John Liu Pegs His ‘True Base of Support’ at 25 Percent

John Liu’s mayoral campaign may be hovering around ten percent in the polls, but according to the candidate himself, they

John Liu. (Photo: Getty)
John Liu. (Photo: Getty)

John Liu’s mayoral campaign may be hovering around ten percent in the polls, but according to the candidate himself, they understate his support by more than twofold. Indeed, a beaming Mr. Liu told a room full of teachers yesterday that if the surveys were accurate, he’d actually have the support of a quarter of the city’s Democratic primary electorate.

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“My true base of support in the electorate is closer to 25 percent,” Mr. Liu, the city’s comptroller, exclaimed at a teacher’s union mayoral forum in Brooklyn. “You add on top of that the tremendous amount of labor support I’m going to have, that puts me very much in the running–much more so than other candidates who I don’t think have any piece of their base that is not being reflected in the public poll numbers.”

The Brooklyn United Federation of Teachers forum was apparently closed to the press, but Politicker wasn’t kicked out until after Mr. Liu spelled out his case for victory in a 25th-floor conference room packed with public school teachers. Making an argument he’s presented before, Mr. Liu went on to say the possibility of electing the city’s first Asian mayor will drive that voting bloc to the polls. These voters, Mr. Liu firmly insisted, are simply not being reached due to language barriers and lack of publicly listed phone lines.

“What the polls don’t show is if you look at the breakdowns, you see breakdowns for white voters, black voters or Hispanics voters,” he explained, claiming the 15 percent of the Democratic primary electorate will be Asian. “That’s it; those are the only breakdowns you’ll see. The Asian voters are not being captured in the public polls.”

Marist College, one of two public pollsters that regularly releases numbers, actually does include a breakdown of the Asian vote and had recently the comptroller with 11 percent of the overall vote. Additionally, Asian Americans are only 12.7 percent of the city’s population, according to U.S. Census figures, and data crunchers widely expect them to be even less of the electorate due to lagging citizenship and civic participation rates.

Once all of his support is taken into account, Mr. Liu nevertheless claimed, he’ll have enough “to be running circles” around his opponents–even though two of his former associates–including his one-time campaign treasurer–were recently found guilty of committing campaign finance fraud on his behalf. He dismissed any continuing cloud over his own campaign as mere “innuendos.”

“I’m certainly not only relying on the Asian vote, I only bring up the Asian vote because they are missing from the polls,” Mr. Liu said. “We got a broad outreach. I’m in every community, I’m going to be running circles around all of my competitors.”

 

Additional reporting by Colin Campbell.

John Liu Pegs His ‘True Base of Support’ at 25 Percent