The latest ‘leader’ in the race for City Hall, Bill deBlasio, talks education in Brooklyn’s Columbus Park yesterday, where he also re-stressed his earlier call for higher taxes on the rich. (Stefan Jeremiah)
The newly minted Democratic front-runner in the mayor’s race doubled down yesterday on his central campaign theme that New York is a “Tale of Two Cities,” and he demanded that the rich cough up more in taxes.
“Nearly 400,000 millionaires call New York home, while almost half our neighbors live at or near the poverty line,” Bill de Blasio said in a morning e-mail to supporters, a day after a Quinnipiac University poll showed him leading the race for City Hall for the first time.
He kept up his tax-the-rich drumbeat later in the day by calling a news conference to discuss his proposal to increase the city’s income tax from 3.876 to 4.3 percent on households earning more than $500,000 to fund more pre-K classes.
De Blasio estimated that would raise $532 million and allow another 50,000 city kids to enroll in full-time pre-K.
“I believe it’s time to ask the wealthy to do a little more. I believe that’s one of the progressive changes we need to move away from the mistakes of the Bloomberg and Quinn years,” said de Blasio, taking a dig at City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, his nearest mayoral rival.
It’s a different tale than de Blasio was telling in 2010, when he took a position against hitting up Wall Street for extra dough.
“Punishing Wall Street, taxing Wall Street into oblivion, couldn’t be worse for New York City, and I oppose that,” Public Advocate de Blasio declared during a breakfast that year sponsored by the Association for a Better New York.
“I’ve gotten to the point I’m not sure any new revenues we can propose would be that productive,” he said back then, sounding more like a moderate Republican than progressive Democrat.
Besides de Blasio, city Comptroller John Liu is the only Democratic candidate to push for increasing taxes.
Quinn flip-flopped on the issue. In her 2009 State of the City address, she suggested raising taxes on those making $300,000 to raise $1 billion in new revenue. She now says the proposal was made in response to the recession and is no longer necessary.
Between 2003 and 2005, the city raised income-tax rates on those making more than $150,000 to 4.46 percent. That higher rate was also in place from 1991 to 1998 to pay for a Safe Streets, Safe City initiative.
Hoping to solidify his lead over Quinn, de Blasio attacked her for a pilot program she sponsored that offers parents the chance to get low-interest loans to help pay for day care.
That program is available to up to 40 families the first year and would offer loans of up to $11,000 at a 6 percent rate.
“It’s not time to saddle middle-class families with debt so they could get child care,” de Blasio said. “Hers is for a small number of families with a higher income level. Mine is universal — it doesn’t matter who you are.”
Quinn shot back that de Blasio was going after her record because his own is so thin.
“In my time as speaker, I’ve expanded the number of pre-K seats by 10,000,” Quinn said.
“Bill de Blasio has no record of delivering in this area. So instead, quite frankly it’s sad, he’s going to try to tear apart other people’s records who have delivered.”
Quinn also enlisted retail-workers union boss Stuart Appelbaum, an ally, to blast de Blasio for his delayed endorsement of a living-wage bill that passed the council last year.
“This is really a tale of two de Blasios,” said Appelbaum, who added the public advocate only supported the bill after a poll showed it was popular.
“When it came to living wage, he clearly took a vacation from being a progressive,” charged Applebaum.