Crains New York - February 18, 2013 - (Page 6)
Labor strife in mayor’s race
BY CHRIS BRAGG
City labor unions have agreed to delay endorsements until unusually
late in this year’s mayoral election,
potentially shifting the dynamics of
the Democratic primary contest.
The move is intended to avoid having union endorsements splintered
among several candidates—a goal
that is already proving elusive.
The executive board of the Central Labor Council, an umbrella
group of local unions, voted nearly
unanimously last month for a resolution stating that its members
would not make endorsements in
the Democratic mayoral primary
until May, according to labor
sources who attended the meeting.
by Andrew J. Hawkins
main rivals—Public Advocate Bill
de Blasio, former Comptroller Bill
Thompson and Comptroller John
Liu—cannot now roll out their own
early endorsements to show they are
gathering strength, which might
blunt Ms. Quinn’s advantage in the
polls. It’s also possible that the two
unions’ defiance of the resolution
could lead others to break the deal
and endorse one of the speaker’s
rivals.
Pressure on de Blasio
“If they still hold to May, then
Quinn has two and a half months to
gain steam. If this
breaks the deal, it’s
game on,” said one
operative.
The three unions
that have endorsed
are members of the
Working
Families
Party. Ms. Quinn has
now lined up about
15% of the party’s
weighted endorsement vote. She needs
60% to land its coveted endorsement and
ballot line this year.
WFP support is key to Mr. de
Blasio’s campaign, however, and the
public advocate needs backing from
a high percentage of the WFP’s uncommitted member unions and organizations in order to get the powerful party’s nod. That could
increase pressure on pro-de Blasio
unions to announce their support
soon. Ⅲ
‘If this
breaks the
deal, it’s
game on,’ an
insider said
Speeches signal City Hall shift
T
here were two State of the City speeches last week,
one by a mayor looking to preserve his legacy, another
by a potential successor trying to fashion her own.
The addresses bore few similarities, other than the
obligatory references to New York’s being “great.” Mayor
Michael Bloomberg (above) boasted of his administration’s
high points over the past 11 years—he literally hung them
from the rafters of the Barclays Center—while City Council
Speaker Christine Quinn, at home in the council chambers,
emphasized her efforts to help average New Yorkers.
buck ennis
Three endorse early
But there have already been three
endorsements in the race. Grocerystore workers’ union UFCW Local
1500 endorsed City Council Speaker Christine Quinn before the CLC
passed its resolution, while the Retail, Wholesale and Department
Store Union and the Mason Tenders District Council endorsed Ms.
Quinn in defiance of the measure,
sparking predictions that others
would follow.
There are some 35 members of
the CLC board, including all of the
city’s biggest labor players, such as
the United Federation of Teachers,
District Council 37, building service workers’ union 32BJ and health
care workers’ union 1199 SEIU. If
the agreement is kept, they will stay
on the sidelines for the next two and
a half months. The Democratic
primary is currently scheduled for
September.
The strategy behind the resolution is to stop individual unions
from making endorsements until
the CLC does, maximizing the umbrella group’s impact
and potentially unifying labor’s overall
strategy in the mayor’s race, rather than
letting unions go in
different directions
early in the campaign. CLC President Vincent Alvarez, who
was
elected in June 2011,
has pushed for more
unity from organized
labor in the city.
“It’s an effort by
labor to be more collaborative and
have a more coherent process,” said
one labor source. “The mayor’s race
is full of candidates with deep ties to
labor, and the effort is to make sure
[the CLC endorsement decision] is
as democratic as possible.”
One political operative speculated that a delay in endorsements
could help Ms. Quinn, because her
nyc mayor’s office
Unions aim to unite
behind a single
candidate, but
some jump the gun
THE
INSIDER
The mayor mentioned the middle class just once in his remarks;
the speaker did so 44 times. He
took the podium as Brooklyn Nets
dancers gyrated; she was introduced by her 86-year-old father, a
former union electrical worker
from Queens.
Mr. Bloomberg, who alluded
several times to his lack of confidence in how the city will be run after he leaves office, unveiled no
grand schemes, instead launching
proposals that he could bring back
to port before his term
ends Dec.
31. He said
he
would
push to ban
plastic-foam
food packaging
from
Christine Quinn
stores and
restaurants,
ease the consequences of low-level
marijuana arrests, increase the city’s
wireless Internet connectivity,boost
tourism, double recycling, open
more charter schools and complete
long-gestating
infrastructure
projects.
He rejected calls to delay a rezoning of the area around Grand
Central Terminal, saying it could
be sabotaged by politics after he
departs. He indicated that plans to
revamp the South Street Seaport,
erect a soccer stadium in Queens
and create a waterfront park in
Greenpoint, Brooklyn, would get
done this year.
At times defiant and scolding,
the mayor charged that critics of
stop-and-frisk policing would not
sacrifice their own lives to scale it
back and therefore should not con-
demn others to death by doing so.
Alluding to the teachers’union and
parent activists, he accused those
who object to letting charter
schools share other public schools’
space of trying to “lock out” and
“deny resources” to children.
In contrast, Ms. Quinn was genial and autobiographical, recollecting her grandfather’s emigration here from Ireland. While the
mayor tripped over numerous
words, even flubbing several attempts to pronounce Coney Island’s Steeplechase Plaza (he ultimately settled on “Staplechase”),
the council leader, whose thundering laugh could scare off a flock of
birds, was both smooth and dynamic. She moderated the volume
and shrillness that have characterized her public speaking in the past.
The fulcrum of her address, two
days before the mayor’s, was income equality, a running theme in
the Democratic primary in which
early polling has marked her as the
front-runner. But rather than propose new taxes on the wealthy, as
two of her Democratic rivals did,
Ms.Quinn,who is courting real estate and other business support,instead called for new borrowing and
budget reallocations.
“We face an affordability crisis
in our city, and it cuts right at the
fabric of New York,” she said. By
building middle-class housing and
spending more to help cashstrapped families, the government
can bring wealth distribution more
into balance, she added.
Whether she will get a chance to
implement that vision and dispel the
mayor’s fears of post-Bloomberg
New York will be decided in the next
eight months. Ⅲ
Crain’s Insider, our award-winning politics newsletter, is
now a blog. Read it every day at www.crainsnewyork.com/insider
6 | Crain’s New York Business | February 18, 2013
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crains New York - February 18, 2013
DIGITAL NY
IN THE BOROUGHS
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