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Liu, de Blasio enter race for Public Advocate
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With New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum's announcement yesterday that she won't seek a third term, two City Council Members Tuesday announced their intention to run for the seat.
Council Member Bill de Blasio (D - Brooklyn) Tuesday ended his bid for Brooklyn Borough President and announced that he would instead run for Public Advocate, while Council Member John C. Liu (D - Queens), who has raised more than 7 million dollars for an unknown campaign, according to the Daily News.
Liu and de Blasio will face-off against fellow Council Member Eric N. Gioia and perennial candidate Norman Siegel, a prominent civil liberties attorney in a September 2009 Democratic Primary. There has also been some speculation that Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has his eye on the post.
Both Liu and de Blasio were vocal critics of Mayor Bloomberg's term limits extension bill, although de Blasio took a far more public role in leading the charge.
De Blasio also cited his efforts to fight cuts to school classroom aid as proof that he is "obviously not scared to stand up to the mayor," adding: "I think that's a pre-requisite for anyone who wants to be public advocate."
He rejected the suggestion that he burned too many bridges among his Council colleagues during the term limits war to return to sit among them (the Public Advocate also serves as the City Council President.
"Obviously, there is a place in the Council for a loyal opposition," said de Blasio. "Up until Thursday afternoon, I can't tell you how much my singular focus was on that vote. I wasn't thinking about the future. But to me the world was a very different place on Thursday morning than it was on Friday morning."
Liu was front-and-center among critics of Council Speaker Christine Quinn in the wake of the slush fund scandal, and has also called for more accountability at the MTA and been critical about how the Department of Education as (as he put it) "destroyed mayoral control."
"The position is best-suited to be a counter-weight to the mayor, and it is the way I would like to serve New Yorkers," said Liu. "It is in the best interest of the public within the constraints of the City Charter, to have a system of checks and balances."
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