Between my wife and myself, we pretty much know all the Dems running for mayor of NYC. And we both know a lot of the organizations supporting one or another of the candidates.
I want to go through the endorsements that matter to me. I will note my bias: John Liu is a friend of my family. He, my wife, and I have spent some really solid time talking, including in a rainstorm, about a wide range of issues. And he and my son really like eachother. And the fact that he comes from a math/science background also biases my wife and me towards him (even though it seems he and my wife went to rival schools!) since we both are scientists. But the first mayoral candidates we knew personally were Bill de Blasio and Anthony Weiner and we supported Bill Thompson very actively last time around, so maybe those balance a bit.
What I give below tries to give all candidates credit where credit is due, given the biases I state above.
In general, next to Sal Albanese, John Liu is considered the most liberal Democrat running for NYC mayor this year. And yet I am fascinated that the Staten Island Democrats have come about as close to a unanimous endorsement of John Liu as you can get. Though John Liu is considered liberal and Staten Island generally considered conservative, three out of three Democratic Clubs on Staten Island have endorsed John Liu.
The Staten Island Democratic Association, the Democratic Organization of Richmond County, and the South Shore Democratic club (the only three Democratic Clubs I am aware of on Staten Island...if there are others please correct me!) have all endorsed John Liu. At least two out of those three were reported to endorse him quite overwhelmingly. Now of course Staten Island has the fewest Democratic voters of all the NYC Boroughs, but still, I think it is interesting that Liu can bridge so well the liberal and conservative ends of the Democratic party here in NYC. This has been something as a theme of his campaign.
Though I like Sal Albanese quite a bit, it seems he hasn't gotten any endorsements yet. Or at least his website isn't publicizing any of them. He either isn't getting much solid feet-on-the-ground support despite his excellent positions, or he needs to seriously work on his website. Since he so far isn't much of a contender, I don't feel obligated to hunt down any endorsements he might get...if any. He is smart and VERY liberal...but I see no momentum at all so far.
Some real serious details below...
Christine Quinn and John Liu have split the National Organization of Women endorsements with Quinn getting the NYC (Manhattan) Chapter and Liu getting the Brooklyn-Queens Chapter NOW endorsement.
Liu and de Blasio seem to be getting the most union endorsements so far from what I see at everyone's websites. These are very important endorsements in this era of Republican attacks on unions! I do not always agree with every union on all issues, but overall unions rock and we need them to help us head off Republican attacks on working class and middle class Americans. So the fact that Liu and de Blasio seem the two main union endorsed candidates means something to me.
Looking at education related issues, it is interesting that a recent forum of some 14 organizations focused on parents and kids found Liu by far best among the Democrats, but the UFT opted for Thompson. Fair enough. These are different advocacy groups with different interests even if they should dovetail more. But the message seems to be Liu and Thompson are the main education candidates even if the main advocacy groups don't agree at all about their relative merits on this issue.
The major Democratic clubs I am most familiar with are the Brooklyn "reform" clubs and they seem fairly split in this race. Quinn got Lambda Independent Democrats (LGBTQ focused). John Liu got Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats (usually considered the most liberal and most solidly "reform" of the Brooklyn clubs...my wife is on the board of this club) with Sal Albanese a somewhat distant second. Bill de Blasio got the endorsement of the Independent Neighborhood Democrats (where I used to be on the board) after a very strong packing effort from the Quinn campaign was headed off. The New Kings Democrats (the newcomer in Brooklyn politics and considered the "hipster club" locally) also went for de Blasio.
The main Manhattan progressive/reform clubs like Downtown Independent Democrats, Three Parks Independent Democrats, and Village Independent Democrats, all went for Liu, but I am less familiar with them so can't really comment on their endorsements beyond where they went. I do know at least one of these clubs once (many years ago) had some issues that called their reform credentials into question, but that really was a long time ago.
I find it interesting that Anthony Weiner has gotten so little support so far despite pretty reasonable polling. A late start and a sex scandal may account for this. Quinn, de Blasio, Liu and Thompson all have some reported financial scandals, but people seem to hold sex scandals against politicians more than financial scandals. As far as I am aware Sal Albanese is to date the only Democratic candidate with no reported scandals. Liu and de Blasio both had some issues with campaign financing laws in their previous campaigns (for, respectively, Comptroller and Public Advocate). Neither Liu nor de Blasio have been directly accused of any wrong doing whatsoever nor have their current mayoral campaigns had any campaign issues so far.
Thompson and Quinn had scandals that are more embedded in the political system: they are the main machine candidates who have been part of a corrupt flow of money in the city, whether it is Slushgate (Quinn) or ties to disgraced Brooklyn Party Boss and accused sexual predator Vito Lopez (Thompson).
Finally, a fellow NYC blogger, Rock Hackshaw, introduced me to the Human Rights Project score card of NYC Council members a couple of years ago. The scorecard is VERY detailed and I can't do it justice in a short comment. They cover homeless issues, race issues, gender issues including LGBT issues, poverty, etc. Among the WORST rated council members for 2011 is Chirstine Quinn. She gets a miserable 12% rating. However, to compare Quinn with two of her opponents who have been city council members, de Blasio and John Liu, we have to go back to 2008 and 2009 when all three were in the City Council. Looking at their overall scores (again, keep in mind the report goes into considerable detail and I am just looking at overall score):
Christine Quinn: a mediocre 45% average score in 2008 and got a "C" for 2009.
Bill de Blasio: a mediocre 58% average score in 2008 (ranked 11th highest scoring council member) and a 2009 rating of "B" (8th highest scoring council member so made the top 10 list that year).
John Liu: a 61% score in 2008 (8th highest scoring council member so on the top ten list) and a 2009 rating of "A" (4th highest scoring council member, so also on the top ten list).
So Liu comes off best both years all three were on the city council, de Blasio comes in a reasonable second, and Quinn bottom. I like using score cards like this to balance my own personal impressions. For example, my current City Councilmember, Brad Lander, used to come off pretty badly on the ground and he and I used to butt heads a lot. However, for 2011 (the same year Quinn got a 12%) Brad Lander gets a very good 74%. This was the first evidence I saw that Lander was better than I had expected and he has been doing well since. When ratings from organizations like this agree with my personal impressions it confirms at least some of my impressions. However, when they go against my impression, I am willing to reassess my impressions at least to some degree. By the way, two council members I particularly like, Tish James and Jumaane Williams both do even better than Brad (over 85%).
I should note that the best ranked Republican (Halloran) got only 22% in 2011 and all other Republicans got 10-15% range (similar to Quinn). So note that Quinn ranks about like a Republican on these issues. The other Democratic mayoral candidates were not on the City Council at the same time as Quinn, Liu and de Blasio, so it is harder to compare them with their ratings on human rights issues.
So there it is. Democrats have a diverse field for mayor this year. I hope this gives you some idea how good each candidate is. Albanese may be the most appealing to liberals and progressives, but has so far gotten little support and is the longest shot. Liu and de Blasio get some very respectable liberal, progressive, union and reform Democratic support in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Quinn gets the main LGBTQ support. Liu and Quinn split the National Organization of Women support with Quinn getting Manhattan and Liu getting Brooklyn and Queens. Liu comes in best on Human Rights with de Blasio a probable second and Quinn probably last. Active Staten Island Democrats seem solidly behind Liu. And on education issues Liu (as well as the Green candidate) seems to be winning parents while Thompson is winning the UFT.
Hope that helps you all make some decisions or at least frame some questions about our next mayor.