If you have not done so yet, go check out the Gotham Gazette's Campaign 2005 - Mayoral Candidates: Grid.

Chockfull of information it really is a fast way to check where the candidates stand and compare in issues such as immigrant voting rights, the smoking ban, city finances, anti-terror plans and civil rights.

I hope they do the same next time with all major electoral positions in the city. This would be an amazing resource to have in the future.

This is a really great profile about Virginia Fields, well worth the read.

[via A Long Road From Birmingham]:

Fields showed the most aggressiveness in discussing Bloomberg's veto of the Equal Benefits Law, a measure championed by lesbian City Councilwoman Christine Quinn that would have required contractors doing business with the city to offer their gay and lesbian employees domestic partner benefits on par with those given to spouses. Asked about the mayor's assertion that city procurement policies should not be used to advance social agendas, the borough president scoffed.

"The city is always doing social policy," she said without skipping a beat. "I mean we do so much policy on a whole host of issues. So I think that is a real phony argument when you look at a number of legislative initiatives and policy initiatives where we often tie in decisions that are clearly related to social policy."

Told that the mayor, responding to Gay City News' Andy Humm immediately prior to the LGBT Pride March in June, said he would have taken the same view back in the 1970s and 1980s when sanctions against businesses active in apartheid South Africa were adopted by the city, Fields seemed taken aback.

"To now know that the mayor has taken a position that he would have done differently is very disturbing and I can only say that I am so glad that he was not mayor at the time when that decision was being discussed," she said.

[via Quinnipiac University | Ferrer still short of 40% in NYC dem primary, Quinnipiac University poll finds; three others in horse race for second place]:

New York City likely Democratic primary voters give mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer 33 percent, short of the 40 percent he needs to avoid a Democratic primary runoff, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

The other Democratic contenders are in a horse race for second place, and a chance to be in the runoff, with 17 percent each for Council Speaker Gifford Miller and Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields and 16 percent for U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.

Even among these likely Democratic voters, 16 percent remain undecided and 51 percent say they still might change their mind before the September 13 primary.

And 44 percent of these likely Democratic voters say they will vote for Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg if the candidate they support does not win the primary.

Unfriggingbelievable.

I am just flabbergasted by this. I really am. If there is anything that reflects the problems of the Democratic Party, from a local to national level, is this race. There is no unity, no desire for a Democratic Party win. What we have are four factions vying to undercut each other, and not interested at all to bring back New York City to the Democratic Party.

The New York Post printed FERRER: AX 'PARK DISS' COMMISH, this morning; giving the impression that Ferrer was somehow calling for a firing squad; but I have here the audiocasts that will paint a better picture of the incident.

Fernando Ferrer's Call for Accountability

Mayoral Candidates Follow-up on Ferrer's Call for Accountability

The podcast, raw and unedited, is a whopping 9+ GIGABYTES.
Daily Gotham's audiocast of Parks1 26 July 2005 Mayoral Forum

Oh, and just in case you wondered, I signed the pledge too

Now, the question you've all been waiting for me to answer : Who came out in front?

And the answer is ...

Ferrer:

(1) Ensure every dollar of the consession money goes back into the parks.

(2) Minimum staffing and maintenance standards
(3) Compeltely clear & transparent way for people to judge the city in its maintenance of its parks

"Lovely to have wifi but we first need the benches."

Fields
(1) Funding would be a priority .. that's why I signed the 1% pledge

(2) Planning, so that when decisions made about development, parks are on the table

Miller
(1) Reclaim bottom 50 parks

(2) $10 million for maitenance & $25MIL capital

(3) Enforce maintenance & make sure there's security

(4) Create relationships with private funding

Ognibene
(1) The first thing I would do is to rethink my position about community gardens

(2) I went to all the community organizations and the most important thing to do is to find out what they need and what they want and make sure they interact with the new parks commissioner ... there's no reason why every park has people's input

Dave Evans : "I am not an advocate ... but I get indignant every morning I see the benches along Riverside Drive and I see them with no wood:

Ognibene:
All of our benches have wood on them.

