Editorial: Two Endorsements: Quinn and Lhota

Christine Quinn, the Democratic Choice

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is almost gone. At year's end there will be nothing more he can do to shape, alter or improve the City of New York. It's the end of 12 years of governing under one man's singular, often inspiring, sometimes maddening priorities, which were as big as a rising ocean and as small as your soda cup. It was a vision that succeeded brilliantly, but incompletely. But don't worry, New York. Mr. Bloomberg's is hardly the only way to run a city, and the excellent news is that there is a candidate who is ready to carry on at least as well as he did.

She is one of seven Democrats who have been toiling for months in the primary race, standing before voters day and night in a marathon of civic engagement. A common complaint is that this year's candidates look small, like dots on the slopes of Mount Bloomberg. But that isn't fair; all but a few are solid public servants running substantive campaigns. Though the race was crashed, and distracted for a few irritating weeks, by the unqualified Anthony Weiner, it has since sobered up, and voters are paying attention. It is clear by now — and last Wednesday's debate made it even clearer — that the best in the group is Christine Quinn.

Ms. Quinn, the City Council speaker, offers the judgment and record of achievement anyone should want in a mayor. Two opponents — Bill de Blasio, the public advocate, and William Thompson Jr., former comptroller — offer powerful arguments on their own behalf. But Ms. Quinn inspires the most confidence that she would be the right mayor for the inevitable times when hope and idealism collide with the challenge of getting something done.

Ms. Quinn has been an impressive leader since her days as a neighborhood advocate and her early years on the City Council. We endorsed her for the Council in 1999 as someone "who can both work within the system and criticize it when necessary" — a judgment she has validated many times since. She has shepherded through important laws protecting New Yorkers' health, safety and civil rights, including measures banning public smoking, protecting tenants and small businesses, and battling slumlords. She sponsored the sweeping 2007 legislation that made the city's exemplary campaign-finance laws even stronger. She pushed successfully for a state law making kindergarten mandatory for 5-year-olds — giving thousands of poor and minority children a better start on their educations.

As speaker, Ms. Quinn has been a forceful counterpart to Mr. Bloomberg, and has turned the Council from a collection of rambunctious, ill-directed egos into a forceful and effective legislative body. In wrestling with budgets she has shown restraint that runs counter to lesser political instincts. She fought, for example, for a Bloomberg plan to keep a year's surplus as a rainy-day fund. There was fierce opposition from Council members who wanted to spend the money. Ms. Quinn was right, and the city had a cushion when the recession hit.

Mr. Bloomberg has raised expectations that hard decisions should be made on the merits — that the city needs a mayor who is willing to say no. More than with the other candidates, that description fits Ms. Quinn. As an early leader in the campaign, with a target on her back, she has faced anger and derision without wavering. We admire her staunch support for the city's solid-waste management plan, which is good for the whole city but bitterly opposed in some neighborhoods. She has been willing to challenge the mayor's misjudgment and insensitivity, as when he tried to require single adults to prove their homelessness before they were allowed to use city shelters.

Mr. de Blasio has been the most forceful and eloquent of the Democrats in arguing that New York needs to reset its priorities in favor of the middle class, the struggling and the poor. His stature has grown as his message has taken root — voters leery of stark and growing inequalities have embraced his message of "two cities." He has ennobled the campaign conversation by insisting, correctly, that expanding early education is vital to securing the city's future. And yet, Mr. de Blasio's most ambitious plans — like a powerful new state-city partnership to make forever-failing city hospitals financially viable, or to pay for universal prekindergarten and after-school programs through a new tax on the richest New Yorkers — need support in the State Capitol, and look like legislative long shots. Once a Mayor de Blasio saw his boldest ideas smashed on the rocks of Albany, then what?

Mr. Thompson, meanwhile, who nearly defeated Mr. Bloomberg four years ago, has run a thoughtful campaign grounded on the insights he gained in important elective and appointed posts in New York City. A former president of the old Board of Education, Mr. Thompson argues that he is the best candidate to fix the city schools, but his close ties to the United Federation of Teachers, not always a friend of needed reforms, give us pause. The teachers' union is one of the municipal unions itching for retroactive pay raises in contracts that expired under Mr. Bloomberg and need renegotiating.

