Back in October, after months of hemming and hawing, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn endorsed fellow Democrat Bill Thompson for mayor. “I believe Bill Thompson has been a good controller, I think he would be a good mayor, and I think it’s very important that the Democrats are united,” she said. It was a tepid statement of support, but controversial nonetheless — Quinn was and is very closely allied with Mayor Bloomberg, who was a Republican and now is an Independent (who ran on the GOP line). But Michael Barbaro in the Times reports today that Bloomberg gave Quinn permission, in part because he knew that at stake was her political future in the near term — with her own reelection — and the long term, when she will likely run for mayor herself in four years and will probably need to distance herself from a city tired of over a decade of Michael Bloomberg. The pair met for coffee at a diner, apparently, and Hizzoner basically told her to “do what you have to do.”
City Council Speaker Tries to Move Out of Bloomberg’s Shadow [NYT]
