NYC Comptroller Bill Thompson (D)

While Mayor Mike spread the green (so to speak) at the Staten Island St. Patrick’s Day Parade this weekend, his so-far-only-kinda-officially-announced major Democratic competitor (sorry Tony A) stepped up his “Mike’s out of touch” attacks.

Comptroller Bill Thompson launched into a (for him) blistering blast on Bloomberg — specifically the Mayor’s comments during his radio show on Friday morning when hizzoner responded to questions about the fairness of hiking taxes on the rich in these tough times.

Here’s what Bloomberg said on Jon Gambling’s show: “We can tax the rich, except that, if you haven’t looked at the stock market lately, they aren’t making any money.” Bloomberg went on to say, “You know, the yelling and screaming about the rich – we want rich from around this country to move here. We love the rich people.”

And here’s what Thompson had to say about that on Sunday:

This is one of the clearest defenses I’ve ever read of the Reagan-Bush Republican philosophy of trickle-down economics. For eight years, George Bush said virtually the same thing our Mayor said on Friday – we need to give tax cuts to the rich, because it will trickle down to everyone in society. I have a very different philosophy. I believe that our working families and small businesses are the ones who drive our economy. I believe that government should be focused on helping the middle class. And I believe that the trickle-down philosophy has caused us to be in the mess that the country is in today. I think that at times, the Mayor’s wealth has caused him to be out of touch with what most New Yorkers experience every day.

It’s by far the toughest language the generally congenial Comptroller has used in describing Bloomberg or his policies. He’ll follow up this morning with a proposal to hike the city’s current 3.65% income tax rate to 4.3% for those making more than a half-mil per year with the rate going to 4.8% for folks earning more than a million in taxable income.

But Thompson probably should talk to his state counterpart Tom DiNapoli before accusing the mayor of “not getting it.” DiNapoli reported just six weeks ago that bonuses to taxpaying New Yorkers in the financial industry fell 44% in 2008 costing the state a cool billion in tax revenue and the city $275 million. Indeed Thompson himself noted last September that Wall Street accounted for almost half NYC’s tax revenues in the past few years.

So it’s hard to argue with Bloomberg saying “We love rich people,” since it’s those rich people with their rich, taxable bonuses that have filled the city’s coffers for much of this decade. Thompson sure as hell better love rich folks if he wants to bring in an extra billion in revenue from them. Everyone acknowledges the era of easy Wall Street money has come to an end and honest minds can disagree over the wisdom of hiking taxes on the rich at this time. Is it killing the golden goose or sharing the pain?

So while recent polls show most New Yorkers actually agree with Thompson that Bloomberg is a bit out of touch with the average person, the Comptroller’s latest broadside takes the mayor’s perfectly rational (if politically tone-deaf) statements and turns them into something they are not.

If Thompson can follow up and engage Bloomberg in a real debate about the merits of hiking top tax rates, however, he could do himself and the rest of us a lot of good.

Brooklyn Bridge Free No More?

It’s no mystery what Mike Bloomberg is going to run on in his bid for a third term — safe streets and good management. But what exactly would his Democratic opponent try and do to sour New Yorkers on their popular mayor?

If Anthony Weiner was to really run (which seems very doubtful at this point) he has already spent months sketching out an outer-borough populist case that paints Bloomberg as an elitist who was lucky enough to be mayor during one of the biggest economic booms in the city’s history. Weiner would be prepared to illustrate such an argument with the mayor’s own actionsand pet projects (see: Term Limits, Congestion Pricing, and Yankee Stadium).

Bill Thompson, on the other hand, has been far more coy. While he has mildly critical of Bloomberg on some issues (term limits, school control) he has shown little fire in the belly and even less campaign fire and brimstone. Thompson has shown no hints of a storyline he might use to bring the mayor down — until now.

Sunday Thompson joined Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat and a handful of other pols to blast the proposal emerging in Albany to toll the East and Harlem River bridges. The idea has been around for decades and was one of the key recommendations of the Ravitch Commission which was charged with finding a permanent fix for the MTA’s fast-growing budget problems.

In the past couple of days the idea of tolling the currently free bridges into Manhattan (from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Broadway bridge over Spuyten Duyvil — my personal favorite place-name in NYC) has gone from a non-starter to a no-brainer as the leaders of the Assembly and State Senate have both thrown support behind it.

The original Ravitch plan called for tolling the East River bridges at the same rate as the Midtown and Battery Tunnels and the Triboro Bridge while putting $2 tolls on the Harlem River crossings. Now Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith back the idea of tolling all the bridges at that $2 mark (or the same as the current subway fare at the time).

Leading the charge against this idea now appears to be Thompson’s first significant attempt at finding an issue that will help define him and Bloomberg. Tolling these bridges has always been easily spun as a Manhattan-centric idea (at least since Mayor Lindsay ordered up a study on it in 1970) designed to stick it to the working stiff. And so Thompson adopted a bit of that stand in Sunday’s news conference arguing “Harlem and East River tolls would burden many hard-working people who live in boroughs other than Manhattan and would drastically hurt small businesses, many of which already are struggling in this economy.”

