Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg picked up three more union endorsements yesterday at a sometimes deafening campaign rally where he was cheered by a throng of construction workers.þþThe endorsements came from the carpenters, painters and laborers unions, all of which generally lean Democratic and in 2001 supported Mr. Bloomberg's opponent, Mark Green. They came a day after Mr. Bloomberg, a Republican, won the support of the city's largest municipal union, District Council 37, which also traditionally backs Democrats. þþThe endorsements represented the flip side of the mayor's bruising and ultimately losing campaign earlier this year to build a stadium on the West Side of Manhattan. The mayor pursued that plan despite what many polls showed to be its overall unpopularity. But through months of attacks against the stadium plan by his Democratic opponents, Mr. Bloomberg's aides had insisted it would deliver support for the mayor from the construction unions.þþAnd at the rally yesterday, at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan, union leaders cited the mayor's push for the stadium, and his opponents' moves against it, as an important reason for their backing.þþBut the leaders also credited Mr. Bloomberg for jobs they said would be created with the building of new stadiums planned for the Yankees and Mets, and with redevelopment plans on the West Side of Manhattan and in the Williamsburg and Greenpoint sections of Brooklyn.þþMichael Forde, executive treasurer-secretary of the New York City District Council of Carpenters, said, ÿIf the great mayors of New York City of the last 300 years had the same lack of vision that the mayor's opponents have, most of New Yorkers would still be living in tepees and log cabins.ÿþþIn the 2001 general election, only the union representing correction officers supported Mr. Bloomberg. þþ
Source: NY Times
