Fernando Ferrer’s Problem
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

With the political class in this city already starting to sketch the post-mortem – or, since the election is a week away, maybe pre-mortem is a more appropriate term – of the mayoral campaign of Fernando Ferrer, the latest clues can be found in last night’s debate. New Yorkers didn’t have to watch Mr. Ferrer and his Republican opponent, Michael Bloomberg, go at it for long to recognize why a Democrat hasn’t won a mayoral election in New York City since 1989, despite the fact that Democrats hold an overwhelming advantage in the city in terms of party affiliation of registered voters. That was a year when “The Cosby Show” and “Cheers” were the hot television programs, no one but a few scientists had heard of the Internet, and the Yankees lineup included Rickey Henderson and Tommy John.
Mr. Ferrer came off yesterday as an angry, hard-left candidate, out of touch with mainstream American values. In the midst of a desperate war to save our country from a barbaric enemy, with Americans pinned down on the field of battle, he said he wanted to keep military recruiters out of New York City schools. He repeated his zero-sum line from the previous debate about how building firehouses in Baghdad means closing them in New York. “I’m not the candidate of the people in the boardrooms,” Mr. Ferrer said proudly to a city whose boardrooms are filled with people fueling the city’s renaissance. Mr. Bloomberg aptly summed up the Ferrer campaign by saying of his opponent, “He stands for complaining.”
We’re among the many New Yorkers who were proud to see the mayor say it would be “an outrage” to withdraw immediately from Iraq, the tack that Mr. Ferrer seemed to be proposing and toward which Mr. Ferrer’s national party chairman seems to be reeling. It would, the mayor said, mean the troops who fought there already “died in vain.” Mr. Bloomberg said he saw nothing wrong with giving the military the same access to city high schools that businesses get for the purpose of recruitment and of giving students options. No doubt many will take those options, because fortunately our young people remember that our city was the first targeted in the war of terror that was launched against America and of which Iraq’s ancien regime was a part.
It was the mayor, not Mr. Ferrer, who sketched an optimistic vision of economic growth, one that will affect all New Yorkers, rich and poor. He effectively, and accurately, portrayed Mr. Ferrer as a candidate with ambitions to raise taxes. A week is a long time in politics, and surprises happen. But Mr. Ferrer is lagging in the public polls, and we don’t think it is only because he is being outspent by Mr. Bloomberg. One wonders how many losing elections it will take for the Democrats to realize that campaigning for tax increases and against the American military is a losing strategy. Eventually, people are going to stop remembering even the names of the television shows and Yankee players and the also-rans from 1989.