With Mayor Bloomberg's reelection spending at $46 million - and that's weeks before the actual election - it's hard not to feel bad for Fernando Ferrer, no matter how questionable he may be as a politician. It's this NY Times story about how Ferrer had to march after Bloomberg in yesterday's Bronx Columbus Day parade that lays out the disparity: Here Ferrer is, son of the Bronx, former Borough President, and he's waking in a sea Bloomberg posters. Clearly, the Bloomberg campaign knows how to emasculate a candidate on his home turf. And the Mayor's campaign is also trying to shame Ferrer into giving back thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from tobacco companies; we're not very convinced by Ferrer's reason for not wanting to do so (besides needing the money), as they just cited the party where there were people smoking around the Mayor but he claims no one was? Huh? But Ferrer may be able to spook Bloomberg, if the Mayor happens to decline an invitation from the Hispanic Federation to debate on October 27. The debate would be for Univision, and one would think the Mayor would want to snatch up the Hispanic voter base, but a debate on a Spanish language network would give Ferrer an unfair advantage in that he can speak the language, whereas the Mayor would stumble through it. Gothamist can't wait to see what excuse the Mayor gives this time!
And speaking of billionaire political candidates, the Post is saying that Tom Golisano, who hopes to run as against Eliot Spitzer (and maybe William Weld, if he's still an Independent) in the 2006 Governor's race, is thinking about having Democrat Tom Suozzi of Nassau County as his running mate.
