Stringer Theory: a Democrat Rises to Challenge de Blasio

Ross Barkan

Scott Stringer was stunned.

Mr. Stringer, the city comptroller, found himself last week on the receiving end of the sort of Bloombergian wrath that is rarely seen from Mayor Bill de Blasio, a fellow Democrat with an operative’s sense of discretion. Mr. de Blasio had wrangled two pols from Mr. Stringer’s Upper West Side base, along with many other shared allies, to repudiate his latest analysis of the mayor’s prekindergarten plan, even digging out a statement from a former Bloomberg chief of staff to drive the point home: I am the mayor, you are wrong and I have many, many friends who agree with me.

Mr. Stringer had crossed a de Blasio red line when he chose on August 27 to release a report detailing how his office has not received more than 70 percent of the city’s contracts with new universal pre-K service providers. “I don’t know why any public official would want to leave parents with the misimpression that there’s a danger when there isn’t a danger,” Mr. de Blasio groused at a press conference the next day. As the mayor was about to pontificate under a bright Brooklyn sun, his office shot out a press release with 30 statements from elected officials and allies defending the mayor and discrediting Mr. Stringer’s report, a passive aggressive broadside that was clearly assembled with urgency.

That afternoon, in the same municipal building Mr. de Blasio occupied as public advocate, Mr. Stringer blew up.



Read more at http://observer.com/2014/09/stringer-theory-a-democrat-rises-to-challenge-de-blasio/#ixzz3CB4hH9d3