|
Thursday, October 17, 2002
Carl McCall has a new ad out to appeal to Hispanic voters, but this time he's using Jose Serrano and Alfonso Carrion instead of Ferrer & co. Could this mean that McCall is backing away from the support of Roberto Ramirez's machine, which has been supporting him only half-heartedly in recent months? (This is the link provided to the ad, but I can't get it to work)
McCall's previous Hispanic Dream Team that joined in his ads was Fernando Ferrer, Adriano Espaillat and Nydia Velazquez -- all decidedly in Ramirez's camp. Serrano has broken with Ramirez on several recent elections, though Carrion has always been assumed to be taking orders from Ramirez.
McCall would have a good reason to break with Ramirez: the fact that he and his proxies, including Espaillat, have closed their campaign offices that could be working for McCall, a tactic they used last year to help Michael Bloomberg defeat Mark Green in the mayoral election. Ramirez's crew could be upset with McCall for any number of reasons, but one certainly seems to be a split over the State Senate primary in which McCall supported Eric Schneiderman over Guillermo Linares; joining McCall in supporting Schneiderman was Serrano, though not Carrion, while Ramirez and Espaillat supported Linares.
That Upper Manhattan/Bronx Dems are now using the shuttered-office tactic for the second year makes this a trend and not a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon.
As to exactly what is going on with McCall and Ramirez, only time -- and the next campaign-finance filings -- will tell.
An interesting distinction that pops out between McCall's English-language site and his Spanish-language version is that the Spanish version still prominently displays the news of Andrew Cuomo's and Charlie King's endorsements...is this a subtle recognition of the fact that Cuomo/King seemed to be leading in Hispanic support, despite the supposed Black/Latino alliance and McCall's relationship with Ramirez and nearly all other Hispanic electeds and union leaders in the state (other than Amigos de Pataki, of course)?
Steven I. Weiss 3:00:00 PM
|