New York City – It looks like Bill Thompson is going to easily win the write-in vote over Mayor Bloomberg — unfortunately for him, the people doing the writing are city Sanitation agents.
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The Sanitation Department reported yesterday that Thompson’s campaign is facing a hefty $125,775 bill for plastering city property with 1,677 illegal campaign posters.
Thompson spokesman Mike Murphy charged that City Hall was pulling the strings of ticket writers.
“Is anyone really surprised by the power of the incumbent to fine his opponent?” Murphy asked.
Not true, insisted Sanitation spokesman Vito Turso.
He said the agency’s enforcement agents are assigned to rip down unauthorized posters without consideration of who or what is being publicized.
To prove it, Turso produced a list of more than two dozen politicians in similar straits.
In contrast to Thompson, Bloomberg’s campaign has been cited for 70 violations.
“The campaign has made a concerted effort [not to repeat 2005],” said Howard Wolfson, the mayor’s campaign spokesman. “In fact, those 70 were from overzealous supporters.”
Four years ago, The Post found Bloomberg topping the list of poster pests with 4,218 summonses. At $75 a pop, the fines came to $307,725.
Rather than fight them at an administrative hearing, the mayor simply paid in full.
Meanwhile, in an apparent attempt to irritate the mayor, the Thompson campaign keeps projecting Bloomberg’s eventual spending for his third-term run at $200 million.
In truth, the mayor seems certain to surpass $100 million, which in itself would easily qualify as the all-time record for a local race.
Bloomberg reported tearing through an extra $18.7 million since the last filing period on Oct. 2 to bring his total to $83.4 million as of last Monday.
All the money comes from his astoundingly deep pockets.
Yesterday, the mayor added another $1.7 million, mostly for TV ads, to hit the $85.2 million mark.
That’s more than the record $85 million it cost Bloomberg for his entire 2005 campaign — and that’s before he revs up a get-out-the-vote effort that’s shaping up as the most extensive ever undertaken by a mayor.
Scratching for every buck, Thompson reported raising $270,000 from 3,000 donors.
Aides said with public matching funds he should collect more than $1 million this round.
That would get him within $800,000 of the $10 million spent by Freddy Ferrer, Bloomberg’s 2005 Democratic challenger, who ended up losing by 20 points.
Money isn’t Thompson’s only problem. Yesterday — two days after President Obama had his picture taken with the comptroller — the White House allowed Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to join Bloomberg at the Manhattan Children’s Museum to promote a program to combat childhood obesity.
“Mayor Bloomberg has distinguished himself not only in New York but across this country as one of the great public-health advocates in America,” said Sebelius.
Bill Thompson should take advantage of the fact that the Bloomberg Administration refuses to take advantage of a small device that would save the city, us the tax payers, over $200,000,000.00 (that’s two hundred milliaon dollars) a year, in electric bills, from what the city pays. This is not pocket change.
There is this small device, the Safe Loop, that would eliminate all stray voltages and current leakage into the ground, from each of the 350,000 street light poles that we have in the city. The elimination of stray voltages would also eliminate the hundreds of millions of dollars that the city pays for legal fees and settlements as a result of stray voltages that injure, people, animals and our earth. The cost of this device and its installation would be paid for by the savings within one year.
The research was done to prove these statements and yet Bloomberg’s staff refuse to make use of it.
Mr. Thompson, go, go, go…