Mike wins battle, but war looms

Daily News Analysis

BY DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF

The MTA handed Mayor Bloomberg a big personal victory yesterday by approving the West Side stadium plan - but they also gave him a major political headache.

The decision guarantees the Jets stadium will remain a divisive campaign issue as Bloomberg struggles to win reelection in a city where more than half of all voters say they don't like him, polls show.

So instead of talking about how crime is down, the economy is up and tourists are returning, the already battered Bloomberg will have to spend more time - and political capital - pushing his beloved stadium.

"When the gods really want to punish you, they answer your prayers - that's where Bloomberg is right now," said political consultant Norman Adler. "He would have been better off if he had lost."

The real political wild card, however, is the city's hunt for the 2012 Olympics, which will be decided in July.

"If the city gets the Olympics, the whole anti-stadium argument folds," predicted Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf. "It's just too hard to attack the prestige of the Olympics and all that goes with it."

In the meantime, the warring began yesterday when - in a rare show of unity - three of Bloomberg's four Democratic rivals gathered on the steps of City Hall to denounce the mayor and the MTA.

"If George Pataki and Mike Bloomberg want a West Side stadium, they can chip in and pay for it themselves," sneered Democratic front-runner Fernando Ferrer. "But don't stick us with the bill!"

Like most shots aimed at the mayor, the blast was not so much about the process or the stadium's $1.9 billion price tag.

It was more about the Democrats' favorite image of Bloomberg as an out-of-touch billionaire more concerned with building stadiums than bettering the lives of average New Yorkers.

For a Republican running for reelection in a Democratic town - where a poll yesterday showed only 38% of voters favor the stadium - that's a potentially deadly attack.

But Bloomberg is not without friends, or a rationale.

The stadium already has the backing of many black and Hispanic elected officials, who see the stadium and surrounding West Side as a rich vein of new construction and tourism jobs.

For Bloomberg, a former businessman turned mayor, convincing voters of that could turn out to be the toughest sales job of his life.