One of four contenders for the Democratic mayoral nomination, Anthony Weiner, accepted the endorsement of District 15 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers yesterday on the steps of City Hall. The IAMAW represents auto mechanics and transportation workers, and has an area membership of approximately 12,000. “When working people in New York City have fought for better benefits, better job conditions, and better jobs, Mr. Weiner has been right there … leading the fight,” the union’s direct business representative, James Conigliaro, said at the press conference. Mr. Conigliaro cited Mr. Weiner’s fight to win benefits for airline workers, his efforts on behalf of middle-class New Yorkers, and his opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement as reasons behind IAMAW’s endorsement of his candidacy.

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Democratic mayoral front-runner Fernando Ferrer received yesterday the endorsement of New York City’s comptroller, William Thompson Jr., a Democrat many political observers expect to be a mayoral aspirant in 2009. The Ferrer campaign touted the nod as backing from “the highest elected African-American official in New York City.” At a press conference on the steps of City Hall yesterday, the comptroller praised Mr. Ferrer, a former Bronx borough president, for his record on education. While professing his support for Mr. Ferrer, however, Mr. Thompson declined at yesterday’s conference to make statements critical of Mayor Bloomberg, whom he has occasionally lauded in the past.

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Mayoral candidate C. Virginia Fields wants to know whether police officers on patrol at the Carnival del Boulevard parade in Washington Heights Sunday discriminated against her campaign posters. A senior aide to her campaign apparently captured a snippet of footage on his cellular phone – which aired yesterday on New York 1 – of officers along the parade route on St. Nicholas Avenue tearing her posters down from the official NYPD barricades. Ms. Fields’s campaign manager, Chung Seto, insisted that Mayor Bloomberg’s posters on barricades along the same route that were left untouched. She fired off a letter to the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, asking for an explanation. “Either you have a consistent policy or you don’t,” she said during a phone interview. “We will obey by any policy and any rules, but is there a policy that caters just for mayor and not his opponents?” A police department spokesman, Jason Post, denied that officers give Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign posters preferential treatment. “Nobody can hang anything on a police department barricade,” he said. “The only thing you’ll every see on a barricade is New York City Police Department. The allegation that the mayor’s campaign literature doesn’t get ripped down is erroneous.”

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The speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, said yesterday that he would push for two new tax changes if elected mayor. Mr. Miller, one of four Democrats seeking the party’s nomination to take on Mayor Bloomberg in November, wants to double the city’s Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income residents in the five boroughs. That increase, which he has called for before, would mean an average credit of more than $2,400 for those who qualify. Mr. Miller also said yesterday that he would fight to expand the School Tax Relief program, which offsets property taxes earmarked for education spending, to those who rent their homes and apartments. The existing program applies only to homeowners. Both measures would require approval from Albany.