Bill Thompson’s campaign resorted to taking a cyber-swing at front-runner Bill de Blasio in the race for mayor yesterday — launching a Web site that bashes the public advocate for going back on his promise to disclose his meetings with lobbyists.
The late-game release of the attack site — coming just 11 days before the Sept. 10 primary — not only borrowed from Speaker Christine Quinn’s playbook, but also repeated her theme that de Blasio says one thing and does another.
The de Blasio campaign Web site features a database that claims to list all meetings between the public advocate and a lobbyist, “yet an analysis of his official schedule reveals Bill de Blasio repeatedly did not disclose meetings with lobbyists, many of which donated thousands of dollars to his campaign,” the Thompson site says.
Team Quinn — which has a Tumblr page titled “A Tale of Two de Blasios” — also continued to beat the “hypocrite” drum by criticizing de Blasio’s support for a controversial real-estate development in 2009.
The heightened attacks came after three polls this week showed de Blasio leading the race by as much as 15 percentage points.
“It only makes sense that with de Blasio as the front-runner the other two have turned their guns on de Blasio. And they have to keep de Blasio under 40 [percent] and at the same time try to get into the runoff [while] looking over each other’s shoulder. So it’s a very tough, strategic game,” said political consultant George Arzt, who is unaffiliated with any of the campaigns.
“As we approach Labor Day, when voters finally focus on this race, there tends to be a frantic quality to all campaigns.”
The two top finishers in the primary will face each other in an Oct. 1 runoff if no candidate wins with at least 40 percent of the vote.
During a conference call with reporters yesterday, Thompson spokesman John Collins criticized the public advocate for falling short of his pledge to disclose all lobbyist meetings.
“This is just a troubling pattern of Bill de Blasio saying one thing and doing another,” Collins charged.
Quinn laced into the front-runner after she was endorsed by the 25,000-member New York City District Council of Carpenters outside City Hall.
“More and more as I’m out there every day campaigning, like I was this morning in Washington Heights, I’m hearing New Yorkers ask me questions, ask me questions about why does the public advocate say one thing and do another,” she said.
“I think candidates being disingenuous and talking out of both sides of their mouth does matter, and I think we’re going to see the results of that come [Election Day].”
She took a jab at de Blasio’s progressive stripes because he supported a nonunion builder that was set to build luxury condos near the Gowanus Canal during his time in the City Council.
De Blasio had atypically sided with Mayor Bloomberg by trying to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from declaring the toxic canal a Superfund site, which the builder, Toll Brothers, said would derail the project.
The feds ended up declaring it a Superfund site, and Toll Brothers dropped its plans. Earlier this year, the firm threw a fund-raising party for de Blasio.
He argued that the firm — which has also donated to Quinn — had committed to using union labor on that project, which included affordable housing.
“It’s so far from the truth I don’t even know where to begin,” de Blasio said of Quinn’s attack. “That plan we had for the Gowanus was all union labor . . . At this point, Speaker Quinn is just throwing stones almost randomly.”