To Endorse or Not to Endorse?
Was it a good idea for the UFT to endorse Thompson when it did? At the time, I thought so. It appeared Quinn was a 500-pound gorilla, Wiener was poised to enable yet another GOP win, and that de Blasio and Liu were swirling the bowl.
Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous accusations,
Or to take Arms against reformy advocates,
And by opposing end them: while we come to life, wake up...
But when Carlos Danger did his amazing self-destruction routine, it looked like de Blasio had a chance. Unlike Thompson, de Blasio had never told the Daily News he approved of Bloomberg giving all city workers, except teachers, an 8% raise. Considering that, Thompson's ties to Meryl Tisch, and his flip-flopping on stop and frisk, I declined to work for Thompson against de Blasio.
One of the arguments the UFT rep imploring me to work for Thompson offered was that one could not simply look at the polls. One must look deeply. After all, Thompson was sorely underestimated in the polls four years ago. This was certainly true. I can't help but recall another UFT rep telling me we could only move the polls five points, and that's why we weren't endorsing Thompson against Emperor Bloomberg. Months later, when Thompson lost by precisely five points, a more senior UFT official informed us we could only have moved the needle three points.
I began to thing the UFT did not look so deeply at polls either. And this leads me to wonder whether, given the
