In a recent Op-Ed on this website by Ezra Friedlander, the argument was made as to why our community should support de Blasio. Aside from the inherently insulting insinuation that we need an “askan” to tell us who to vote for, the points that the author makes are nothing more than political spin. The gist of his article is that de Blasio is more sensitive to the community’s needs, however he makes absolutely no case at all that de Blasio would make a good mayor.

A mayor needs to be more than just a nice guy who you can relate to. He needs to be a proven leader in both the political and executive fields. Imagine for a moment Google was looking to hire a new CEO. What would they be looking for? Obviously it would be someone with experience managing a fortune 100 company with a proven track record of success. I can assure you, they would not hire someone who has never managed a large company or someone who makes unrealistic claims. A candidate for that position who promises to double the size of the company within a year would be laughed out of the room. To be the mayor of the City of New York is to be the CEO of a company with a $70 Billion budget. The mayor must be in tune to how the city functions, understand its agencies as well as how the budget works.

Let’s have an honest conversation about skillsets in these important areas. Firstly, de Blasio never worked a private sector job in his life (which most of us do). For the most part he never had to worry if his job would be there in the morning if business was bad. de Blasio also never worked with a 70 Billion dollar budget or anything even remotely close to it. The closest thing he did to a private job was being a political organizer for Quixote Center to assist the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. I will cover that in depth later in the article. The rest of his history involved being a city councilman as well as public advocate. Not much executive experience to be had there. During his tenure in those positions he is credited with supporting legislation to (and this is all from Wikipedia, feel free to check the sources…)

“prevent landlord discrimination against tenants who hold federal housing subsidy vouchers, and helped pass the HIV/AIDS Housing Services law, improving housing services for low income New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS. As head of the City Council’s General Welfare Committee, de Blasio helped pass the Gender-Based Discrimination Protection law to protect transgender New Yorkers, and passed the Domestic Partnership Recognition Law to ensure that same sex couples in a legal partnership could enjoy the same legal benefits as heterosexual couples in New York City. During his tenure, the General Welfare Committee also passed the Benefits Translation for Immigrants Law, which helped non-English speakers access free language assistance services when accessing government programs”.

These are simply not heimish issues.

Even more absurdly, Freidlander goes on to state that, “People think it’s important to elect candidates who reflect our own personal values and points of view on every issue. This is a mistake. We should focus exclusively on the issues that are significant to the particular race that is being considered. It’s meaningless and unproductive to assess the political history of an individual of over a quarter century ago…” According to Mr. Friedlander we should completely forget that de Blasio supported the overtly anti-semitic Sandanista regime while in college, even travelling there to assist on the ground. de Blasio was a member of a socialist club in college as well. Should we also forget that De Blasio was a key advisor to Mayor Dinkins? On top of that, de Blasio is marketing himself as the Mayor for the underclass. What does that mean? To me it sounds like some redistribution of wealth is in our future with some real middle class woes behind it. I think we have all learned our lesson about forgetting the past of young radicals when they run for office. In fact, our current president and de Blasio have a lot in common with their work history and political ideology. If de Blasio will publicly apologize for his past associations, we might have something to talk about. Until then, in my eyes, he enabled a heinously anti-Semitic regime.

Let’s look at Joe Lhota, de Blasio’s opposition. Lhota worked for a living as an investment banker specializing in public finance, serving state and local governments throughout the United States. After which he joined the Giuliani administration serving in a number of key positions including Director of the Office of Management and Budget and later became Deputy Mayor of Operations. Lhota knows the numbers and has actually run a city before. On top of that, Lhota has a successful history of leading collective bargaining agreement negotiations. That will come in pretty handy with at least three contracts needing negotiation with the next mayor (police, fire and teachers). As Chairman of the MTA he restored many services that were shut down in 2010 as well as spearheaded the response and recovery to Superstorm Sandy. The MTA was hailed as having performed exceptionally during and after the storm. What experience does de Blasio have that matches Lhota in executive leadership? The answer is none. In the area of executive leadership, Lhota is by far more qualified than de Blasio. It isn’t even a contest.

As far as other issues of our community, Lhota has already publicly stated he is against city intervention in MBP as well as spoke out in support of Yeshivas. He wants the city to pay for security for all schools, public and private. In the area of taxes, de Blasio wants to raise taxes on the wealthy (what is his definition of wealthy?) and Lhota states he will lower taxes. de Blasio has stated publically that he is democratic socialist and Lhota is a conservative. de Blasio wants to be a mayor to the underprivileged and Lhota wants to be a mayor for all New Yorkers. Tell me which one of these is better for our community. Nothing socialist has ever worked well for our community Mr. Friedlander.

Finally, somewhere in this op-ed there should probably be some kind of disclaimer outlining Mr. Friedlander’s association to De Blasio. His bio states he has a political strategy firm. Are you on the De Blasio payroll? Was your op-ed an advertisement? Also, could you also outline why we should care about your opinion after wholeheartedly supporting Quinn (whose polling barely made a dent in any frum community).

I did however enjoy Mr. Freidlander’s story of how De Blasio drove him home to Boro Park one night and didn’t even need a GPS. Boro Park is a big grid, Mr. Friedlander. If you can play tic-tac-toe, you can navigate it.

P.S. I urge all of my fellow community members to do their own research on candidates running for office. Most endorsements are powered by some self-serving interest. I think that is quite obvious by what we have seen. You are empowered to use your vote however you wish, please, just make it an informed vote.

Best wishes,

Mr. Think for Myself

NOTE: The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of YWN.

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