We started with a commitment: to fight for hard working New Yorkers.  We believed Democratic values needed to be renewed with new ideas.  To offer ideas of relevance to middle class people and those struggling to make it.

 We talked about real problems and real solutions. 1.8 million people without health insurance in New York City — and plans to help small business expand coverage. And people joined us. We talked about how hard it is to afford this city.  And the need for fairer taxes middle class people pay 10 percent less in taxes, and the very wealthy pay a little more. And people joined us.

 And we talked about schools. That teachers need to be paid better and principals need authority to bring discipline.

 And our movement grew more.  We’ve started something that will be good for our party, and more importantly will offer real solutions that are relevant to hard working New Yorkers.

 I generally believe in the run off system. But this year is unusual — the winner of a run off will face a Republican mayor who supports George Bush, and a Republican mayor who has shown he will spend any amount to win.  To succeed, we need focus and unity and a chance to make our case against him.

Freddy Ferrer is a good man. We both want to fight for hard working New Yorkers. We may have some differences in approach, but they are very small compared with our differences with Republican Mike Bloomberg.  A man who urged New Yorkers to vote for George Bush and a Republican party whose economic policy leaves hard working people behind.

 I want to be clear.  I am proud to support Freddy Ferrer.  He will be a great mayor.  He will serve two terms.  He has the record, he has the brains, he has the commitment, he has the understanding to not only run circles around Republican Mike Bloomberg, but to lift up our City.

 Nationally and locally, Democratic success depends on ideas, and unity.

 There is a time for campaigning, and there is a time for coming together for hard working people. This is a time to put aside my run off and step aside so Freddy Ferrer — with his long record of service and commitment to all New Yorkers — can quickly begin to make his case against Republican Mike Bloomberg.

 I will always continue to fight for hard working New Yorkers. And am grateful to all the people who stood with me.  Some will agree with this decision, others will not.

 It is my decision. No deals, no understandings. And it was a difficult decision.  It’s in my DNA to keep fighting.  But I believe it is the right thing to do.

Tomorrow, I will stand with Freddy Ferrer and say I am proud to support him. He has the right heart, good ideas, and a record of service to the whole City.

 I want to thank everyone who has stood with me, everyone who worked and believed in this campaign. 

 Thank you.

- Anthony 

“We started with a commitment: to fight for hard working New Yorkers.  We believed Democratic values needed to be renewed with new ideas.  To offer ideas of relevance to middle class people and those struggling to make it.

“We talked about real problems and real solutions. 1.8 million people without health insurance in New York City — and plans to help small business expand coverage. And people joined us. We talked about how hard it is to afford this city.  And the need for fairer taxes middle class people pay 10 percent less in taxes, and the very wealthy pay a little more. And people joined us.

“And we talked about schools. That teachers need to be paid better and principals need authority to bring discipline.

“And our movement grew more.  We’ve started something that will be good for our party, and more importantly will offer real solutions that are relevant to hard working New Yorkers.

“I generally believe in the run off system. But this year is unusual — the winner of a run off will face a Republican mayor who supports George Bush, and a Republican mayor who has shown he will spend any amount to win.  To succeed, we need focus and unity and a chance to make our case against him.

“Freddy Ferrer is a good man. We both want to fight for hard working New Yorkers. We may have some differences in approach, but they are very small compared with our differences with Republican Mike Bloomberg.  A man who urged New Yorkers to vote for George Bush and a Republican party whose economic policy leaves hard working people behind.

“I want to be clear.  I am proud to support Freddy Ferrer.  He will be a great mayor.  He will serve two terms.  He has the record, he has the brains, he has the commitment, he has the understanding to not only run circles around Republican Mike Bloomberg, but to lift up our City.

“Nationally and locally, Democratic success depends on ideas, and unity.

“There is a time for campaigning, and there is a time for coming together for hard working people. This is a time to put aside my run off and step aside so Freddy Ferrer — with his long record of service and commitment to all New Yorkers — can quickly begin to make his case against Republican Mike Bloomberg.

“I will always continue to fight for hard working New Yorkers. And am grateful to all the people who stood with me.  Some will agree with this decision, others will not.

“It is my decision. No deals, no understandings. And it was a difficult decision.  It’s in my DNA to keep fighting.  But I believe it is the right thing to do.

