FREDDY Ferrer is one of two candidates for mayor of New York City in apparent possession of a coherent plan for actually winning, the other being Mark Green.
Green is everybody’s front-runner, and his current strategy seems clear: Sit tight, stay low and hope to inherit the job.
The Bronx Beep, who’s running as the Anti-Rudy, clearly has decided that the exploitation of race and class envy is his ticket to Gracie Mansion.
Or, at the very least, into a run-off for the Democratic mayoral nomination – whereupon the antipathy the municipal unions have for Green presumably could come into play.
It is not a prescription for tranquil governance.
But it honors the prime directive of practical politics: First, get elected. Time enough later to deal with the consequences of irresponsible rhetoric.
And incoherent, even contradictory rhetoric; it doesn’t matter.
Tuesday, Ferrer traveled to Wall Street to bait the Fat Cats – that is, to demand the reimposition of an income-tax surcharge, plus a boost in the hotel occupancy tax.
But would such a policy hurt the wealthy?
Not really.
Now that the commuter tax is gone, there’s less reason than ever for rich folks who work in New York actually to live here. Gouge the people who choose to stay deeply enough, and presently they’ll leave, too.
Enough of them will go, anyway, to offset any gains to the treasury from Ferrer’s proposed tax hike.
Meanwhile, the real backbone of the tax base – middle- and working-class outer-borough types who can’t leave – gets whacked.
And there is substantial irony in Ferrer’s enthusiasm for a higher hotel tax. He always points out that he is what he has become precisely because of his mother’s hard work – as a hotel maid!
Ferrer has every right to be extremely proud of that – it’s the American success story. So why is he promoting a tax hike virtually guaranteed to result in fewer hotel jobs of the very sort that made all the difference to him?
Because the substance of his proposals isn’t important. It’s the rhetoric that counts.
Freddy Ferrer says he speaks for “the other New York.”
The point is to cobble together a coalition of folks angry with the incumbent mayor, and hope that it adds up to enough support for a No. 2 finish on Sept. 11 – and a runoff with the now-presumptive primary winner, Green.
It might happen.
If it does, Ferrer – of Puerto Rican ancestry – then cranks up the race-baiting. (Depending on how he comports himself, this sounds uglier than it need be – ethnic politicking being as New York as Ellis Island.)
He also moves quickly to exploit Mark Green’s principal weakness: Institutionally speaking, Green is an unpopular guy.
Most of the municipal unions, for example, detest him.
Just why, isn’t clear; certainly he’s never done much to anger them.
And Ferrer, of course, already has promised teachers a 30-percent raise – a sugar-plum vision now beguiling many other union leaders, too.
Which is, again, the plan.
Will it work?
Green’s support clearly is widespread at the moment, but some people think that it’s tentative – transitory, even.
If so, this could tamp down Ferrer’s hopes of making a run-off. (If not, there probably won’t even be a run-off.)
As for Phase Two – well, the best-laid plans of mice and men, etc., etc.
But it appears to be a plan for getting around Mark Green.
Right now, this seems to be more than anyone else has.