Last week’s stunning mayoral poll put Borough President Markowitz ahead of other pretenders to the City Hall throne, but the Beep’s dithering over whether he will run is allowing valuable fundraising opportunities to dissolve into the ether, experts said.
Markowitz led the Marist/WNBC poll with 18 percent to once and future mayoral hopeful Rep. Anthony Weiner’s 13 percent, but he’s far behind the declared mayoral candidates in a more-important survey: the amount of money in his campaign warchest.
And time’s a-wastin’.
“There are two things in politics that you can’t make more of: time and money,” said Scott Levenson, a political consultant with the Advance Group. “And money takes time.”
Indeed, Markowitz acknowledged as much in an interview with The Brooklyn Paper.
“My indecision is not helping me,” Markowitz said.
“The train is already slowly moving out of the station. Every day and every week and every month I don’t make a decision, the chances of having a seat on this train are going to be diminished.”
To buy a ticket on said train, the term-limited Markowitz needs money — but he’s raised only $900,000 to City Comptroller Bill Thompson’s $4.2 million, Weiner’s $3.5 million and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s $2.4 million.
Markowitz’s continuing indecision is particularly odd, given that he just outpaced all of those candidates in the Marist poll, experts said. It is common for candidates to turn this week’s good news into next week’s fundraising pitch letter — yet Markowitz hasn’t done so.
Markowitz isn’t the only one who’s undecided. The plurality of voters in the Marist poll — 36 percent — didn’t offer a preference for an election that won’t take place until September, 2009.
The undecideds didn’t surprise Marist Institute Director Lee Miringoff.
“The race is very fluid and wide open,” he said. “The fact that Markowitz is in front … does show some support for him, and certainly would be encouraging for him.”
Others said that an unconventional politician like Markowitz could simply be pursuing an unconventional strategy.
“A lot of the politicos and political professionals don’t appreciate how strong the average Brooklynite feels about Marty,” said Councilman David Yassky (D–Brooklyn Heights). “People feel that he is genuinely on their side, and that’s a very, very powerful thing.”
Hank Sheinkopf, a political consultant, agreed.
“The danger with publicly announcing is it might be a disaster for him,” said Sheinkopf. “He’s floated the balloon. No one killed the balloon yet. So it’s still floating.”
But whether it’s floating high or floating away remains an open question.
