Mayor de Blasio’s second bid in two years to kill the horse-carriage industry collapsed Thursday morning. Yet by Friday he’d gotten right back on his . . . hobbyhorse, with aides probing the City Council about a new bill.
Happily for the horses, de Blasio still shows no sign of understanding the political ABCs.
His first drive for a ban was slow and open: After months floating plans by the City Council, the mayor got Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito to move toward a vote.
He was foiled by public opinion — and by the adamant opposition of the Teamsters, who rep the drivers.
The speaker couldn’t get the votes, and the mayor publicly gave up.
For Round Two, de Blasio tried to go fast and phony: He pushed for a quick vote on a supposed “compromise” he said the Teamsters had endorsed. In fact, the “deal” outraged the drivers (who knew it was a fast track to extinction) and other interests, from the friends of Central Park (where the mayor promised a new stable) to pedicabbies (who also faced a death sentence).
And whatever the mayor had promised the Teamsters, it wasn’t enough to keep them on board once their other members — and the rest of the movement, especially the Transport Workers Union — spoke up.
Thing is, killing the carriages has zero support beyond a handful of animal-rights ideologues and developers eyeing the land beneath the current stables.
Here’s an irony: De Blasio could satisfy those developers — his donors — by just negotiating a true deal to move the stables, as Mayor Rudy Giuliani did in his day.
Apparently, though, fair negotiation just isn’t part of this mayor’s skill set.