“Tomorrow, I will stand with Freddy Ferrer and say I am proud to support him. He has the right heart, good ideas, and a record of service to the whole City.

“I want to thank everyone who has stood with me, everyone who worked and believed in this campaign.  

“Thank you.”

C. Virginia Fields is a wonderful spark plug to this humdrum race, having shown herself to be strong in spirit and deeply concerned about all of our city residents. But she has not satisfactorily made the case for her candidacy.
Freddy Ferrer has been a longtime city leader and fighter for the right things in our city. He continues to earn our admiration and respect. However, he has not brought much more to the table than he did four years ago.

Anthony Weiner, however, has come along and talked to this city about issues. While we don’t always agree with everything he says, Weiner has been right on most of the issues, but more importantly, he’s been on the issues – with solutions. We applaud his campaign, which has consistently put out new positions demonstrating thought and an understanding of the city and the election process.
As the candidate who has brought the debate to a constructive level, he has earned our respect and our support. We endorse the Congressman from Queens, Anthony Weiner for Mayor.

A stunning new poll yesterday showed Rep. Anthony Weiner has caught fire and zoomed into a statistical dead heat with Fernando Ferrer…

By Carl Camanile, Frankie Edozien, and David Seifman 

The Democratic race for mayor took a dramatic turn yesterday as Rep. Anthony Weiner surged to within two points of longtime front-runner Fernando Ferrer in a new poll.

The Marist College poll showed Weiner gained an astonishing 10 points in a single week, propelling him to 31 percent — right at the heels of Ferrer, who had 33, in a statistical dead heat.

Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields was in third place at 17 percent, while City Council Speaker Gifford Miller trailed at 14 percent.

Five percent of likely Democratic voters remain undecided, even when pressed by pollsters to state a choice.

"He’s got the momentum going his way at the right time," Marist poll director Lee Miringoff said about Weiner.

"It’s not like the others have tanked. What we’re seeing is that as voters began focusing on the race, the undecideds began moving Weiner’s way."

The poll found that only 40 percent of registered Democrats who support a candidate say they are strongly committed to their choice.

And 22 percent said they might change their mind.

Weiner, who celebrated his 41st birthday last Sunday, claimed the development didn’t come as a surprise to him.

"I’ve always run underdog campaigns and I’ve always won," he said. "In my campaign for City Council and my campaign for Congress, I went from being described as being the underdog to the winner in a matter of days."

In 1998, Weiner won a congressional primary in his Brooklyn and Queens district by 511 votes of the 45,113 cast — with the Queens Democratic organization supporting one of his four opponents.

Analysts pointed out that Weiner’s mayoral-race gain came as his chief rival, Miller, was enmeshed in a dispute with the Campaign Finance Board that has forced him to cut back his TV ads.

Ferrer shrugged off the poll and defiantly predicted he’d win Tuesday’s primary outright with at least 40 percent of the vote — avoiding a runoff.

"Make no mistake, I’m going to win the primary," Ferrer said at City Hall, where he was endorsed by state Senate Minority Leader David Paterson (D-Manhattan). "My body, I feel it."

Ferrer loyalists called on Dennis Rivera, president of the powerful hospital workers’ Local 1199, to join the Ferrer campaign as he did in 2001.

"Dennis Rivera was the first one to call me in 1989 to say that we need to do David Dinkins," recalled Assemblyman José Rivera, the Bronx Democratic leader.

"I’m beginning to feel disappointed because I haven’t received a phone call from Dennis Rivera — a similar phone call to what we’re doing with Fernando Ferrer. But there’s still time, Dennis . . . And my phone number is (718) 931-5200 in case you forgot."

Rep. José Serrano said he was angry that "the people who gave us [the black-Latino-labor] coalition are walking away from it."

STANDING IN front of a shuttered firehouse in Brooklyn, the city’s firefighters union yesterday endorsed Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner for mayor.

The Uniformed Firefighters Association, still battling with Mayor Bloomberg over a new contract, is angry that the city closed six firehouses during the 2003 budget crunch.

UFA President Steve Cassidy said Weiner got the union’s nod because he "fully understands public safety."

The Brooklyn-Queens congressman responded, "There’s no doubt in my mind that our city is less safe because six firehouses have been closed. I will reopen the closed firehouses and return fire protection to the communities that they serve."