Good as far as it goes but truth be told Assemblymember Jose Peralta seemed to strike the better campaign pose when he said “The MTA’s Harlem and East River toll plan would win approval by Robert Moses the Master Builder himself, with their idea to seal off Manhattan Island and make it only affordable to the wealthy.” Peralta is presumably not running for mayor, however.

Thompson is instead repeating his proposal from late last year to radically increase registration fees for large gas-guzzlers. It’s an idea that could very well work but his failure to get any traction for it with the only three guys in Albany makes him look no more effective than Bloomberg whose congestion pricing plan suffered an even worse fate.

Thompson has spent the last seven years as the city’s Comptroller dutifully presenting solutions but rarely engaging in the kind of hard-ball politics many of his ambitious predecessors became infamous for (paging Liz Holtzman!). If he’s going to take on Bloomberg and his big bucks he’s going to have to be more than the cerebral dispassionate solutions guy. New York already has one of those that voters say they basically like. His name is Mike Bloomberg.

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg

It’s nice to be Mike. Bloomberg that is. And not only because he’s (still) worth multiple billions of dollars.

The new Marist Poll out Friday shows why it’s virtually impossible to see how Mike Bloomberg is stopped from winning a third term as Mayor later this year.

Despite the “Blues for Bloomberg?” headline a quick peak into the numbers shows that Bloomberg is broadly popular among New Yorkers and actually in a better position than he was at this time in 2005. And he’s ready to spend even more than the $80 million in blew through then on his way to a 18-point win.

The headline-inducing number — 55% of NYC voters say it’s time to elect “someone else” — is undercut by what voters told pollsters to other questions.

Sure, the mayor’s approval numbers have dropped pretty substantially in the last few months (from 68% in October to 52% now) but it’s still higher than his approval number in March of 2005 when it was just 43%.

Marist Polls on Bloomberg's Popularity

Far more telling though is what voters said when asked more specific questions: “If the election were held today would you vote for Bloomberg or (Democrat) Anthony Weiner?” Voters pick Bloomie 53%-37%. Same question but switch Bill Thompson for Weiner and it’s the same story: Bloomie wins 53%-36%.

Then there are the questions that get to the root of how people are really feeling as opposed to what they may tell pollsters about how they might vote eight months from now: Is Bloomberg working hard as Mayor? 80% say he is. Does he understand the problems facing the city? 68% say he does. And the clincher, is he a good leader? 67% think he is.

If you’re Thompson or Weiner or dark horse Dem Tony Avella there are some numbers that could give you hope and a line of attack:  “Does Bloomberg care about people like you?” 47% agree but 50% disagree. “Was changing term limits a good thing? 25% say it was, 46% say it was not, 29% don’t care. But honestly, it’s a pretty faint glimmer when you remember you will be outspent four or five to one.

In much the same way that many New Yorkers thought Rudy Giuliani was an a**hole but voted for him because he was our a**hole, voters think Bloomberg is something of an imperious autocrat but at least he’s our imperious autocrat. Plus la change….

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg

You gotta hand it to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He royally pisses the voting public off with his term limits power grab but they still lovvvvve him.

That’s what a new Quinnipiac Poll out Tuesday seems to suggest. By a margin of 56% to 42% NYC voters disapprove of the term limit extension Bloomberg and the City Council pushed through for themselves last year. So that’s bad news for Bloomy, right? Of course not!

A big majority of those same voters say they not only want Bloomberg to run but that they’ll vote for him over two potential Democratic opponents. Bloomberg beats Anthony Weiner or Bill Thompson by almost identical double-digit margins (50-35 and 50-34 respectively).

While a NY1 Poll puts the Bloomberg-Weiner match much closer both polls show Bloomberg with a very high approval rating (64-29 in NY1 Poll and 69-25 in Q) that makes a mockery of the notion that at this early stage there’s a real race for Mayor.

Bloomberg will spend tens of millions more than whichever Democrat emerges to challenge him and voters don’t mind that either. Quinnipiac asked if voters thought Bloomberg bankrolling his own campaign A) freed him from being beholden to special interests or B) made it look like he was trying to buy the election. By a margin of 54-40 voters chose the “freed from special interests” line. Big smiles all around Camp Bloomy.

The bottom line is that with these poll numbers, more money to spend per vote than any candidate in history, and a top team of hired guns (including part of Obama’s micro-targeting group that so successfully ushered in the new era of get out the vote operations) Bloomberg has very little going against him.

Anthony Weiner would certainly make a fiery opponent and would likely connect with some disaffected blue-collar voters angry about the economy. But it’s hard to see how that’s enough to overcome Bloomberg’s huge advantages. If voters don’t dislike Bloomberg right now with term limits fresh on their minds what’s going to make them learn to dislike him later?

Thompson’s run would be different and potentially more effective if he could mount a real grass-roots rebellion among African American and Latino voters but what’s going to fuel that other than class resentment (which is Weiner’s theme)? And when has Thompson shown he can or will run that kind of contest?

So Boss Bloomberg should sleep soundly tonight knowing that less than ten months from election day there are virtually no signs that his chances of winning a third term are anything but golden.