BACKED BY THE BEST: Joe Lhota and Christine Quinn tout their endorsements by The Post yesterday. (
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That didn’t take long.
Christine Quinn rushed out a new campaign commercial yesterday touting her endorsements by The Post and the city’s other two major daily newspapers.
“I was thrilled to receive The Post’s endorsement today,” Quinn said after a campaign stop in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
“To get the endorsements in less than a week’s time . . . it’s quite a hat trick. Not something I expected, but I’m gratified and honored to have the papers’ support and I’m also very gratified and honored with all of the endorsements — in particular the message . . . that I am somebody who gets things done for New Yorkers; that I’m a progressive who delivers on progressive values.”
Quinn also took a thinly veiled swipe at one of her leading opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, saying the papers recognized her campaign promises as realistic while dismissing his as “empty promises” and “pie in the sky.”
A cornerstone of de Blasio’s campaign is a plan to raise taxes on those earning $500,000 or more to fund universal prekindergarten — a plan that would need support in Albany. He has also promised to ban horse-drawn carriages on his first day as mayor.After claiming victory yesterday for the delayed shutdown of Brooklyn’s Interfaith Medical Center, which he fought to keep open, de Blasio predicted his tax plan would win approval, although the Republican-controlled state Senate is on record opposing such increases.
“Albany will defer to the local will of the mayor and the City Council. That’s been the tradition,” de Blasio said.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a supporter of mayoral contender Bill Thompson, charged de Blasio was engaging in fantasy.
“When you put out a plan that basically says we’ll raise money from the rich so we can fund money for pre-K — when Albany has already called it [the tax hike] dead on arrival — it sounds nonserious,” she said.
While in Brooklyn, Quinn also announced plans to open an all-girls Science, Technology, Engineering and Math middle school in each borough.
She said the proposal was an effort to close the gender gap in math and science, where men tend to excel more than women.
“We need to do all we can to foster our girls’ limitless potential,” she said.
“With new STEM middle schools made solely for New York City girls, we’ll set them on a path to become the great minds who are ready to tackle the challenges facing New York City.”