11 — that’s a qualification that nobody else has,” Giuliani said.
During the debate, Lhota repeatedly emphasized his government service, while Catsimatidis claimed mysteriously that he couldn’t divulge his own.
“I served in government in various ways that I choose not to talk about,” Catsimatidis said.
Meanwhile, both candidates defended the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy.
Asked what he would do if his son were stopped, Catsimatidis replied that he’d ask if he was “walking with his pants half-down or hat on backwards, or drunk.’’
He said, though, that stop-and-frisk should be put to a public referendum.
Both said they would push to keep Ray Kelly as police commissioner, or ask him to consult on his replacement if he wouldn’t stay.
Catsimatidis said he’d beat the Democratic candidate because “I have a love factor with minorities. They all give me hugs.’’
The most entertaining moment came as Lhota was asked to explain his stance as the “anti-kitten candidate” for saying that he would not have stopped subway trains to save cats on the the tracks last week.
“I’m not the anti-kitten candidate!” he insisted with all seriousness. “I never said I wanted to kill a cat.”
“But I know too much,” he said. “We have thousands of cats, literally thousands of cats that are in the subway system day and night, scurrying across the tracks, and they don’t get killed.’’
Catsimatidis, who often goes by the shortened “Cats,” pounced on the moment to play off his name. “I thought you hate cats. You love this Cats, yeah.”