NEW YORK CITY: Joe Lhota Accused Of Race-Baiting With Anti-De Blasio Ad

Via Politicker:

Republic mayoral candidate Joe Lhota’s latest television ad warns New York City will plunge into violence if Bill de Blasio is elected mayor. In the most negative attack of the election season, the ad features chilling images of crime scenes and corpses lying on the ground, and slams Mr. de Blasio’s allegedly “recklessly dangerous agenda on crime,” warning the Democrat will “take New York backwards.” The 30-second spot, which began airing on broadcast stations today, according to the campaign, includes video of the recent motorcycle gang attack on a father on the West Side Highway and a barrage of images of an overturned cop car, cops in riot gear, graffiti and a scared woman peering out from behind a subway pole–all set to menacing music.

Lhota is slamming critics of the ad.

Enraged by suggestions that his latest campaign ad is divisive and potentially race-baiting, Joe Lhota slammed his front-running opponent in the mayor’s race, Bill de Blasio for comparing his commercial to the infamous “Willie Horton” ad. “I think this is about Bill de Blasio and his inability to have a vision at all,” Mr. Lhota groused to reporters at a campaign stop in Boro Park today. “What you should do is go look at the Willie Horton ad and then ask yourself why they would make such a ludicrous comparison.”

The ad, of course, is a desperation move as De Blasio is leading by more than 40 points. The election is in two weeks.

NEW YORK CITY: Mayoral Candidates Release First Ads Of General Election

A poll released today shows Joe Lhota trailing by 50 points. Crazy. But today's Lhota ad is all about how much he's like De Blasio. Wut?

Tweet Of The Day - Karl Frisch

No @JoeLhota4Mayor you wouldn't be 1st NYC Mayor with a beard in 100 yrs. Koch had #BessMyerson. #GoogleIt #votebeard pic.twitter.com/cBZuwxEa6Z
— Karl Frisch (@KarlFrisch) September 26, 2013

De Blasio Leads Lhota By 43 Points

Unless Bill De Blasio does something spectacularly Weineresque in the next few weeks, New York City is going to have its first Democratic mayor in 20 years. Check out the poll results released today.

Would-Be Kitten-Killer Joe Lhota Wins GOP Primary For New York City Mayor

During his victory speech, former MTA head Joe Lhota crowed and crowed as if he didn't just take only ten percent of the votes won by Bill De Blasio, who competed in a hotly contested ten-person field. During his speech Lhota reaffirmed his support for stop-and-frisk, declaring, "I won't handcuff our police officers." But he will handcuff thousands of innocent black and Latino men.

NYC Voting Guide

HomoQuotable - Josh Barro

"The next mayor of New York, if he or she is to do a good job, will have to say 'no' a lot. Only Lhota gave the correct answer: No, you do not strand thousands of New Yorkers for 90 minutes in a futile effort to herd two cats whose lives we are inexplicably prioritizing over the rats who are run over, or drowned, or exterminated in the subways every day. The most terrifying aspect of this campaign is that New York is poised to elect its first non-asshole mayor since Abe Beame. There’s a reason big cities elect mayors like Mike Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani and Rahm Emanuel and Richard Daley and Ed Rendell. The mayor’s main job is to say 'no.' Those guys are good at saying 'no.' Lhota is the only person in the field who resembles them." - Josh Barro, writing for Business Insider.

Today's New York Daily News

Kitten-gate, now in day three.

NYC Mayoral Candidates Weigh In On Kittens-On-The-Subway-Tracks Debate

As Gotham continues to be roiled in debate over whether the subway should have been shut down for those two kittens on the tracks, the mayoral candidates have weighed in and only one would have let the trains roll over their little bodies. (Spoiler: It's the Republican seen above pointing Fluffy to an oncoming B train.) Via New York Magazine:

Republican front-runner Joe Lhota — whose previous job was, in fact, running the MTA — would not have stopped the trains. "No, Joe does not think a train line should be shut down" to save two kitties, a campaign spokesperson tells Daily Intelligencer. This puts Lhota at odds with his chief rival, John Catsimatidis, who points out to Daily Intelligencer in a peculiarly formatted e-mail that you can't spell Catsimatidis without "cats": I am an Animal Lover / Especially CATS / Supposed they were Baby Rats / Its up to the Policeman on the Scene to make decision / Not the Mayor.

All of the Democrats who responded via their spokespeople are pro-kitten. Anthony Weiner: "If Anthony is elected mayor, he will not only stop trains for kittens, he will personally crawl over the third rail to do it." Christine Quinn: "Chris would have stopped the trains for the kitties." Bill Thompson: "Bill would work to protect the subway kittens in such a situation." Why does Bill De Blasio remain silent?!?1?

UPDATE: The kittens have been named Arthur and August and will be available for adoption in three days if no owner comes forward. They are believed to be four weeks old.

UPDATE II: Here's today's New York Post.

Rudy Giuilani For Joe Lhota

Giuliani recorded this clip for Lhota a couple of months ago, but an apparently new ad buy now has his message appearing at the front of many YouTube clips.

NYT Endorses Quinn & Lhota

The New York Times editorial board has endorsed both Christine Quinn and Joe Lhota for mayor. Republican front-runner Lhota is the former head of the MTA.

