It’s time for the latest installment of our weekly scorecard rating how next year’s potential mayoral candidates performed in the past seven days. This week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to duck out of the battle when he unloaded on reporters at a press conference and said he would no longer take questions about the 2013 mayoral contenders’ proposals. Mayor Bloomberg’s desire to remain above the fray could have a pronounced effect on his would-be-successors. Public Advocate, Bill de Blasio, of course, has no intention of being anywhere other than front-and-center in the nascent campaign and he continued to ride wave of publicity from his tax-the-rich plan, which–even when this paper slams it–is still a winning issue, as it’s aimed at helping little tiny children learn.
Without further ado, here’re our highlights:
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Christine Quinn is lucky, Mr. Bloomberg will no longer be helping her lesser-known rivals perpetually pester him into public back-and-forths that inevitably raise their profile. Mr. Bloomberg is out and, consequently, Ms. Quinn is up.
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Bill de Blasio is lucky, because everything we wrote above is probably untrue. A Bloomberg spokesman went on TV to decline a debate between Hizzoner and Mr. de Blasio, and Mr. Bloomberg himself has repeatedly discussed his antagonist's tax and education proposals.
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Billy Thompson, like Ms. Quinn, backed off his specific tax-the-rich proposal from 2009. It's not immediately clear what the endgame here is for Mr. Thompson, as the Democratic primary electorate surely favors that sort of thing. But fine, this time we'll wait to judge.
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Tom Allon has hinted he might switch parties and run as a Republican, but the deadline to be able to do so without the blessing of the county GOP organizations is today. Mr. Allon didn't respond to multiple inquiries from Politicker about whether he's still a Democrat.
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Scott Stringer might have trouble staying in the race at this point. The backroom chatter that he's running for comptroller is almost cacophonous, and rumors are spreading that he's already told supporters of this intention. When will we know for sure?
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John Liu never has a good week when the headlines are all things like "US Prosecutors Deny Effort to Make Up Case Against Liu" and "Feds Deny Effort to 'Manufacture' Corruption Case Against John Liu." But it could have been--and has been, in the past--worse.
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