Quinn Punished Gentile For Voting Against Expanding Term Limits, Says NY Times

Council Speaker Christine Quinn once enjoyed a comfortable lead in the race to gain the Democratic nomination for mayor. However, her support appears to have evaporated and she now finds herself trailing Public Advocate Bill de Blasio as the primary election nears on September 10. A report by the New York Times is attributing her struggling campaign to her controversial effort to expand mayoral term limits for Michael Bloomberg, a political maneuver that may have included some horsetrading, and that has alienated voters and fellow Council members, including Vincent Gentile.

The Times described how Quinn’s problems began in 2007 when, as Council Speaker, she initially expressed an adamant opposition to expanding term limits:

“I am today taking a firm and final position,” she declared. “I will not support the repeal or change of term limits through any mechanism, and I will oppose aggressively any attempt by anyone to make any changes in the term limits law.”

The next 314 days turned an implacable opponent of tossing out the law into a primary architect of its dismantling.

It is an about-face that haunts her still.

An angry public has viewed Ms. Quinn’s decision to undo the law as a back-room deal — a simple tit-for-tat that guaranteed Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg a third term in exchange for his blessing for her own eventual bid for City Hall.

But a close-in examination suggests that her reversal was an act more of self-preservation than of favor-trading, driven by intersecting motivations: avoiding the wrath of term-limited Council members who could undermine her speakership, distancing herself from an embarrassing scandal over City Council budgeting that had damaged her own mayoral prospects and, above all, protecting a political identity that hinged on a working partnership with the popular Mr. Bloomberg.

Whatever the reason that caused Quinn to reverse herself on the issue of term limits, it has not sat well with Democratic voters. A joint New York Times and Sienna College Poll conducted recently found that nearly two thirds of Democratic voters were against expanding term limits and, worse for Quinn, 54 percent of voters had an unfavorable view of the Council Speaker.

Quinn’s effort to score Bloomberg another term also left many political allies burned in its wake. The Times described how Gentile was punished for not going along with Quinn’s measure:

A few weeks before the Council voted on the issue, Ms. Quinn sought to persuade Councilman Vincent J. Gentile of Brooklyn, a Democrat, over coffee at a Manhattan diner. During the conversation, the speaker reminded him that she would soon select chairmen for legislative committees, coveted assignments in the Council, according to people with knowledge of the meeting.

“Decisions have to be made,” she told Mr. Gentile, one of the people said.

After Mr. Gentile voted against overturning term limits, Ms. Quinn denied him prestigious chairmanships, leaving him with a lesser post overseeing libraries. “It was carrot-and-stick at epic proportions,” said Councilman James S. Oddo, Republican of Staten Island, who opposed the change in term limits.

Ms. Quinn confirmed that she had lobbied Mr. Gentile at the diner, but said she could not recall mentioning committee chairmanships.

It should come as no surprise that Gentile is now backing de Blasio’s campaign, although he’s also seeking a third term in office.