About Quinn:

We had already made up our own minds in favor of Ms. Quinn, but the Wednesday debate would have clinched it anyway. Candidates were asked what legacy they wanted to leave after two terms. “More people in the middle class,” Ms. Quinn said. It was a perfect answer, and she could have left it there. But, Quinn being Quinn, she threw in supporting details. She wants 40,000 more apartments the middle class can afford to live in. She wants to repair crumbling public housing, providing “quality conditions” for 600,000 people. She wants to make the school day longer and replace textbooks with electronic tablets. At the buzzer, she threw in: make the city “climate-change ready.” A lot of good ideas that, in Ms. Quinn’s case, add up to an achievable vision, and one we would be glad to see come to pass.

About Lhota:

Few people know better than Mr. Lhota how city government works. He was an expert budget director for Mr. Giuliani, and then became deputy mayor for operations. In 2011 and 2012, he ran the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which, under his leadership, recovered amazingly quickly from the damage done by Hurricane Sandy. Mr. Lhota, son of a New York City cop, is not a glad-handing pol, but a practical and efficient one. When The Times’s editorial board interviewed candidates for the mayoral endorsement, it asked them to supply one practical idea to improve the quality of life in New York. Some were flustered. Not Mr. Lhota, who gave an instant, excellent answer: park-and-ride lots at the far ends of subway lines, to coax drivers at the city’s edges onto mass transit.

UPDATE: Queers Against Quinn responds on their Facebook page.

It should not come as a surprise to anyone to see the New York Times endorse Christine Quinn for the Democratic mayoral nomination; it's exactly what one should expect from a paper that's nothing but a shill for Bloomberg, Inc.; in fact, the Times all but says that it's endorsing Quinn in order to carry on Bloomberg's legacy, following with an almost entirely fictional account of Quinn's role as Speaker of the City Council. On the same editorial page, the Times endorses Joe Lhota for the Republican nomination, which should give you a clue as to how far to the right the NYT has swung over the course of the last few decades, serving as a cheerleader for Bloomberg's 12 years of misrule & for the real estate industry of which the Times is a part (few know that the NYT itself holds major real estate interests in the city). Here's the good news: the NYT's disgraceful endorsement of the worst candidate in the Democratic field won't do anything to guarantee Quinn's election; in fact, there's quite a record of NYT-endorsed candidates going down to defeat, which every true progressive in this city is hoping will happen to Chris Quinn~!

NEW YORK CITY: Leading GOP Mayoral Candidate Joe Lhota Backs Marriage

Former MTA head Joe Lhota, who is thus far the leading GOP candidate for New York City mayor, says he backs marriage equality. Lhota officially launched his campaign yesterday at a press conference.

Lhota is a Republican in a heavily Democratic city. He’s fiscally conservative, but he is pro-choice and favors marriage equality. He said he would perform a same-sex marriage if asked. Pundits say his late entry into the race has already changed the multi-candidate Republican primary. “I think at this point he is the Republican primary,” Baruch College’s Micheline Blum said. And his candidacy has also shaken up the Democrats at a time when the party thought it would finally have a chance of taking City Hall after 20 years of GOP victories.

Lhota yesterday added that he strongly supports the NYPD's controversial  "stop-and-frisk" policy, which was ruled unconstitutional (in some cases) earlier this month. 

MTA Head To Resign For NYC Mayoral Bid

MTA chief Joe Lhota will resign his position, as is required by New York City law, in order to run for mayor next year. The news comes weeks after Lhota's handling of the Hurricane Sandy recovery was widely praised by all sides.

Though he has said little about his plans, Mr. Lhota floated the prospect of his candidacy during a meeting with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg this month. It would seem to be an uphill battle in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than six to one. A former executive vice president for the Madison Square Garden Company, Mr. Lhota is well known among the city’s political and business elite, some of whom have recently clamored for him to enter the race. But in a recent Quinnipiac University poll, Mr. Lhota lost, 60 percent to 9 percent, against an unnamed Democrat in a hypothetical mayor’s race. Nonetheless, his entry into the race would immediately jolt a campaign that many had expected to be determined by the Democratic primary next year. He would be the first prominent Republican to enter the race.

Thus far the only other declared GOP candidate is the relatively unknown billionaire owner of a New York City supermarket chain.

Giuliani Backs MTA Chief For Mayor

Two weeks ago we learned that MTA head Joe Lhota, who has earned widespread praise for the response to Hurricane Sandy, was being touted in GOP circles as a candidate to succeed Mayor Bloomberg. Now he's got Giuliani in his corner. Via New York Times:

Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, under whom Mr. Lhota was a deputy mayor and with whom he still speaks frequently, is encouraging him to run and appears poised to take on an active role in any campaign. And Republican county leaders in the city have been contacted by a supporter, Jake Menges, an adviser to Mr. Giuliani, requesting that they hold off on endorsing a candidate. “He said, ‘I’ll have someone that you’ll like,’ ” Phil Ragusa, the Queens Republican chairman, recalled of his conversation with Mr. Menges. “I guess it was probably Joe.” In a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 6 to 1, the specter of a run by Mr. Lhota, who declined to comment on his plans, has galvanized some who quietly expected the 2013 race to end a two-decade stretch without a Democratic mayor. “The M.T.A. happens to be one of the few things that was run well since Sandy,” State Senator Martin J. Golden of Brooklyn said. “I think he’d win.”

In a poll conducted last week, Lhota lost against a hypothetical and unnamed Democrat by a 6-1 margin. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn continues to lead in most polls.