Bloomberg, a Republican, shot back yesterday.

"This is from a guy that made up numbers the day before," the mayor said. "He said crime is up in the city when it’s down 20%."

Bloomberg said the firehouse closures had a "negligible impact" on response times.

"We have more firefighters today working in this city than we had before 9/11," he said. "We are deploying them where our chiefs say they are best needed."

Weiner faces three rivals in Tuesday’s Democratic primary: former Bronx borough president Fernando Ferrer, Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields and City Council Speaker Gifford Miller.

Representative Anthony D. Weiner, a mayoral candidate, has unleashed his fourth television advertisement, ”Stoop,” for the Democratic primary, the final salvo in a $1.8 million ad campaign that began two weeks before election day.

PRODUCER — Jim Margolis, GMMB.

ON THE SCREEN — Mr. Weiner, in his shirt sleeves, sits on the front steps of his childhood home in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and delivers his campaign stump speech. As he reels off his major policy proposals — middle-class tax cuts, reducing government waste, and raises for teachers — brief descriptions flash on the screen below him. The camera pulls in close to frame Mr. Weiner’s face as he recaps, cuts to a shot of Mr. Weiner talking to a group of New Yorkers, then to one of him speaking before a crowd of sign-waving supporters.

THE SCRIPT — ”You know, growing up on this block I learned about talking straight. So here it is: As mayor, I’ll cut middle-class taxes 10 percent. You need a break, not the millionaires. I’ll cut budget waste every year by eliminating the city’s worst-performing programs. I’ll give our teachers a raise and our principals the power to discipline. Better schools for your kids, a tax cut for your family, a mayor who’ll fight for you. That’s straight talk from the stoop.” An announcer says: ”Anthony Weiner. Finally, a fighter for hard-working New York.” The subway door-closing chime — the signal New York touch of a Weiner ad — closes out the soundtrack.

ACCURACY — Short and sweet, the ad says little that is inaccurate. Mr. Weiner does not mention, however, that he is not only not giving a tax break to millionaires, he is also giving them an increase to the tune of at least $79 million. Nor is Mr. Weiner the only candidate to propose giving teachers a raise; every candidate for mayor, including the current mayor, has said he or she wants to do so.

SCORECARD — As Mr. Weiner begins, so he ends. From the first ad his campaign broadcast, on Aug. 19, the candidate has used his advertisements chiefly to introduce himself to voters — most of whom knew little or nothing about him until recently — and amplify the themes he has sounded on the campaign trail. When Mr. Weiner has attacked other candidates or defended himself against their criticisms, he has done so in speeches and during the mayoral debates. The latest advertisement continues that approach.

THE DEMOCRATIC RACE for mayor may be turning into a two-man race between Fernando Ferrer and Rep. Anthony Weiner. Weiner zoomed into a statistical tie with Ferrer, capturing 30% of likely Democratic voters, compared with Ferrer’s 32%, according to a WNBC/Marist poll released yesterday.

With just days to go before Tuesday’s primary election, a runoff seems more likely – a candidate must get 40% of votes to avoid a runoff.

Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields trailed in third with 15%, followed by City Council Speaker Gifford Miller with 13%.

Weiner, whose "Real Solutions Express" campaign bus made stops at a Staten Island hospital and a Manhattan housing development yesterday, approached the poll with some caution.

"I can tell you that there’s a palpable sense that New Yorkers are listening to the idea that campaigns should be about ideas," Weiner said. "I think there’s a resonance to what we’re talking about."

Lee Miringoff of Marist said the results don’t mean Weiner’s rivals are tanking – rather that undecided voters are becoming more focused on the race in the final stretch.

"The undecided are pretty much cut in half over the last week, and most of those have gone Weiner’s way," Miringoff said.

But it ain’t over yet, he warned. "There’s still a large number of Democrats who are still making decisions about who to support – and whether to vote altogether."

Ferrer, the former Bronx borough president, said he doesn’t pay attention to polls and insisted yesterday he would capture the Democratic nomination.

"Make no mistake: I’m going to win this primary," Ferrer said at City Hall. "And I’m going to win it the old-fashioned way. I’m going to win it appealing to Democrats on core Democratic values."

Asked to give New Yorkers one reason why he should be the nominee over Weiner, Ferrer said he would be a different mayor because he comes from a "different place."

