The two leading candidates for mayor drew sharply distinct visions for the future of the city Tuesday night — jousting over job creation, crime reduction and charter schools in a testy televised debate.
Throughout their first showdown, Democratic nominee Bill de Blasio repeatedly depicted GOP hopeful Joe Lhota as a closet member of the Tea Party, while Lhota sought to define himself by decades of public- and private-sector experience.
“What’s important to understand is that I’ve been there before and I’ve done it,” said Lhota, who ticked off his roles as city budget director, deputy mayor, MTA chairman and longtime corporate executive.
“I can be mayor on day one without any training, without any learning curve whatsoever,” he added. “And I believe that distinguishes me in this race.”
But de Blasio said the problem with Lhota wasn’t a lack of experience, it was having a game plan and values ripped from the “Republican playbook.”
“Yes, Mr. Lhota was the top aide to Rudolph Giuliani — the most divisive administration we’ve seen in decades . . . and Mr. Lhota had a ringside seat helping to make that happen,” de Blasio charged.
Lhota, who is trailing by more than 40 points in the polls, came off as well-prepared and knowledgeable — but he didn’t score the knockout punch needed to make a major dent in de Blasio’s lead.
Emphasizing his strong support for the NYPD, Lhota doubled down on his experience combating crime, saying that New York “might be less safe with him [de Blasio] because he’s untested.”
De Blasio has supported a string of legislation and lawsuits aimed at reining in the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program, which a federal judge ruled in August was being used in a racially biased manner.
Lhota has opposed the regulations as bureaucratic obstacles to good policing — but for the first time, he also raised the prospect of harsh punishment for cops who abuse the policy.
“If a police officer is charged and convicted with racial profiling, they shouldn’t just be disciplined, they ought to lose their job,” said Lhota, who after the debate characterized that offense as a felony.
“I don’t know why they haven’t been prosecuted. As far as I can tell, none of them have been charged with it.”
On education, de Blasio argued that his controversial bid to introduce the imposition of rent charges to charter schools housed inside public buildings would be applied fairly.
“The ones that have millions of dollars of surplus, that have lots of private assets at their disposal, why shouldn’t they pay some rent to help us out so we can run the best school system possible?”
To which Lhota shot back: “The reason why charter schools shouldn’t pay rent is because they are public schools — and we don’t charge our public schools rent.”
When it came to the economy, the two men depicted one another as being on the radical sides of their respective parties.
“Mr. Lhota’s plan is to give tax breaks to the wealthy, tax breaks to corporations — and again that is classic Republican trickle-down economics and that is not going to help us,” said de Blasio.
Lhota fired back that de Blasio was a “career politician” whose plan to tax the wealthy would inevitably spread to include a tax on the middle class.
Even lighthearted topics like sports couldn’t bring the two men any closer together.
Bronx-born Lhota, an avid Yankees fan, said “my blood is actually pinstripe blue.”
De Blasio, an unabashed Red Sox fan who grew up in Cambridge, Mass., said he deserves credit for sticking with his hometown team.
“I’m a loyal person,” he said. “A real sports fan doesn’t change their color.”
Lhota later said, “The thing that bothers me the most is that he’s a Celtics fan,” referring to Boston’s NBA team.