A Bloc-Buster of a Mayoral Race

After months of dreary campaigning, New York’s mayoral race has caught fire. And the turning point may have come during the festive West Indian parade in Brooklyn, an event that drew more than a million people.

As African Americans and residents of Caribbean descent packed the streets Labor Day, the Rev. Al Sharpton strolled beside Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, whose candidacy he has endorsed. Asked how his nod might affect Tuesday’s primary election, Sharpton, the city’s most charismatic black leader, gestured at people surging to greet him and Ferrer. “Look at the crowd,” he replied.

In a tight contest that has no black candidate--and with black support crucial to four Democratic aspirants--Ferrer’s push to become New York’s first Latino mayor suddenly has gained momentum. While he ran last in some early polls, the Puerto Rican candidate vaulted into the lead in two surveys last week--largely as a result of Sharpton’s coveted support and some key labor endorsements that could swing thousands of votes his way.

“A lot of people just wanted to write us off,” Ferrer said Thursday on the steps of City Hall. “And a lot of people were wrong.”

Slight Edge Over Democratic Favorite

With less than a week to go, Ferrer held a 28%-26% edge over Public Advocate Mark Green, the longtime Democratic front-runner, according to the Quinnipiac Poll. City Council Speaker Peter Vallone and Comptroller Alan Hevesi garnered 15% each. But in a mark of how rapidly the numbers could change, 14% of voters polled were undecided, and a whopping 53% said they could change their mind.

“It’s still a very volatile Democratic electorate,” political consultant George Arzt said. “We could see some surprising shifts by election day.”

On the Republican side, media mogul Michael Bloomberg has spent $20 million of his own money and seems headed for an easy primary win over former Bronx Congressman Herman Badillo.

If no candidate wins 40% of the primary vote, the top two vote-getters would face each other in a Sept. 25 runoff. The final election is Nov. 6.

Democrats, who enjoy a 5-1 registration edge over Republicans in the Big Apple, are widely expected to recapture City Hall--GOP Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is leaving in January because of term limits. But few experts gave Ferrer much of a chance as the campaign took shape earlier this year.

Indeed, the conventional wisdom held that Ferrer--the son of immigrants, who grew up in a South Bronx tenement--had limited appeal beyond his ethnic base. But pundits now are taking a second look at his bid to unify blacks and Latinos in a coalition that could transform the face of New York politics.

“I’m trying to reach all New Yorkers,” the 51-year-old Ferrer has insisted, even though most of his campaign events have targeted black and Latino voters. A moderate who rose through the ranks of Bronx Democratic politics, he has cast himself as an advocate for poor and disadvantaged New Yorkers, who he says have been ignored by Giuliani’s administration.

While some experts believed Ferrer’s rhetoric would alienate voters in a city where the mayor remains popular, the Democrat has made big gains.

“Now It’s a Race!” shouted the Daily News, reporting that a confident Ferrer had garnered some heavyweight labor endorsements. The New York Post called the Quinnipiac results a “poll shocker” that few had predicted.

Factoring in Growing Latino Population

Ferrer’s late-summer rise has prompted speculation that New York’s rapidly growing Latino population may be ready to flex its political muscle. (Latinos now make up nearly 25% of city residents.) Yet Ferrer’s candidacy could face the same pitfalls that plagued former California Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, who in June lost his bid to become Los Angeles’ first Latino mayor.

Like Villaraigosa, Ferrer has never run as a citywide candidate; his three opponents have. And while his ethnic base may give him a solid advantage in the primary, the stakes often change in a runoff.

“So far, Ferrer’s political strategy seems to be working well,” said former Mayor Edward I. Koch, who has endorsed Vallone’s candidacy. “But it could also be a case of him winning the battle and then losing the war.”

Ferrer may pull together enough black and Latino votes to make it to a runoff, Koch and other experts suggested. But they speculated that his appeal could fade if whites, who make up 50% of the voting pool, believe Ferrer’s campaign to reach “the other New York” somehow excludes them. Although he has been endorsed by former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and former vice presidential candidate Geraldine A. Ferraro, Ferrer is drawing only 5% to 8% of white support, polls show.

There is no more potent symbol of this gulf than Sharpton, who received ovations at the West Indian Day Parade but who also is a provocative--and negative--symbol for many white voters. Anger still runs deep, for example, over Sharpton’s support of Tawana Brawley, a black teenager who falsely claimed in 1987 to have been raped by white men.

“His [Sharpton’s] numbers are very good in the black community but very bad elsewhere,” GOP political consultant Joseph Mercurio said.

As Ferrer plots strategy in the campaign’s final hours, he and his rivals have had to walk carefully through these ethnic and racial minefields. Despite Sharpton’s immense boost, Ferrer’s campaign has not bought citywide TV spots to advertise the endorsement. Instead, he has used radio spots in selected markets to draw political support from black and Latino listeners.

Green gained visibility in recent years through his criticism of abuses in the New York Police Department. He may have thought he was immunizing himself against law-and-order critics when he recruited former Police Commissioner William J. Bratton to back his campaign. (Many experts credit Bratton with engineering the police deployment strategies that led to New York’s stunning drop in violent crime.)

Offsetting Liabilities Linked to Bratton

But Bratton has become a liability for Green because some minority voters attack his role in the dismantling of community policing programs. Even Ferrer has criticized Bratton in the last week of the election, though several years ago he had praised Bratton’s “pioneering” anti-crime work.

Mindful of these sensitivities, Green has toured black and Latino neighborhoods with former Mayor David N. Dinkins--the only African American to hold the office--who has endorsed him. It’s a valuable political shield. Yet Green has been reluctant to use Dinkins in TV spots.

“No way he’s going to do that because there are some white voters who might not respond well to the image of Dinkins,” said a veteran political consultant who asked not to be identified. “For Green--or anybody else running in a New York primary--this is just basic common sense.”

There are no such dilemmas on the Republican side. But Bloomberg, who earlier was plagued by a series of verbal gaffes, may take more heat over New York magazine’s publication Monday of “famous sayings” he allegedly has uttered over the years.

The comments include: “If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they’d go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale’s.” William Cunningham, Bloomberg’s campaign manager, did not deny the accuracy of the quotes but denounced the release of what he said was old “Borscht Belt” material, adding that the candidate’s enemies were “desperate.”