Razzle Dazzle: Ferrer's Two New Yorks

Razzle Dazzle
Ferrer's Two New Yorks

By RICHARD STEIER

Moments after Freddy Ferrer had concluded what his campaign called a "There Are Still Two New Yorks" speech at Bronx Community College Oct. 25, a reporter asked him about polls that show many New Yorkers believe that theme is divisive.

Mr. Ferrer responded that the speech and its theme merely spoke to the reality of life in New York. Returning to his contention in the speech that those who had been able to cross the bridge from poverty into the middle-class had an obligation to maintain that bridge "for those who are still on the other side," he said that was the reason he had sought a career in public service.

"You do what you believe," the former Bronx Borough President said, standing in the cavernous library of the college he attended back when it was the Bronx campus of New York University. "You fight for the people that you believe in."

Some Whites Take Offense

The "two New Yorks" theme has given Mr. Ferrer his greatest problems with white voters and white editorial writers and columnists, who view it as a coded racial appeal to minority voters. Some of the pundits also argue it is a form of class warfare.

KEEPING THE BRIDGE OPEN: Freddy Ferrer last week reiterated his desire to bridge the 'two New Yorks' he said exist by helping those living in poverty to improve their lives so that they can be part of 'a growing, strong, dynamic middle class.' Such conclusions often seem to say more about those drawing them than they do about Mr. Ferrer and the message that dominated his 2001 campaign for Mayor and has re-emerged recently as he tries to overcome Mayor Bloomberg's enormous lead in the polls.

There is nothing in Mr. Ferrer's words that is overtly racial. Consider, by way of comparison, the 1985 mayoral race in Chicago in which Democratic nominee Harold Washington, seeking to become that city's first black chief executive, ran with the campaign slogan, "It's our turn," and Republican opponent Bernard Epton managed to outdo him in brazen obnoxiousness with a TV commercial that stated, "Vote for Epton. Before it's too late."

Four years ago, Mr. Ferrer's theme was viewed to some extent in racial terms because the city had become so polarized by Rudy Giuliani's mayoralty. Minority residents were grateful for the large drop in crime during his eight years in office but resentful of what they viewed as harassment that accompanied the NYPD's quality-of-life crackdown, creating an atmosphere that one police union leader lamented as "toxic."

And while Mr. Giuliani touted the city's prosperity, he often acted indifferent to the problems of a school system in which most students were minorities. Some of those problems stemmed from his shortchanging the system financially and beating up Chancellors for reasons that ranged from pure meanness to an effort to advance his career in national politics by embracing conservative Republican dogma on charter schools and tuition vouchers.

Describing the climate that existed back then during last week's speech, Mr. Ferrer said, "I saw too many New Yorkers alienated from one another, I saw too many New Yorkers struggling, longing for the same simple things - a job, a good education - that others took for granted."

His role as a pronounced underdog this time around forces Mr. Ferrer to view the city's glass as half-empty, just as Mr. Bloomberg as the incumbent makes the case for half-full in discussing the school system's progress and the areas where it is still not doing well enough.

Adventures in Faux Populism

There have been times, in critiquing Mr. Bloomberg's performance in other areas, when the Democratic nominee has engaged a sort of faux populism to distort Mr. Bloomberg's words, as when he has used the Mayor's statement that the city offers poor people better hospital care than wealthier residents receive to suggest that he is either out of touch or being cruelly misleading.

In fact, Mr. Bloomberg made that statement in response to a high rating for city hospitals from an independent accreditation panel, and whatever hyperbole may have been involved, his essential point was that the municipal system - thanks in part to additional money he provided after years of fiscal starvation under Mr. Giuliani - was offering quality care to even its poorest patients. Mr. Ferrer's criticism of Mr. Bloomberg's decision in 2003 to boost property taxes 18.5 percent conveniently glides past any mention of reasonable alternatives. The fact was, Mr. Bloomberg showed political courage, after having pledged during the 2001 campaign that he wouldn't hike taxes, in taking that step rather than imposing draconian cuts in city services to balance the budget.

Notwithstanding such caricaturing, Mr. Ferrer during 20 years in office and on the campaign trail has assiduously avoided ethnic and racial politics. The issues he has raised sometimes have a racial component to them, but more often they pivot heavily on matters like economic class and even neighborhood.

Cuts Across Race Lines

When he talks about an affordability crisis in New York, he is tapping into a concern expressed 25 years ago by white families in stable city neighborhoods who saw the influx of more-affluent young whites driving up rents and home prices. They feared that when their own children left home, they wouldn't be able to live in the area where they'd been raised.

That message hasn't resonated with white voters, who overwhelmingly favor Mr. Bloomberg according to the polls. The irony is, if there was a moment in the campaign when it seemed Mr. Ferrer was pandering to a particular constituency, it was when he told a Sergeants' Benevolent Association meeting in March that the police shooting of Amadou Diallo six years ago was not a crime.

Given that he had gone to jail in 1999 to protest the killing, Mr. Ferrer's failure to explain how his position had evolved so drastically inevitably aroused suspicion that he tailored it to gain support from cops or more-conservative white voters.

The "two New Yorks" theme has resounded for much of the city's history. When it was dealt with in plays like Sidney Kingsley's "Dead End" 70 years ago, the contrast between the wealthy people on Manhattan's East Side and the youths who came out of the slums just a couple of blocks away made it clear that the dynamic involved economic class, and to a lesser extent, ethnicity.

It hasn't come up much in politics, either here or on a national level, in part because the poor are rarely part of those conversations. Politicians usually pitch their appeals to those who view themselves as middle-class; it is why campaigns over the past decade have touched on the poor primarily by talking about welfare reform.

A Narrow Perspective

Mr. Ferrer has attempted to change that. It is a measure of the tide that he is bucking that his proposal this spring to place a small tax on stock transfers to help pay for education was immediately derided as a nonstarter in Albany. The feeling was that it would cost the city business among stock traders who could make their transactions elsewhere; the competitive disadvantage this posed held sway over any consideration of how much the additional revenue might mean in school districts where students are operating under a far greater disadvantage.

At times his speech had literary touches worthy of John Steinbeck or Nelson Algren. Publicly conceding for the first time that the odds are against his candidacy, Mr. Ferrer said, "I may win, I may lose, but I will speak for those who can't speak for themselves, and I will be heard. I will speak for the jobless, I will speak for the homeless, I will speak for the hungry, I will speak for the powerless. I will speak for the middle class that cannot afford their property taxes and are worried about this winter paying for their home heating bills. I will speak for children born with a sense of wonder and possibility who should not have to learn that dreams are there for some people, but not for others."

'About Uniting a City'

He addressed those who had called the "two New Yorks" theme divisive, saying, "This is not about one New York against the other, this is about building a city united in common purpose and opportunity, where all of us live under the blessing of possibility. There are two New Yorks. I have lived in both of them. Born in one, I crossed the bridge of hope and opportunity into the other, but I have never forgotten where I came from."

A case can be made against Mr. Ferrer's candidacy; a case can be made that he hasn't offered enough evidence that he represents a better alternative when weighed alongside Mr. Bloomberg's record over the past four years.

But he deserves credit, rather than castigation, for making us think about the people - struggling middle class as well as poor - whose concerns often are ignored or glossed over in what passes for political debate in this city and this nation.