Roundup of select blog posts on the Mayoral Forum:
Living Liberally/OpenLeft
Excellent liveblogging coverage from a great team.
7:48 To the final question, from Dan Cantor, about convincing WFP Thompson could beat the Bloomberg behemoth, Thompson just had the first laugh-out-loud line of the night: ”I’ll quote someone who said, ‘Rich guys don’t always win.’”…which was Bloomberg’s defense of spending $100 million on the campaign just 40 minutes ago.
Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn
A ’shucks I missed it’ from one of Brooklyn’s most important local bloggers.
City Councilmember Bill de Blasio, who is running for Public Advocate sent out a press release about Bloomberg’s statement that more people are choosing to stay in homeless shelters because they have become more attractive during his time in office. “It is insulting to the almost 35,000 people who spent last night in a shelter to say that they were there out of choice, not out of necessity,” de Blasio said.
Neighborhood Retail Alliance
Mom and pop businesses are paying close attention to politics. Who knew?
And what’s even more precious is the way in which Bloomberg tries to take the ethical high ground; and elide the way in which his own spending-both direct and charitable-has basically rendered the democratic process inoperative. Here’s his haughty comments to the WFP forumn: “Mayor Bloomberg Thursday night defended the overwhelming pile of money he is spending to win reelection, while two Democrats who want to replace him said he was running a city for the rich. “I made every dime that I have,” Bloomberg told the Working Families Party candidate forum, sparking scattered hisses from the crowd of about 250.”
Village Voice
Great reporting on what each candidate had to say.
He [Bloomberg] got a little ruffled when asked about the unfair advantage his riches give him in the Mayor’s race. “I made every dime that I have,” he said. Besides, “you can’t have a totally fair, equal election… some people went to better schools than others… I used my money only to talk about what I would do and what I have done.” In the end, he said, it was in the voters’ hands — and “rich people don’t always win… You can’t buy an election. The public’s much too smart for that.”
