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NYC CORRECTION OFFICER UNION CITY'S LARGEST SPANISH PAPER EL DIARIO- LA PRENSA ENDORSE BILL THOMPSON FOR MAYOR OF NEW YORK October 15, 2009
BILL THOMPSON DEMOCRAT FOR MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY BILL THOMPSON ENDORSED BY PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA Ralph E Smith Reporter Street Beat News Interview Mr. Bill Thompson speaks with The Guardian Chronicle Columbus Day Parade 2009 FRIDAY OCTOBER 9, 2009 City’s Largest Spanish Newspaper Backs Thompson By Diego Ribadeneira
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Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has trotted out a long list of endorsements from a variety of ethnic news media outlets representing the city’s diverse communities. But on Thursday, the city’s largest and arguably most influential Spanish-language daily, in a long front-page editorial, endorsed Mr. Bloomberg’s opponent, Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr., while at the same time offering a lacerating assessment of the mayor’s eight years in office.
The editorial, in El Diario-La Prensa, even compared Mr. Bloomberg to Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president, for his all-out campaign to upend the term limits law so he could seek a third term.
The editorial devoted most of its space to portraying New York under Mr. Bloomberg as a city that has largely ignored the needs of Latinos who never enjoyed the fruits of the economic boom and who have been hurt the most by the recession.
“After a decade misspent exalting the rich and their excesses, too many New Yorkers are paying the price,” the editorial said.
“In the past year, more than 4 out of 10 low-income Latinos either had their wages or hours reduced or lost their jobs — or both,” the editorial said. “Food banks cannot meet the demand for food. The number of homeless New Yorkers in shelters is at a record high. New York City has more than a million people living in poverty.”
The editorial said Mr. Thompson would reorient the priorities of City Hall as mayor based on his record as comptroller. Mr. Thompson, the editorial said, “has served this city as its comptroller, successfully managing billions of dollars in pension funds, highlighting deficiencies and disparities in critical city services, and emphasizing communities that have historically been absent from the table when it came to asset management and city contracts.”
Mr. Thompson, who trails the mayor in polls and in the amount of money his campaign can spend, is counting on the support of working-class and middle-class voters, precisely the kind of people El Diario reaches.
Though the editorial credited Mr. Bloomberg with steering the city following 9/11, taking control of the schools and making protecting the environment a priority, it delivered a lengthy critique of Mr. Bloomberg’s efforts on extending term limits:
Bloomberg’s legacy has been most tarnished by the blatantly undemocratic maneuver he pulled on term limits. Twice, New Yorkers had voted to limit the service of local elected officials to two terms. Instead of respecting that, Bloomberg and his associates peddled the idea of overturning term limits to the editorial boards of local newspapers; pressured the heads of nonprofit organizations that rely on private donors and city funding to speak before the City Council in support of undoing term limits; and contrived to run out the clock on a referendum.
All of this is not simply slick scheming — it is a gross abuse of power. Even Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez conducted a plebiscite on his extended stay in power. New Yorkers were not even given that chance.
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