For all the growing testiness of the campaign, the Democrats share much common ground. All agree on equality, opportunity and fairness. They concede that the best of the Bloomberg years — the economic diversification and growth, the astounding drop in crime, the transit innovations, the greener and cleaner public spaces, and big plans for the future — must be preserved. And they agree that the worst must be corrected — starting with the Police Department's unconstitutional use of stop-and-frisk, which has abused and humiliated hundreds of thousands of innocent New Yorkers.

Ms. Quinn has no specific plan to require the richest New Yorkers to pay more in taxes in service of important civic goals (she says she will raise taxes as a last resort), but neither has she made a long list of unrealistic promises. The biggest challenge has not been talked about much — next year the new mayor will have to confront a budget crisis with no money to spare and all those expired municipal contracts to settle. The mayor we will need then will not be the police reformer or education visionary, but a skilled and realistic negotiator.

Some positions Ms. Quinn has supported are unwise or objectionable. She has been too strong in supporting Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, the architect and stoutest defender of stop-and-frisk. She has supported, too blindly, Mr. Kelly's practice of spying on Muslims at prayer, a similar false choice of public safety over the Constitution. She can become mumbly when talking about things that the real estate industry opposes, like changing zoning laws to require construction of affordable apartments. She has a reputation for shouting, but has shown a capacity to listen, and to be persuaded to change her mind — attributes we will count on seeing more of if she is elected.

We had already made up our own minds in favor of Ms. Quinn, but the Wednesday debate would have clinched it anyway. Candidates were asked what legacy they wanted to leave after two terms. "More people in the middle class," Ms. Quinn said. It was a perfect answer, and she could have left it there. But, Quinn being Quinn, she threw in supporting details. She wants 40,000 more apartments the middle class can afford to live in. She wants to repair crumbling public housing, providing "quality conditions" for 600,000 people. She wants to make the school day longer and replace textbooks with electronic tablets. At the buzzer, she threw in: make the city "climate-change ready."

A lot of good ideas that, in Ms. Quinn's case, add up to an achievable vision, and one we would be glad to see come to pass.

•••

For Republicans, Joseph Lhota

You might find it odd to see this page endorsing the mayoral candidacy of Joseph Lhota, a Republican who made his mark in politics as right-hand man and chief enabler to Rudolph Giuliani. Mr. Giuliani, a two-term mayor of uncommon nastiness, has seen his once-formidable reputation shrink to a pinpoint, to the things he did on and around one terrible September day more than a decade ago. But Mr. Lhota is more than the sum of his years as Mr. Giuliani's top deputy, and he is the best qualified of the three men seeking the Republican nomination for mayor.

Few people know better than Mr. Lhota how city government works. He was an expert budget director for Mr. Giuliani, and then became deputy mayor for operations.

In 2011 and 2012, he ran the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which, under his leadership, recovered amazingly quickly from the damage done by Hurricane Sandy.

Mr. Lhota, son of a New York City cop, is not a glad-handing pol, but a practical and efficient one. When The Times's editorial board interviewed candidates for the mayoral endorsement, it asked them to supply one practical idea to improve the quality of life in New York. Some were flustered. Not Mr. Lhota, who gave an instant, excellent answer: park-and-ride lots at the far ends of subway lines, to coax drivers at the city's edges onto mass transit.

Mr. Lhota is running against John Catsimatidis, billionaire grocer, and George McDonald, founder of The Doe Fund, which gives homeless New Yorkers a job and a bed. Mr. McDonald has had an admirable career, though not one that remotely qualifies him to run New York City, and we wish he would do better at hiding his contempt for some of his opponents. When he called Anthony Weiner a "self-pleasuring freak" and got to the brink of a shoving match, he inspired audiences to boo him, not Mr. Weiner, which was quite a feat.

Being mayor requires a thick skin, good humor and the ability to show or feign graciousness. Mr. Catsimatidis, an affable man, is good at that. He likes to call his fund-raisers "friend-raisers," and it doesn't sound ludicrous. He also promises to make this city of eight million people a cleaner, well-run, thriving place, but we won't take him seriously until he shows he can do that at Gristedes.

Mr. Lhota has had to live down his reputation as Mr. Giuliani's enforcer, as when he shamefully threatened to cut off funds to the Brooklyn Museum over artwork that offended the administration. He surely knows and possibly regrets that his loyalty to his old boss has complicated his current ambitions. Asked recently by The Times to name his favorite mayor, Mr. Lhota said Fiorello La Guardia. If he embodies the traits he admires in the Little Flower — "He took off his jacket, he rolled up his sleeves, and he took care of all New Yorkers," Mr. Lhota said — he could do well in City Hall.

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