Weiner Is Our Choice Among Democrats

    We usually don’t make primary endorsements at the Queens Chronicle since we figure it’s best to wait for the race that counts. But in this year’s Democratic primary—a crowded field of four running in lockstep—we felt compelled to single out the candidate who most impressed us.
   After interviews with three of the four candidates—Fernando Ferrer could not make it—we found Congressman Anthony Weiner to have the best understanding of issues facing Queens residents; he has interesting and innovative policy ideas, and the charisma that we have come to expect from the mayor of the greatest city in the world.

    The son of a teacher and a lawyer, Weiner grew up solidly middle-class in Brooklyn where he attended public schools. He now lives in Forest Hills, representing Brooklyn and Queens in the House of Representatives. For the obvious reason of location, Weiner knows what’s going on in Queens. With his experience in Congress, he also has an excellent grasp of issues in their bigger context.
   Ask him about education, health care, traffic or parking tickets and he’ll fire back with a detailed, thoughtful analysis and solution to the problem. We don’t agree with every single one of his ideas—he favors the Cross Harbor Freight Tunnel for starters. We are also skeptical of his “boot camp” charter schools idea, where students with behavior problems would be grouped in military-style charter schools. But we believe that out of his three current opponents, Weiner’s ideas and energy place him far ahead of the field.
   What we do like is his belief in tax cuts for the middle class—not just homeowners—and commitment to making the state pay its fair share for services. It’s an open secret that New York City pays a lot more to New York State in taxes than it gets in return by way of services. Additionally, cracking down on Medicaid fraud is a necessity. With health care costs eating up a larger share of both household and civic budgets, there’s no room for a system that, according to a July investigative report by the New York Times, is being bilked to the tune of millions of dollars a day.
   Speaking of health care, we also support a more aggressive local program to help the uninsured. Small businesses are being strangled by high insurance premiums. Many business owners would like to provide health care to their employees but just can’t afford it. Just as many middle-income workers can’t afford the bite it takes out of their check every month. Weiner recognizes that a national issue like health care is also a local issue.
   He also points out what we all have suspected, that ordinary New Yorkers are being taxed on the sly by the increases in both the number and cost of quality-of-life fines.
   We just don’t feel an urgency in any of the other candidates. Ferrer, the front-runner, never met with our board, but we don’t think that his campaign platform has any more to offer than in years before. And we haven’t forgotten his incomprehensible flip-flop regarding the police officers who shot Amadou Diallo. C. Virginia Field’s ideas, while nice in theory, are far-fetched. She wants to build public housing on vacant lots. What vacant lots are those? She wants to encourage manufacturing jobs. We can’t even keep manufacturing in middle America, where land is cheap.
   And finally, we weren’t bowled over by Gifford Miller, who more resembles a tick on the elephant that is Mayor Bloomberg than a candidate running with a real vision for the city. Every time Bloomberg coughs, Miller sends out a statement that a sneeze would have been better.
   Anthony Weiner gets our support in the Democratic primary, for his knowledge, his ideas and his passion.