Harking back to the candidates’ recent tour of squalid housing, he said: "Some people respond to it intellectually. I respond to it viscerally. I grew up seeing those conditions."

Christy Setzer, a Ferrer spokeswoman, said the campaign’s internal polling has Ferrer "much further ahead" of Weiner and "showing momentum." She declined to release specific numbers.

Miller launched his final campaign push for the nomination at a sparsely attended rally in Union Square.

A Miller aide cut the news conference short when reporters asked repeated questions about the speaker’s problems with the Campaign Finance Board.

Fields visited senior centers and participated in loading up goods for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

When Anthony D. Weiner thinks about the future, he occasionally dwells on the past — 1977, to be specific, when Edward I. Koch was in last place against a crowded field of better-known Democratic mayoral candidates, only to surge ahead in the primary’s final days, beat Mario Cuomo in a runoff and then beat him again to become the city’s 105th mayor.

”We have a certain affinity in this city for late-charging candidates in the primary,” Mr. Weiner said in an interview a few weeks ago. ”They have a particular affinity for Brooklyn and Queens congressmen who are appealing to working-class New Yorkers and those who aspire to get into the middle class.”

When he said it, that seemed like just another instance of Mr. Weiner’s trademark bravado. But now, as Mr. Weiner enters the final weekend of campaigning, it looks more like prescience.

After weeks pounding the pavement, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of campaign ads and a couple of strong debate performances, he has marched steadily up in public opinion polls. A Marist survey released yesterday shows him with a 30 percent share of likely Democratic voters, a statistical tie with Fernando Ferrer, who has consistently led most polls, giving Mr. Weiner his highest numbers yet in any poll.

”In every race I’ve been in, I’ve always been an underdog who’s been outspent and had political organizations lined up against me,” Mr. Weiner said yesterday while campaigning in Hell’s Kitchen, one of his few stops in Manhattan over several straight days of campaigning. (He was accompanied by James R. McManus, a Democratic district leader and founder of the local McManus Democratic Association — at least one political organization that has lined up with Mr. Weiner, not against him.) ”So to some degree, when I was at 6 percent, in fourth place, I had them right where I wanted them. But there’s a lot of work to be done here. We still have several months to go.”

For the last four days, Mr. Weiner has crisscrossed the city by school bus, hitting areas including Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, Forest Hills in Queens and Riverdale in the Bronx. They are central to the campaign strategy he has pursued from the beginning of this campaign: drawing high turnout in his Congressional district and among other pockets of middle-class white voters, especially those middle-class whites who might best be termed ”Giuliani Democrats.” At yeshivas and parochial schools, pizzerias and ice cream shops, Mr. Weiner has continued to talk up his central campaign themes: lowering taxes on the middle class, aiding small businesses and promoting governmental ties to religious institutions.

On Wednesday Mr. Weiner stopped his campaign bus across the street from the volunteer firehouse in Broad Channel, Queens, outside a Roman Catholic school that he said he had helped keep open.

”As mayor, I’ll not just concentrate on the big skyscrapers of Manhattan,” he said, a poke at Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and a reaffirmation of his own outer-borough bona fides, much brandished by the candidate as he looks to offset City Council Speaker Gifford Miller’s presumed advantage in Manhattan.

But there have been a few tweaks to the routine. With recent polls showing him nipping at Fernando Ferrer’s heels, Mr. Weiner has scaled back the self-deprecating cracks about his skinny frame and has adopted a more statesmanlike pose, part of a broader conversion from scrappy underdog to genuine contender.

And where his early stump speeches invoked New York’s middle class with unerring regularity, he has lately circled back to issues of poverty and chronic unemployment, in what appears to be an effort to scoop up wavering supporters of C. Virginia Fields. (During Thursday night’s debate, he pointedly named Ms. Fields when asked which of the other candidates he would most support after himself.)

But Mr. Weiner still relies on some his usual lines, as when he hands out orange and blue campaign stickers to children and tells their parents, ”If I see that on eBay in two hours, I’ll know who to call.” And he still likes to leaven his paeans to small businesses with a good joke or two.

”The Democratic primary is on Tuesday,” he told a couple having coffee at a shop in Hell’s Kitchen. ”Here’s a little reminder,” he added, putting a campaign pamphlet on the table. ”If you don’t mind sharing, we’re trying to save money on the campaign.”