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News stories
Mayor’s jab at UFT an all-time low
Compares union to NRA, prompting citywide outcry
Bruce Cotler
New York State Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz is among those who demanded the mayor apologize for his offensive remark.
Elected officials, community and union leaders and three of the four Democratic candidates for mayor gathered on the City Hall steps on Jan. 7 to demand an apology from Mayor Bloomberg for likening the UFT to the National Rifle Association on his Jan. 4 radio show.
The mayor’s remarks prompted some 120 elected officials and community leaders to send a letter calling for an apology and stating that the comparison was particularly inappropriate just three weeks after the Newtown school shootings.
Apparently piqued by the UFT’s new ad calling on him to negotiate a new teacher evaluation system, the mayor suggested on his weekly radio show that the UFT, just like the NRA, was out of sync with its rank-and-file members.
Bloomberg contended that in both organizations, “the membership, if you do the polling, doesn’t agree with the leadership.”
Mulgrew blasted the mayor at the Jan. 7 press conference for his “demonization” of teachers, which he said had “reached a new low.”
In a letter later that day to the mayor, Mulgrew wrote, “At a time when we need to work together to strengthen our schools, you only do further damage to our schools and the communities that rely on them by resorting to the same divisive tactics that have crippled our national political system.”
Also speaking at the press conference, AFT President Randi Weingarten called the mayor’s comparison “disgusting” and said that it could undermine his work as a national advocate for greater gun control and possibly efforts to restrict gun ownership in the United States.
“It is a shame for the mayor to use that kind of analogy in a collective-bargaining spat,” Weingarten said.
Three Democratic candidates for mayor appeared at the press conference.
City Comptroller John Liu said that the mayor should apologize because “the belligerence of the NRA” was in part responsible for the attack on the Sandy Hook Elementary School, which claimed the lives of seven educators killed while trying to protect their students. The comparison to the NRA showed an “utter disrespect for teachers,” Liu said.
Former City Comptroller Bill Thompson also called for an immediate apology from the mayor. “When we disagree, we don’t demonize people. We don’t insult people. We don’t go to the lowest common denominator. But that’s what the mayor has done,” Thompson said.
Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, also running for the city’s top office, said that the mayor’s remarks were “not becoming for the leader of the biggest city in the country.” He continued, “The mayor is very good at hurling insults and he’s not particularly good at apologizing — and it is time to apologize.”
The fourth Democratic candidate for mayor, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, also was in total support of the union. She signed the letter and released a public statement, but was not present at the press conference.
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Related topics: political action