FALSE ADVERTISING: This generic skyline on mayoral candidate Bill Thompson’s campaign literature looks as if it belongs anywhere but New York City.
City Comptroller William Thompson’s campaign for mayor is making over the city’s skyline — literally.
The Democratic nominee challenging Mayor Bloomberg has campaign literature using a generic cityscape that bears no resemblance to the Big Apple.
There’s no Empire State Building, Chrysler Building or Citicorp Building in the Thompson skyline.
Instead, there’s a city scene that many people who saw the literature mistook for Chicago, including a skyscraper with two tall spires that looks like the Sears Tower and a bunch of short, stocky buildings.
“I will be a mayor for ALL New Yorkers — that’s the difference,” Thompson is quoted as saying in the literature.
Members of Team Thompson insisted the background wasn’t the Second City or any other city, but a composite of the five boroughs.
And they said the design has been replaced — apparently with one featuring actual New York landmarks, judging from the current one on Thompson’s campaign Web site, which has the Empire State Building’s spire standing tall.
But the old literature was used at a Thompson rally just last Saturday on the Upper West Side, as captured in a video posted on the campaign’s Web site.
“The [literature] in question was the first version . . . printed very early in the campaign,” said Thompson spokeswoman Anne Fenton.
“The skyline was designed as a composite of all five boroughs signifying Bill Thompson’s message of ‘A mayor for all New Yorkers,’ ” she said.
Fenton said that the literature used over the weekend was likely taken from an old box left over from before the redesign.
Political pros said the error could have been avoided by using the genuine article to begin with.
“I obviously have no idea why it happened and neither do they,” said Baruch College political-science professor Doug Muzzio, arguing a better image would have been the Empire State Building or something like it.
Consultant Joe Mercurio said, “They probably should have used the real shot . . . I don’t think people in the outer boroughs mind being identified by the Manhattan skyline.”
But, he added, it’s not a major transgression.
“It’s advertising,” he said. “It’s not a white paper on economic policy.”
Political strategist Dan Gerstein said, “That’s fitting, a non-existent skyline for a non-existent campaign.”
Most polls have shown Thompson trailing Bloomberg by double digits.
The Democratic hopeful is also being massively outspent .
Campaign-finance reports released last week show Thompson had spent about $4 million, while Bloomberg had burned through more than $60 million.