One of Joseph J. Lhota’s credentials in appealing to Republican voters is his association with former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, for whom he worked as budget director and deputy mayor. Mr. Lhota’s top rival in the Republican mayoral primary, John A. Catsimatidis, is now taking aim at that pairing, seeking to portray Mr. Lhota as a lackluster public servant compared with his former boss. Mr. Catsimatidis’s 30-second commercial “Not Even Close†is the latest in a series of advertisements he has made attacking Mr. Lhota; it began being shown on Tuesday on cable and broadcast stations.
Mr. Catsimatidis is taking advantage of several spontaneous comments that Mr. Lhota wishes he could take back. At a candidate forum in May, Mr. Lhota referred to officers for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as “nothing more than mall cops.†He later apologized for the comment.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority did raise fares and tolls while Mr. Lhota was its chairman, although those increases had previously been planned. It is not clear what Mr. Catsimatidis means when he asserts that Mr. Lhota “stiffed†workers. The contract of the largest union of transit workers expired in January 2012, shortly after Mr. Lhota joined the authority, and Mr. Lhota did not reach a contract agreement with the union before he resigned to run for mayor. While at the authority, he called for three years of “net zero†increases in labor costs; that was in line with what his predecessor, Jay H. Walder, had pursued and in line with the contracts that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had negotiated with the state’s public employee unions.
The ad’s claim that Mr. Lhota taunted a senior citizen who was a Holocaust survivor refers to an incident at a transportation authority board meeting in September 2012 in which Mr. Lhota clashed publicly with a board member, Charles G. Moerdler, who was 77 at the time, over the board’s meeting schedule. Mr. Lhota twice challenged him to “be a man,†but apologized after the meeting, saying, “I think my Bronx upbringing came out today.†Mr. Moerdler was born in Paris and is a Holocaust survivor, but he is better known for serving in civic positions in New York over several decades, including a stint as the city’s housing and buildings commissioner in the 1960s.
With a week until the primary, Mr. Catsimatidis is betting that his barrage of attack advertisements is eroding Mr. Lhota’s reputation with Republican voters, leaving them with the impression that Mr. Lhota is disrespectful and has a short fuse.
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