Miller Brings Staten Island Happy News
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The speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, literally delivered welcome legislation to Staten Island this week, in another sign that he is courting support for next year’s mayoral race in the city’s one Republican borough.
After attending two news conferences at Staten Island late last week, Mr. Miller shepherded two pieces of legislation through the council Tuesday that could help the Manhattan Democrat garner support on Staten Island.
The council overrode a mayoral veto to require stationing nurses in private and public schools and approved a law to increase service on the Staten Island Ferry. Though the nurse bill affects schools citywide, Staten Island, which has many parochial schools, has been dubbed the “epicenter” of the problem.
Mr. Miller denied at a news conference that passing either law was an attempt to make political inroads in the Republican stronghold that both Mr. Bloomberg and Mayor Giuliani carried in their elections. He said the bills were simply good policy.
Sources said, however, that between the mayor’s 18.5% property-tax hike and cuts to services, the borough could be in play in the next election.
“Staten Island is the Ohio of the mayoral election,” Council Member Michael McMahon, who represents the borough’s North Shore and is the lead sponsor on both the nurse and ferry bill, said. “It’s a swing district.”
Pollsters and political observers note that Mr. Miller, a wealthy, white Upper East Sider, needs outer-borough votes to have a chance in both the primary and general elections. With a former Bronx borough president, Fernando Ferrer, and Rep. Anthony Weiner, of Brooklyn and Queens, as two likely Democratic opponents, that makes siphoning off votes elsewhere more challenging.
“He’s definitely created a couple of Staten Island wedge issues that will serve him well,” Democratic political consultant Allen Cappelli, a Staten Islander, said. “Gifford Miller understands that good government is good politics.” Mr. Cappelli also said all three men have all been visible on Staten Island lately but noted that the mayor’s initiatives to curb overdevelopment there and to overhaul the city’s schools will probably work in his favor.
A New York University professor and adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, Mitchell Moss, said Mr. Miller has only just discovered the oft forgotten borough.
“Councilman McMahon has become his chauffeur there,” Mr. Moss said. “He wouldn’t know how to get anywhere on Staten Island if he took the ferry over there himself.”
Though the borough actually has more registered Democrats than Republicans, the director of Quinnipiac University’s Polling Institute, Maurice Carroll, said there is no doubt that Democrats have a hard time there.
Mr. Carroll said the mayor’s numbers were drastically down on Staten Island immediately after the property-tax hike, but that the $400 property-tax rebate helped boost his standing. Like others, he said, a bloc of votes at Staten Island or any of the outer boroughs could tip the scale in a candidate’s favor, especially in the primary.