In his column today, Juan Gonzalez noted that Michael Bloomberg is going to appear at an Al Sharpton event later this week.
According to the web site of Sharpton’s National Action Network, the event is actually an invitation-only luncheon this Thursday in midtown, where Bloomberg will be among the people giving remarks. The others include Governor David Paterson and Rev. Jesse Jackson.
The appearance is part of a concerted effort by the Bloomberg campaign to point out the mayor's relatively good relationship (certainly, compared to Rudy Giuliani's) with black New Yorkers and with the African-American political establishment, in particular. (The first endorsement the campaign rolled out at a public event, remember, was from Reverend A.R. Bernard of Brooklyn.)
Councilman Charles Barron, for one, takes a dim view of the mayor's African-American outreach.
“Bloomberg has been buying off black leaders, particularly in the clergy," Barron said in a brief interview. "But there’s anger towards the mayor in the black masses. They’re not buying Bloomberg.”
Barron—a Democrat and former Black Panther who, it should be said, isn't likely at any given moment to have much that's nice to say about the mayor—predicted that Bill Thompson would enjoy support from an overwhelming majority of black voters, and suggested that Thompson could further increase his support by “coming out against gentrification, speaking out more on affordable housing, and police brutality and the mayor’s budget cuts.”
A recent Quinnipiac poll of a hypothetical Thompson-Bloomberg race showed Thompson with support from 35 55 percent of respondents, to Bloomberg's 49 30 percent.
