Bill de Blasio, the city’s public advocate and a Democratic candidate for mayor, is running his second television commercial of the campaign. Titled “Dignity,†this 30-second ad will appear on network and cable channels across New York City starting Monday.
There is no way to know if Mr. de Blasio’s son, who is 15 and biracial, will be stopped by the police. It has not yet happened.
A single superlative - only - is proving highly problematic for Mr. de Blasio in his campaign commercials. He is not the only candidate pledging to end the way the Police Department carries out the stop-and-frisk tactic. Nor is he the only candidate proposing an income tax on the rich to pay for education. Nevertheless, Mr. de Blasio is making both of these claims for the second time.
On stop-and-frisk, Mr. de Blasio argues his platform â€" support for two City Council bills, one banning racial profiling, the other creating an inspector general in the Police Department, combined with his vow to replace Raymond Kelly as commissioner â€" amounts to a stronger set of reforms than his rivals have espoused. But his opponents say they will achieve the same ends through different means, and back several of the same measures he does. To curb stop-and-frisk abuses, Christine C. Quinn, for example, has beefed up the power of the Civilian Complaint Review Board and shepherded the inspector general bill that Mr. de Blasio likes through the Council, even as she has encouraged Mr. Kelly to join her administration. William C. Thompson pledges to ban racial profiling and backs an inspector general, just not via the pieces of legislation in the Council.
Like Mr. de Blasio, John C. Liu, the city comptroller, has proposed raising the city’s marginal income tax to pay for after-school programs, among other things. To be fair, Mr. Liu’s electoral odds are long, making Mr. de Blasio the only top-tier candidate to outline such a plan. But the claim remains inaccurate.
Mr. de Blasio is finding new and creative ways to weave his diverse family into his campaign message, but dropping the misleading word “only†from several of his claims, or using it more carefully, would do wonders for the accuracy and credibility of his commercials.
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