The big debate breaking out in the mayor’s race is about which candidate has actually gotten things done. A leftist group is running a nasty ad against frontrunner Christine Quinn that says she’s done little more than be a rubber stamp for Michael Bloomberg — oh, and that she’s mean to animals also.
This line of attack is very threatening to Quinn, because her bid for mayor is predicated on the notion that she’s the only person in the race who’s wielded authority in the city aside from the mayor these past eight years.
The problem for Quinn is that, as a matter of simple political fact, the attack is accurate. She’s the speaker of the City Council, and the City Council is a surpassingly unimportant legislative body with remarkably little authority.
The problem for her opponents is that it’s true of them, too.
Indeed, Quinn has gone on the attack herself, saying her rivals are do-nothings and know-nothings and loudmouths who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk and other such argle bargle. Meanwhile, The New York Times ran an amazingly vicious — accurate, but vicious — piece about how ineffective Anthony Weiner was as a congressman.
So who’s left among the Democrats? John Liu is now the comptroller, and William Thompson was the comptroller, which certainly sounds like an important position, as the keeper of the city’s money. But in fact the technical job of comptroller involves the management of pension funds and handling pension moneys and running audits on various city departments. It’s green-eyeshade detail at its most grindingly dull.
Bill DiBlasio, who was on the City Council, is now the public advocate, perhaps the silliest post in all of American elected officialdom — an office that exists solely to issue reports.
Why does that silly office exist? Ah, there’s the rub, and the explanation for why all these candidates for office are having public quarrels about who really does stuff — quarrels that reveal just how little stuff any of them actually does.
The explanation is that in 1989, the governance of the city changed in an unprecedented way when its charter had to be revised — and the revision made this city’s mayor perhaps the most powerful local official in the United States.
Before 1989, eight officials served on a body known as the Board of Estimate. There were three citywide officials — the mayor, the City Council president, the comptroller — and the presidents of each of the five boroughs. The citywide officials had two votes each; the borough presidents, one.
This board ran the city. It shaped the budget and every major decision about land use ran through it. But in 1987 the US Supreme Court ruled the Board of Estimate unconstitutional because it gave the same number of representatives to the borough of Brooklyn (2.5 million) as Staten Island (under 500,000).
For two years, a Charter Revision Commission labored. In the end, it couldn’t figure out how to create a proper balance between competing interests — so it just empowered the mayor.
The City Council President’s title was retained as a sop to the man who then held it, Andrew Stein, but the position was stripped of all its power. In 1993, it was renamed the Public Advocate. The comptroller lost his say over the city’s policies, and so did the borough presidents.
Which leaves us with a mayor who is, for all intents and purposes, Super Mayor. Every appointed citywide official is chosen by him without a legislative check. The Police Department is his, the Fire Department is his, the Buildings Department is his — and, since 2002, the Department of Education as well.
The City Council controls the budget, nominally, but the mayor has the authority not to spend money it appropriates pretty much at will. He has single-handed control of the streets (that’s why he can make bike lanes with a wave of his hand). Zoning is mostly under the control of the City Planning Department.
When the mayor’s will is thwarted, it’s almost always by the state-level powers that be in Albany, not by the city’s own legislature or other elected officials.
So when it comes to who’s got a proven record of achievement doing things for voters among the Democrats running for mayor, the answer is: pretty much nobody. They’ll all have to figure out another way to win.