Ferrer Camp Issues Ad Showing Mayor Riding Sidesaddle, in President’s Lap
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.

The Ferrer campaign has been highlighting Mayor Bloomberg’s ties to President Bush for months. Yesterday, they brought that charge to a new level, releasing a cartoon campaign ad that shows the president straddling a horse and the mayor sitting sidesaddle across his lap.
In the ad, the two Republicans trot in front of pictures of oil fields, with a country and western song about enduring love soaring in the background.
Mr. Bush is wearing a cowboy hat and a red bandana. Mr. Bloomberg, who looks slightly flushed, carries a wad of cash. After he passes it to the president, the six-shooter gun in Mr. Bush’s lap fires a shot.
Mr. Bloomberg has opposed Republicans in Washington on several issues, including gun control. But Mr. Ferrer has argued throughout the campaign that the mayor’s financial support for individual Republicans overrides his public statements.
“Mike Bloomberg gave more than $7 million to George W. Bush and the Republican Party. He needs to answer for that donation and the harm his lavish spending on the Republican Party is doing to our city and country,” a spokeswoman for the Ferrer campaign, Jen Bluestein, said.
“Mike Bloomberg contributed $7 million to the nonpartisan, not-for-profit host committee which supported the Republican Convention, as did multiple Ferrer campaign donors. … The convention was a shot in the arm to our economy,” a spokesman for the Bloomberg campaign, Stuart Loeser, said.
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The Democratic mayoral nominee, Fernando Ferrer, said yesterday that if elected, he would lobby Albany to reinstate the commuter tax and would use the $500 million it is estimated to generate to offset part of the city’s looming $4.5 billion budget deficit.
The proposal, however, has virtually no chance of becoming a reality and is already backed by Mayor Bloomberg, whom Mr. Ferrer is trying to unseat.
Mr. Ferrer, however, said Mr. Bloomberg had changed his position on the issue three times since taking office.
The state Legislature repealed the tax in 1999, and two years ago, Albany lawmakers, including some of Mr. Ferrer’s own allies, again overwhelmingly rejected reinstating the tax. They have given no indication that they would be willing to reconsider it now.
A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, Stuart Loeser, said Mr. Ferrer was “MIA” on the issue when it mattered, despite the fact that his campaign chief, Roberto Ramirez, and the chairman of the state Democratic Committee, Assemblyman Herman Farrell, voted to eliminate the commuter tax. “Freddy had been in office for 17 years when the commuter tax was eliminated, and Mike Bloomberg was a long ways from even thinking about running,” Mr. Loeser said in a statement. “Either Freddy didn’t say word one to the Bronx delegation in Albany to stop them, or they didn’t respect his requests when he did.”
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Just eight days before Election Day, one of Fernando Ferrer’s most prominent supporters, Rep. Charles Rangel, joined Mayor Bloomberg yesterday morning, praising the mayor’s commitment to Harlem.
“Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for playing such an important role in the dream that all of us had and generations before us,” Mr. Rangel said, standing beside the mayor at a symbolic groundbreaking for an $18.7 million project to beautify the West Harlem Piers.
Mr. Rangel, the dean of New York’s congressional delegation, supported C. Virginia Fields in the Democratic primary race. Soon after, Mr. Ferrer defeated his Democratic rivals and Mr. Rangel announced his support for Mr. Ferrer.
While Mr. Rangel has been campaigning for Mr. Ferrer, he also has maintained a cordial – even friendly – public relationship with the Republican incumbent. Yesterday morning at the groundbreaking event, Mr. Bloomberg praised Mr. Rangel.
“Charlie’s been there fighting to make the schools better. Charlie’s been there for parks. Charlie has been there as the greatest advocate Harlem has ever had,” he said. “And it’s my pleasure to work with him.”
Mr. Bloomberg, who is fighting to solidify support among black voters, called the revitalization project “more evidence that the second Harlem renaissance is in full swing.”
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Mayor Bloomberg yesterday won yet another endorsement – this time from the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, which represents 2,500 lieutenants, captains, battalion chiefs, deputy chiefs, supervising marshals, and medical officers at the Fire Department.
The Bloomberg campaign billed the endorsement as Mr. Bloomberg’s 13th major public safety endorsement.
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Fernando Ferrer said that if Mayor Bloomberg won’t renounce the poll monitors he hired for Election Day, the Department of Justice should send federal monitors to make sure voters are not intimidated by the mayor’s paid poll workers.
The battle over poll monitors erupted last week when news reports surfaced that Mr. Bloomberg was paying people to guard polls against voter fraud on November 8.
The Bloomberg campaign said at the time that political parties often pay people to monitor polling places.
Democrats, however, latched onto the idea, saying the Bloomberg camp was attempting to intimidate Ferrer voters, many of whom are black or Hispanic.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, Mr. Ferrer said that he didn’t pose a threat to Mr. Bloomberg in terms of his own security.
“That’s something that’s shameful, and if the mayor has funded that, as he has in the past, he should immediately demand a refund,” Mr. Ferrer said.
“We have no objection to federal monitors because we have nothing to hide. It is simply not in our interest to suppress minority votes, because those are votes we are likely to win,” a senior Bloomberg campaign adviser, Terence Tolbert, said.