Weiner Blasts Ferrer 

By CARL CAMPANILE, NYPost

The gloves came off in the Democratic mayoral primary yesterday — with Anthony Weiner calling front-runner Fernando Ferrer an out-of-touch, tax-and-spend liberal.

Weiner, who is trailing the pack in most polls, said he would try to hammer that point home in tonight's mayoral debate, scheduled to start at 7 p.m. at Lincoln Center.

He slammed Ferrer's proposed tax on stock investments to fund education, as well as his vacant-land tax hike to fund his housing program, as old, wrong-headed thinking.

"We, as Democrats, have lost three consecutive municipal elections," Weiner noted. "We don't deserve to win unless we start to have forward-looking ideas that talk to the middle class and those who want to make it into the middle class."

A Ferrer spokeswoman defended the former Bronx borough president's tax plans and blasted Weiner as a desperate candidate out hunting for some easy newspaper headlines.