We spent $25 million dollar rehabilitating all the parks in my community in Queens.

I made sure money was spent so it wouldn't be an eyesore.

I made sure civic groups would get involved in keeping the parks clean and safe.

Miller:

"Fighting the notion that they are an amenity ... a luxury .. parks are a necessity .. they are at the heart of what makes our city strong, our city safe, our city livable."

He's mentioning the

"problem of vision, problem of commitment" Ad $10 million of operating budget and $25 million in capital budget ... publish crime numbers no matter how small ... encourage private and public investment ... "

Fields :
Funding : Funding has been systematically reduced and cut ... funding is the challenge.

I don't know about that bench ... I am not responsible for that.

Parks are the equalizer ... we have people who cannot afford to go away to their summer homes, who cannot leave for the weekend ... I have to toured the parks to better understand what needs to be done.

Ferrer:

Uneveness in investment ... the efforts to reclaim [ parks in Bronx ] was a multi-million dollar effort ... with capital help ... that requires 3 things :

[via Parks1 | Make NYC's Parks #1 In The Nation]

The largest event of the election season is almost here: the Parks1 Mayoral Forum on Parks will bring together 5 candidates, dozens of elected officials, hundreds of gardening, sporting, recreation and cycling groups and NINE HUNDRED New Yorkers for a serious conversation on parks.

I'm here as part of the NYC media covering the largest mayoral forum to date -- there's 900 New York souls eager to listen to what these City Hall hopefuls have to say :

Virginia Fields
Fernando Ferrer
Gifford Miller
Anthony Weiner

and Republican hopeful

Thomas Ognibene

Michael Bloomberg? Nowhere in sight.

[via President Bush's Rating on Handling of Iraq Continues to Erode]:

ROCHESTER, N.Y., July 21 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the latest Harris Poll, the rating of President Bush's handling of Iraq continues to decline. Almost two-thirds (64%) of U.S. adults now rate the president negatively. On almost all measures in this survey, the number of adults expressing negative views on Iraq has increased.

These are the results of a new Harris Poll of 2,339 U.S. adults surveyed online by Harris Interactive(R) between July 12 and 18, 2005. The main findings in this poll are:

* President Bush's 64 percent negative to 34 percent positive rating on the handling of Iraq is an increase in that negative rating from 61 to 37 percent in May.

* By 59 to 23 percent, U.S. adults are not confident that U.S. policies in Iraq will be successful. This represents continued erosion in confidence from May when a 54 to 26 percent majority said that they were not confident.

* The percentage of adults who say that taking military action against Iraq was the right thing to do has remained steady (38% now vs. 39% in May). The percentage who thinks that this was the wrong thing to do has also remained steady (49 percent now vs. 48 percent in May).

* While 44 percent of adults think the situation for U.S. troops in Iraq is getting worse, only 17 percent think things are getting better. A third (35%) feels that things haven't changed, similar to the percentage who felt this way in May (34%).

Not withstanding the hyperbolic pronouncement of Reuters via Washington Post that Bloomberg looks set for another term as NY mayor, Bloomie's camp is not that happy over the implosion happening to Virginia Fields :

FIELDS' MELTDOWN BAD NEWS FOR MIKE - Yahoo! News

SENIOR advisers to Mayor Bloomberg in creasingly fear that Fernando Ferrer will win the Democratic primary and avoid a potentially racially divisive runoff that could work to the mayor's advantage.

The Bloomberg camp --which for months has expected Ferrer to be its opponent in the November election-- is now resigned to the possibility that Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields will not draw enough support to keep Ferrer from the 40 percent needed on Sept. 13 to win the primary outright.

"The only person hurt more than us by Virginia's problems is Virginia," said a Bloomberg aide, referring to the weeklong flap over a doctored campaign photo. "If Freddy reaches 40 [percent], it certainly makes things more difficult."

This is really interesting. So if Virginia photoshops her credibility away and the mayor thinks it's bad news; do they have their panties in a bunch now that Gifford Miller junk-mailed his integrity with $1.6 million of tax payers' money? Does this mean we will have a real election after all?