Bloomberg Campaign Goes Back in Time

Former City Council Speaker Peter Vallone and Queens Assemblywoman Barbara Clark supporting Bloomberg outside the old board of education headquarters at 110 Livingston Street in Brooklyn.

Remember the address 110 Livingston Street?


If you lived in New York City prior to 2002, and paid any attention to the public schools, then you'll remember that 110 Livingston Street in downtown Brooklyn was the headquarters for what was formerly called the NYC Board of Education. It was an address virtually synonymous with 'bureaucracy' or, among those less generous, 'black hole.'

Today the building houses luxury condos.

But it was a visually compelling backdrop for a press conference by the Bloomberg campaign, which assembled a few supporters who remember the recent past: former New York City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, former Congressman Herman Badillo, former Queens Borough President Claire Shulman, and Queens Assemblywoman Barbara Clark.

Their message? Don't go back. "Back" meaning the days before mayoral control, which also happened to be when Democratic mayoral candidate Bill Thompson was board of education president. But it also happened to be the Giuliani era.

Although Shulman and Vallone mostly concentrated on Bloomberg's record, Badillo and Clark took plenty of jabs at Thompson.

Badillo noted that Thompson has been widely described as a board president who was active behind the scenes, and said that wasn't sufficient. "I don't know of any company where the president does not take charge. That's why he was president."

Queens Assemblywoman Barbara Clark said that during the 1990s, "I was dealing with a new chancellor approximately every two years under the leadership of Billy Thompson." She neglected to say that conflicts with former mayor Giuliani also played a big role.

Clark singled out the dismissal of former Chancellor Rudy Crew, who feuded with Giuliani publicly over a plan to give vouchers to parents of students attending failing schools. Crew stood fast against the mayor's proposal and their relationship got ugly. By the end of 1999, a majority of the board's seven members voted to end Crew's contract - including Thompson.

WNYC asked Clark whether her critique of Thompson wasn't really an acknowledgment that the schools were actually run by Mayor Giuliani as much as they were by Thompson. After all, it takes two to tango.

"What I do is hold Bill Thompson responsible for not speaking up," said Clark. "For not speaking up about the destruction that was taking place as a result of having chancellors gone every two years... If nothing else he could have said something... Sometimes a voice needs to come out, as Martin Luther King said."

Thompson's campaign called these and other statements "another attempt from the Bloomberg campaign to distance their candidate from his own abysmal education record. Mike’s Department of Education has become the Bernie Madoff of the American Education system—lying about test scores, graduation rates, and dropout rates. Instead of investing in our children’s future, he’s opted to spend $200 million dollars on distorting Bill’s record and deceiving voters. New Yorkers deserve better, and come November 3, they’ll get it."

So what's going on here? Why all this looking backwards?

It's no secret that Bloomberg has made education a top priority of his administration. Former Deputy Chancellor Christopher Cerf, who's now joined his campaign, says it's fair to compare and contrast the candidates' records on such a central issue. Thompson's campaign has responded largely by criticizing Bloomberg's governance of the schools and looking for chinks in the armor.

On the question of Thompson's record, it's fair to say that before the state put Bloomberg in charge of the schools in 2002, the lines of authority weren't so clear. The board consisted of five members chosen by the borough presidents and two mayoral appointees. The mayor (and the city council) controlled the budget. That gave the mayor extra leverage whenever he wanted to command a majority of the board. Meanwhile, the chancellor ran the schools. And the 32 community school boards had a lot of power over the hiring and firing of principals and superintendents in elementary and middle schools.

But that's history.

And that's why the Bloomberg-Thompson argument over who was in charge at 110 Livingston runs the risk of numbing voters who are more interested in looking forward than looking back. A cynic might say that's a deliberate attempt to suppress voter turnout. Or it could be a sign of weakness by each campaign.

Bloomberg often boasts about higher test scores and safer schools. But aside from wanting more charter schools, he seldom talks about what the school system would look like in a third term. Meanwhile, Thompson often says he would fire chancellor Joel Klein, but he hasn't laid out too many other priorities. Coming from a candidate who played a significant role in the old school system - regardless of how big it really was - voters may be wanting to hear much more.