Bill de Blasio‘s big win in the Democratic primary lends popular support to his claim that attacking the vast and growing economic gulf between rich and poor New Yorkers is the proper business of our city’s political leaders.
But as de Blasio now tries to sell that philosophy to a general-election audience — even as he’s buoyed by sky-high early poll numbers — he’ll likely find himself getting battered from the right and the left.
He already stands accused of fomenting class warfare by his Republican opponent, Joe Lhota, and Mayor Bloomberg. But he has also been pooh-poohed by liberal activists who think de Blasio’s solution to inequality either can’t be enacted or isn’t powerful enough to begin closing New York’s yawning gaps of wealth and income.
As the Texas populist Jim Hightower famously it, there’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos. If de Blasio wants to avoid getting run over, he may want to consider some fancy footwork — or, perhaps, a modification of his plan.
De Blasio field-tested the “tale of two cities” theme on the campaign trail. Democrats clearly liked what they heard; that’s why he came out on top in the primary.
“The people of this city wanted that discussion to start happening, because a lot of people are really struggling to make ends meet,” he told me shortly after his victory. “They want their leaders to acknowledge that and get to work fixing it.”
Fair enough. De Blasio never minced words about his preferred strategy: a 0.5% income tax increase on New Yorkers making more than $500,000 a year, with the resulting $500 million a year dedicated to pre-kindergarten and afterschool programs.
To his credit, de Blasio didn’t narrowly tailor the message to liberals: The proposal was unveiled in a speech to the Association for a Better New York, a civic association that looks skeptically on tax hikes.
A few days after winning the primary, Lhota tore into de Blasio. “It’s a divide-and-conquer strategy,” Lhota told reporters. “It’s class warfare.”
De Blasio will probably win that part of the argument. It’s difficult to see the political harm in acknowledging what just about everybody in New York knows: Some of us are doing spectacularly well, while others are barely hanging on. Peek inside the private clubs and celebrity VIP rooms, and you’ll see the fortunate few toasting their good fortune and success — much of it well-deserved — just as any of us would do.
Our town is home to 70 billionaires (including the mayor, whose net worth was just estimated at $31 billion) and thousands more very well-to-do families living alongside a couple million people living in poverty, with a record-high 50,000 of them sleeping in the shelters each night.
De Blasio didn’t create that jarring contrast and will probably not lose votes for promising to do something about it.
Less easily dismissed is the point by Lhota (who formerly served as city budget director) that de Blasio’s tax hike would yield less than 1% of the city budget — a sum that could be raised by making city agencies more efficient rather than raising taxes.
I recently pressed de Blasio about whether taxing the rich is more a symbolic gesture than a practical necessity. Hypothetically, I asked, if a federal program delivered the city $500 million a year for pre-k and afterschool programs, would you call off the tax hike?
“Half a billion dollars is not symbolic. That’s real money,” he said. “It’s important to get this done to fix our schools, and there is no alternative source of money . . . It’s also important to address inequality.”
The issue clearly resonates with politically active liberals: This week, the second anniversary of Occupy Wall Street’s birth was marked by demonstrations around the city in support of a so-called Robin Hood Tax that would be imposed on Wall Street transactions — a move far more sweeping than anything de Blasio has proposed — and raise “hundreds of billions” to be spent nationwide.
To that crowd, de Blasio’s half-percent tax (which he says would expire after five years) will likely seem like the sort of pittance that shows the limits of ordinary politics, and a reason for the Robin Hood activists to stay in the streets.
If voters conclude that de Blasio’s plan demands too much and delivers too little, he may need to replace the income tax hike with a larger, more stable source of revenue.
Re-imposing a commuter tax, for instance, would raise $500 million a year from non-city residents who work here. It would be a titanic fight in Albany, but no less so than the income tax hike that some insiders have already declared dead on arrival. He could also opt to steal Lhota’s thunder by finding a few fat pieces of government inefficiency and vowing to link the savings to school improvement.
The trick is to make sure people feel relief, not rage.
Louis is political anchor at NY1 News
