It was only a matter of time before one of the people vying for Mayor Bloomberg’s job in November confronted him on his controversial vision for the West Side of Manhattan. This weekend, the Democratic front-runner, Fernando Ferrer, asked the mayor to let the people of New York decide by putting the new Jets stadium on the ballot as a referendum item in November.

“Nothing more profoundly affects the fiscal health of the city now and in the generations to come than the expenditures of untold hundreds of millions of dollars on a West Side stadium,” the former Bronx borough president said on Gabe Pressman’s “News Forum” on WNBC television, which was taped Friday. “So the mayor has an obligation, I believe, and I call upon him to call upon his charter commission to put this measure on the ballot this November for a vote.”

The mayor’s office didn’t waste any time in shooting down the idea. Waiting until November to put the issue before the people would scupper the city’s chances to be chosen as host of the 2012 Olympics, the mayor’s spokesman, Edward Skyler, told The New York Sun. The stadium is the linchpin to the Olympics bid, he said.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” he said yesterday. “The IOC picks the host city in July, so delaying the decision on the stadium would end our chances at getting the Olympics. This idea of a referendum was proposed first by Cablevision, but if Freddy wants to be a shill for the Dolans and join their crusade against jobs and opportunity, he can go right ahead.”

The Dolans, who own Madison Square Garden and Cablevision, have been battling fiercely to defeat the Jets stadium proposal. Mr. Bloomberg has been in a very public fight with them, accusing them of putting selfish business interests – the Jets stadium would compete with the Garden as a sports and concert venue – ahead of the development of the city. The administration’s growling responses aside, it is clear that Mr. Ferrer has zeroed in on one of the mayor’s vulnerabilities. Before Mr. Ferrer called for the referendum, other Democratic candidates had generally taken more circumspect positions on the issue. For example, the speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, said he wasn’t against the stadium so much as the way the project was financed.

Mr. Ferrer’s challenge to Mr. Bloomberg comes only days after a new Quinnipiac University poll showed that New Yorkers were, at best, lukewarm about the mayor’s favored project. Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed said they opposed the stadium and more than a quarter of those asked said they would be less likely to vote for Mr. Bloomberg because of the issue.

To hear the mayor tell the story, his vision for the development of the West Side will create a new business district with hundreds of thousands of square feet of new office space. It also will create “affordable housing,” parks, subway access, and a stadium that can be used for trade shows. He sees the plan as a job creator for a part of the city that has long been blighted.

Critics see it differently. They wonder aloud why the mayor would want to spend $600 million in public money to help a private company, the New York Jets, build the stadium. The mayor complains almost daily about the city’s tight finances, and he has a $3 billion budget gap to fill this year, so critics say there are more urgent needs, such as hiring more teachers and reducing class size.

Mr. Ferrer seized on the idea that the stadium is an ego-driven battle among a trio of very rich men: James Dolan, who runs Madison Square Garden; Robert Wood Johnson III, who owns the Jets, and Mr. Bloomberg, who is worth billions. The criticism not only strikes at the project but also raises the doubts many have about their mayor’s ability to identify with people who aren’t wealthy.

“This has essentially been a fight among three billionaires, the decisions about this being made by two agencies, one state and one city, that nobody ever heard of and nobody ever elected, in somebody’s back room,” Mr. Ferrer said on the Pressman show. “The mayor has an obligation to take that argument out of the back room and put it before the voters.”

Mr. Bloomberg appointed a Charter Revision Commission last year to explore the issues of fiscal stability, judicial reform, and administrative efficiency and accountability. Critics said it was a way to block any threat of a referendum on the Jets stadium. Under state law, a mayoral referendum issue trumps any other issue that other groups try to bring before the voters. Mr. Bloomberg tried to get a referendum passed in 2003 that would have paved the way for nonpartisan elections. His proposal prevented a nonprofit group from getting a referendum on class size, backed by the United Federation of Teachers, on the ballot.

Similarly, analysts doubt that Mr. Ferrer’s call for a West Side referendum will ever get off the ground. What it could do, however, is give the former Bronx borough president an issue with traction. If Mr. Bloomberg says unequivocally that he won’t consider the referendum, his opponents have other options – which would probably keep the stadium issue as a thorn in Mr. Bloomberg’s side throughout the campaign.

One option would be for the City Council to establish a charter commission of its own. While the mayor’s charter proposals would still take precedence on the ballot, Mr. Bloomberg would seem obstructionist not to consider the council proposal. It could be a way for Mr. Miller to exploit the stadium issue. People close to council discussions said the separate council charter commission is something that is indeed being considered.

Another option is to mobilize those who are against the stadium in the far West Side neighborhood in a grassroots campaign to get a referendum on the ballot. Again, if enough signatures were gathered but the mayor refused to allow a vote on the Jets stadium, then he would play into the hands of critics who say he is making a back-room deal without taking into account how New Yorkers feel about the project.

“What this is really about is Ferrer distinguishing himself from the other Democrats in the race,” a Baruch College professor of political science, Douglas Muzzio, said. “This issue has all the ingredients of New York City. It has money, power, real estate, it is all there. People had been asking whether Freddy Ferrer could find a message on which he can run and attack the mayor. The stadium has given him that. This is not political opportunism, this is Ferrer engaging. There are now two adults in the race.”