Independence Party mayoral nominee Adolfo Carrion Jr. is still frustrated at not being invited to TV debates. They could do so much for his candidacy, he says: Just look at… Ross Perot.
Our Danielle Schlanger reports:
With less than two weeks before Election Day, Carrion is still after votes even though he’s barely registering in the polls.
On Thursday night, Carrion participated in
a mayoral candidate forum in Harlem
sponsored by 100 Black Men, Inc. of New York.
Asked about being uninvited to TV debates sponsored by the city Campaign Finance Board because he has not met the benchmarks for performance in public polls, Carrion went after the governing body — and then launched into a story about Perot, who twice ran as an Independent.
“[Perot’s] at seven percent in the polls. They say ‘You’re not going to participate; you’re not allowed because the Presidential Campaign Commission says you’re not allowed,” he told the small audience.
“So [Perot] goes to… President Bush, and says, ‘You know, would you be willing to say you won’t go to the debates if they don’t let me go to the debates?'”
Once they let Perot debate, Carrion said the candidate “went from seven percent to 20% and he got 19 million votes in the general election.
“And the headline the next morning was, ‘Perot Wins Debate’, hands down, all across the nation, in every major newspaper,” Carrion concluded (though Perot obviously didn’t quite make it to Pennsylvania Avenue). “If we want our politics to be driven by ideas, and have the parties pursue the people and not the people the parties, we’re going to need to open this up.”
Though Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) cracked that he “just can’t remember what party he’s running for” when introducing Carrion at the forum, the former Bronx borough president insists things are okay.
“The campaign is going well,” Carrion, who left the Democratic Party and is now registered unaffiliated, told Daily Politics. “We’re out in the street. We’re talking to voters. We’re visiting them in their churches, in their commercial districts.”
Carrion’s performance at the forum met with approval from Bill Burgess, a board member of 100 Black Men and the president of international executive search firm The Burgess Group.
“I thought they were both good,” Burgess said of Carrion and GOP nominee Joe Lhota, saying it was “really bad” that frontrunning Democrat Bill de Blasio didn’t participate.
“I thought that Carrion was better in terms of answering more specific questions to the needs of not only the African-American and other minority communities, but the greater New York City community at large.”
Although he’s widely viewed as needing nothing short of a miracle to make it to City Hall, Carrion said he plans to make the most of the remainder of the campaign.
“We have 12 days to go,” he said. “Each of them counts.”
Here’s a brief clip of Carrion speaking to Daily Politics about the state of the race.