Green Beating Ferrer for Mayoral Nomination in NYC

Public Advocate Mark Green, a longtime liberal who transformed himself into a moderate with law-and-order credentials, was heading for victory Thursday over Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer in a runoff for the city’s Democratic mayoral nomination.

With 96% of the precincts reporting, Green led Ferrer 52%-48% in an election where the votes of white moderate voters appeared to hold the balance of power and the attack on the World Trade Center eclipsed all other local issues.

More than 30% of the city’s 2.2 million Democratic voters went to the polls in a rare Thursday election to help determine the successor to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Although the GOP incumbent is hugely popular with voters, based on his strong leadership in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, he was prevented by city law from seeking a third term.

Green’s apparent win is a significant step toward victory in a city where Democrats hold a 5-1 registration edge over Republicans. Green, the city’s public advocate, will face the GOP candidate, media mogul Michael Bloomberg, in the Nov. 6 general election.

“This has been a campaign of inclusion,” Green told cheering supporters, as the first returns were being tabulated. “We have tried to reach out to all New Yorkers, and we succeeded.”

Ferrer, who finished first in the Sept. 25 primary, had put together an impressive coalition of black and Latino voters, and was seeking to become New York’s first Latino mayor. Green finished second and won the right to face him in Thursday’s runoff, and his strategy from the start was to win over the votes of white New Yorkers who had backed two other, losing candidates, including Comptroller Alan Hevesi and City Council Speaker Peter Vallone.

In early returns, Green appeared to have won an impressive 84% of the white vote; whites constitute 52% of the overall voting pool. Ferrer won an equally lopsided share of black and Latino voters. Both men vowed before Thursday’s vote to rally behind the Democratic winner in November.

The election, which had been originally overshadowed by last month’s attacks, was ultimately driven by a debate over how New York could best recover from the devastation. Green and Ferrer, who both campaigned on the need to unify the shattered city, offered very distinctive solutions.

Green, who had been moving steadily to the political center throughout the campaign, said New York should rebuild the World Trade Center and related financial institutions in lower Manhattan as a first priority. He said “the city’s economic survival--and the nation’s long-term economic health--depends on a swift reconstruction of the original site.”

But Ferrer, voicing the concerns of many supporters, suggested that economic redevelopment--and the millions of federal dollars earmarked for New York--should be geographically spread out through the five boroughs. He believed the city could become a more economically diverse place if the development was not solely concentrated in the original Wall Street site.

Just as important, Green and Ferrer offered different views on future taxation. Green, trying to reassure a nervous financial community and moderate voters, said he would increase taxes to help the city make up for an estimated $4-billion budget deficit only as a last resort. Yet Ferrer said he wanted to raise taxes to pay for educational programs. He also suggested increasing funds for city parks, a proposal that struck some observers as wildly inappropriate, given the city’s fiscal straits.

“There are other pressing problems facing New York,” he said after the Sept. 25 primary, referring to unmet needs in many low-income neighborhoods. “The twin towers may have crumbled, but our commitments have not.”

In a tough editorial, the New York Times called portions of Ferrer’s financial platform “borderline irresponsible” and Green capitalized on that critique in a last-minute negative TV ad against his opponent.

He also got political support from some unlikely sources, including Giuliani and the ultra-conservative New York Post. During a budget address this week, the mayor said it would be “dumb, stupid, idiotic and moronic” for New York to even think about raising taxes, a clear reference to Ferrer’s proposals. And the Post, despite its long-standing dislike for Green’s liberal views, urged its Democratic readers to support him.

Green, 56, took heat from black and Latino leaders for agreeing to Giuliani’s bid to extend his term by 90 days, to aid in a difficult mayoral transition. But observers believe he turned that to his advantage, given his active courtship of moderate white voters who strongly support the mayor.

Earlier, Green moved to mute criticism of his anti-police positions by recruiting former Police Commissioner William Bratton as a campaign advisor. Many political observers are speculating that Bratton, who along with Giuliani won national praise for helping to cut the violent crime rate in New York City, will play a key role in Green’s new administration.

Green’s game plan in this election would have been unthinkable eight years ago, when he was first elected public advocate, a newly created and loosely defined city post. He filed numerous lawsuits against the city, aligning himself with environmentalists, victims of police brutality and low-income consumers. His intensely liberal moves angered many in power, especially Giuliani, but they gained Green valuable television exposure.

His City Hall career began in 1989, when he was named consumer affairs commissioner by Mayor David Dinkins. He grew up in Great Neck, Long Island and graduated from Harvard Law School, where he edited the Civil Rights Law Review. Green first gained attention through his work with Ralph Nader in Washington D.C., where he spent 10 years filing lawsuits against the Nixon administration and writing books critical of American corporate power.

Green ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1992 and 1986. He is married to Deni Frand, a vice president of corporate philanthropy at AOL Time Warner and lives in Manhattan with their two children.