Considering how bitter much of the Democratic and Republican primaries were, things started out pretty civilly between mayoral candidates Bill de Blasio and Joe Lhota—Lhota admirably took the high road when a supporter called de Blasio's teen children "sickening." But it seems the time for niceties is over: Lhota said de Blasio "has no soul" for flip-flopping on the issue of a court-appointed NYPD monitor.
“You can’t have it both ways,” Lhota said Friday during an endorsement event with Staten Island Borough President Jim Molinaro. “He’s for a monitor when he’s a candidate, he’s against a monitor when he’s mayor? You’re either for it or you’re against it. You’re going to flip-flop like that all in one conversation? It talks about somebody who has no soul.”
The call for stop-and-frisk reform has been one of the hallmarks of de Blasio's campaign, a point that de Blasio has been making since before he was running for mayor. He's continually criticized Mayor Bloomberg for being stubbornly out of touch on the issue.
While de Blasio has been a strong and consistent advocate for stop-and-frisk reform, as well as an independent NYPD inspector general, he has called the federal monitor appointed by Judge Shira Scheindlin a "temporary reality."
“I think the fact is when we have a new police commissioner in place with a strong and independent inspector general, with our profiling bill that’s just been passed, I don’t expect that that situation with the federal monitor is going to go on too long,” he said this week about the issue. He also refused to set a timetable for something that hasn't been put in place yet: “I think it’s something that we’ll work through.”
But Lhota is losing badly in early polls, so it seems he's decided his best plan is to go on the attack, taking a page out of Christine Quinn's playbook. It's just quite extreme to say someone "has no soul" because he has a nuanced view of an important issue deserving of discussion and debate, not blind devotion—calling a federal monitor a temporary reality does not contradict with his overall views on stop-and-frisk, nor his desire to shake up a widely-criticized policy.
And we're talking about a candidate who got into a lot of hot water over a perceived lack of kitten empathy—shouldn't he know better than to engage in ridiculous pejorative attacks? Or did he learn nothing from John Catsimatidis' wonderfully understated kitten murder ads?
At least Lhota has the Post backing him up: they seized upon the flip-flop line, further criticizing de Blasio for "flip-flopping" on Ray Kelly...because de Blasio said something nice about Kelly. “It’s well known I have some differences with the commissioner in some areas, but I agree with him on core notions of fighting terrorism,” de Blasio said in Brooklyn this week. I agree with him that New York City has to protect its own interests.” But yup, giving someone you clash with on issues a compliment is a sure sign of someone making flippy floppy.
