Bill Thompson brought the battle to West Harlem on Saturday, where the Democratic mayoral candidate christened a new local campaign office just weeks before voters hit the booths.
The event was part of a large five-borough rally for Thompson, currently the city’s Comptroller, as he seeks to gain office over his opponent, incumbent Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Thompson now trails Bloomberg by only eight percent, according to the latest SurveyUSA poll.
At 132nd Street and Amsterdam, Saturday afternoon, he entered a packed room plastered with campaign posters and blue streamers to a flood of applause from around 40 volunteers.
“What happens over the next three weeks and a couple of days is going to determine who the next mayor of the city of New York is,” Thompson said. “And the people who can determine that are you.”
Thompson went on to emphasize the importance of grassroots activism. “It’s a question of, over the next three weeks, how many doors we knock on, how many people we reach out to, how many phone calls we make, how many of our neighbors we bring out to vote on Nov. 3,” he said. “It is as simple as that.”
Among the attendees was Martin Smith, male district leader of the West Harlem Independent Democrats. Smith attributed Thompson’s recent surge in the polls to his connection with all residents of the city. “I think that Mr. Thompson’s view of the city is vastly different from Mr. Bloomberg’s,” Smith said. “I think that his desire to reach out to all the people in the city and in the community that need basic services is much more sensitive than Mr. Bloomberg’s ever was, or ever could be.”
Noting Bloomberg’s recent escalation of advertisements attacking Thompson, Smith criticized the mayor as disingenuous.
“Mike Bloomberg doesn’t get it. He can’t get it. He is not grounded in the reality of poor working people—he’s grounded in the reality of numbers and business, and every time you look around, he’s trying to present numbers instead of people to talk about his accomplishments,” Smith said. “He can’t come out and say, ’This group of people will stand up and say that I’ve accomplished X, Y, and Z.’”
Criticism of Bloomberg continued, with the crowd shouting, “Eight is enough”—referring to Bloomberg’s extension of term limits.
Charles Ray, TC ’03, attacked Bloomberg for what he called failures in education. “Just because you put a lot of money into schools, it doesn’t always necessarily create great outcomes,” Ray said.
“When Bloomberg got the Department of Education [governance] through the state, much of the representation that went into the governance with respect to community school districts was phased out, and so the ability to have communities supporting their own respective schools and neighborhoods was lost.”
Sylvia Tyler, president of the West Harlem Independent Democrats, echoed Ray’s frustration, saying Bloomberg has “stifled education, and he’s stifled the people working under the public school system, and he is attacking them with charter schools.”
But Tyler admitted there remained hurdles to cross before Thompson can secure the job.
Shortly before the volunteers hit the streets to talk to local residents and merchants, Tyler said, “Bloomberg can spend $500 million if he feels like it. It’s not going to win him the race, but he’s already spent, like, $70 million.”
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