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| Surrounded by family and supporters, New York City Council speaker and mayoral hopeful Christine Quinn, center, laughs while speaking to the media as she announces her mayoral run in New York, Sunday, March 10, 2013. The New York City Council speaker has formally launched what she hopes will be a history-making mayoral bid this fall. |
NEW YORK (AP)
-- Long seen as a leading contender, City Council Speaker Christine
Quinn formally launched Sunday what she hopes will be a history-making
mayoral bid.
A veteran of city politics, Quinn
would be a groundbreaking mayor across two personal dimensions: She
would be the first female and first openly gay mayor to lead the
nation's largest city.
Announcing on Twitter
that she's in the race, Quinn said she wanted to give middle- and
working-class New Yorkers the same opportunities generations of her
family got when they came here.
"I'm running
for mayor because I love this city. It's the greatest place in the
world," she said in a video linked to her post, before starting what she
called a walk-and-talk tour intended to take her to every neighborhood
in the city before the Democratic primary in September.
Her
first stop was the upper Manhattan neighborhood of Inwood, where she
was surrounded by supporters carrying signs that read "Christine Quinn
for Mayor" and wearing baseball caps with her initials on them.
Before
the walk, Quinn told reporters, "I'm running today and I'll stack my
record against anybody else's in this field. ... I balance budgets on
time, and I had the wisdom in the first three years I was speaker, when
there were surpluses, to not spend that money."
Her attempts to meet the people led to a classic New York City moment.
She
shook hands with everyone - people on the street, workers in a diner
and even a bedraggled-looking man sitting on a sidewalk bench.
"Hi, I'm Christine Quinn and I'm running for mayor," she told the man, who looked up at her, seemingly puzzled.
"I need some change," he replied as she searched her pockets, saying, "I don't have any."
A
former tenant organizer and director of a gay and lesbian advocacy
group, Quinn, 46, has been on the City Council since 1999 and its leader
since 2006. The position has afforded her considerable exposure going
into the crowded field of candidates vying to succeed term-limited Mayor
Michael Bloomberg.
She's enjoyed a
considerable edge over other Democratic contenders in polls. A
Quinnipiac University poll late last month gave her 37 percent of the
Democratic vote, while her opponents each got less than 15 percent.
Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 6 to 1 in the city,
though that hasn't translated into Democratic success in a mayor's race
since 1989.
Quinn has generally been
perceived as likely to get the backing of Republican-turned-independent
Bloomberg, and with it support from business leaders.
Some
of her Democratic opponents have tried to use that against her,
suggesting Quinn is too close to a mayor they say has sometimes turned a
cold shoulder to the concerns of middle-class and working-class New
Yorkers. Opponents have faulted her, for example, for joining Bloomberg
in opposing a plan to require businesses with at least five employees to
provide paid sick leave. Quinn has said it's a worthy goal, but now is
not the economic time to do it.
She also has
taken heat for helping Bloomberg get the council to agree to extend term
limits so he could run for a third time in 2008, without asking the
voters who had approved a two-term limit twice in the 1990s.
In
office, Quinn leads 50 other council members and largely controls what
proposals come to a vote. Under her leadership, the council has taken on
matters including requiring electronics manufacturers to collect their
products for recycling, making it tougher for immigration officials to
deport people being released from city jails or police custody and
barring employers from discriminating against unemployed job applicants -
the last of which Bloomberg vetoed. Quinn has vowed the council will
override his veto.
Quinn and her longtime
partner, products liability lawyer Kim Catullo, married last year after
more than a decade together. Their wedding guest list was a who's-who of
New York politics, with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Bloomberg and many other
officeholders in attendance.
The year before,
Quinn had invoked her personal story in lobbying state lawmakers to
legalize gay marriage, a cause Cuomo championed. She called it "one of
the best feelings I have ever had in my life" when the measure passed in
June 2011.
Her announced and likely
Democratic opponents include former City Councilman Sal Albanese; Public
Advocate Bill de Blasio; Comptroller John Liu; and former Comptroller
Bill Thompson.
Republican contenders include
former Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Joseph Lhota; Tom
Allon, a publisher; billionaire businessman John Catsimatidis; and
George McDonald, the head of a nonprofit that helps the homeless.
Former
Bronx borough president and federal housing official Adolfo Carrion, a
former Democrat who is now unaffiliated, is running on the Independence
Party line and seeking Republican backing.
