A Forward-Looking Republican Runs for New York Mayor

On a positive note, libertarian-minded Republican Joe Lhota sounds like he would make an excellent mayor of New York. Via the New York Post:

Joe Lhota calls himself a “new brand of Republican” — in favor of “fiscal discipline” but progressive on social issues: He’s pro-choice on abortion, is fine with same-sex marriage, and is in favor of legalizing marijuana.

Asked when he last smoked pot, he said, “It’s been 40 years. It’s so long ago I can’t remember. I probably had a full head of hair.” But Lhota does recall holding libertarian views when he was just 10 years old. “In 1964, I tried to convince my grandfather, who was active in the New York City firefighters union, to vote for Barry Goldwater over Lyndon Johnson because at the time I thought his approach to limited government was right on,” he recalled.

Lhota is not anti-government—after all, he served as a deputy mayor and also ran the MTA. But, he says, “it’s not the role of government to tell us what to do and what not to do. There’s nothing more offensive to Americans—or New Yorkers in particular.”

He’s the kind of Republican many of us hoped Chris Christie would be, but isn’t.

Lhota is now the GOP frontrunner in the upcoming primaries. It increasingly looks like the Democrats will nominated the most left-leaning candidate in their “colorful” field, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. The candidacy of openly lesbian City Council Speaker Christine Quinn seems to be fading.

More. Speaking of New Jersey and bad Republicans, GOP Senate candidate Steve Lonegan hits a new low.

15 Comments for “A Forward-Looking Republican Runs for New York Mayor”

  1. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    I can’t say that I follow NYC politics at all closely, but the current mayoral race strikes me as an precursor of the political world most of us are working toward. Most all of the serious candidates, as I understand it, support “equal means equal”, which gives pro-equality voters the opportunity to make their choice on other issues.

    With respect to Christine Quinn, I hope that her political fortunes are also a precursor of the political world we are working toward, a world in which politics are orientation-neutral.

    Orientation-neutral, a subset of “equal means equal”, means that voters do not vote either for (cf “At Least He’s Not a Gay Republican”) or against (cf “Cory Booker: My sexuality not an issue”) a candidate solely because of his or her sexual orientation, but instead vote on the issues. We aren’t there yet, not by a long shot, as we all know, but most all of us look forward to the day when sexual orientation isn’t a determining factor in elections.

    By the way, the only thing that makes the Democratic primary “colorful” is that Anthony Weiner, a power-hungry sexual nutcase with a propensity for using his cell phone camera inappropriately (to say the least), let his inflated ego run away with him.

    The Republican race is also “colorful” in a different sense, thanks to John Catsimatdis, who (thankfully) seems to have faded. Catsimatdis is, well, “colorful” — he compared taxes on the wealthy to how “Hitler punished the Jews” in a city with a large Jewish population that knows idiocy when it sees it, and opined that he could have beaten President Obama if only the Republican Party had been smart enough to propel him into the nomination. He’s Anthony Weiner without the pictures.

    As we all know, neither of these guys are the first politicians to run amok, and won’t be the last.

  2. posted by Jorge on

    Your endorsement makes me seriously consider whether I should vote for the guy.

    Being fiscally conservative and socially moderate have become the norm for leading Republican candidates for mayor ever since Rudy Giuliani at least.

    As for being “libertarian”, the extent of Bloomberg’s nanny-state and fine-happy policies probably wouldn’t be endorsed by most normal Republicans. For some reason the Democrats on the City Council go along with them. I will never understand why the NY Daily News supports them.

    Okay. This was a false alarm.

    • posted by Jorge on

      Oh, excuse me, they’re saying Lhota is socially progressive.

      Fine. Point stands.

      As for the Democrats, frankly I think that after 20 years of center-right government the city could benefit from center-left government at least. It’s possible Llota is trying to capitalize on that sentiment, but I don’t think he will actually deliver such a government.

      • posted by Houndentenor on

        How is he a “new brand” when neither Giuliani nor Bloomberg were anti-gay? I guess that’s still noteworthy in the GOP when the Republican Senate candidate across the Hudson is gay-baiting in the current election.

        I left New York before Lhota became head of the MTA. It was such a mess that almost any change in leadership would have been an improvement, but I have not heard any claims that the system is operated any better than it was when I lived there (1994-2009). I think he’s a non-starter in this election, but I will commend Stephen for touting a Republican who is actually pro-gay. I have no idea who I would vote for if I were still there and watching the election from a distance I’m rather relieved that it’s a choice I won’t have to make. (But at least it’s not the anti-gay hate-fest I deal with here in Texas.)

  3. posted by Kosh III on

    Sorry to be off-topic but this is significant

    http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl2153.aspx

    “The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) today ruled that same-sex couples, legally married in jurisdictions that recognize their marriages, will be treated as married for federal tax purposes. The ruling applies regardless of whether the couple lives in a jurisdiction that recognizes same-sex marriage or a jurisdiction that does not recognize same-sex marriage. “

  4. posted by Kosh III on

    IIRC, Guiliani turned quite anti-gay when he was running for President.

    I’m with Hound…he sounds ok, certainly better than the GOP hate fest we have here in Tennessee from our crooked governor on down.

  5. posted by Houndentenor on

    “colorful”?

    Is that a slur of some kind? I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it was just a poor choice of words and not a reference to DeBlasio’s mixed race family.

    • posted by Jorge on

      That still doesn’t rule out DeBlasio’s wife once writing about being a lesbian. The race from my vantage point has mostly been boring. I like Weiner, but otherwise Tom is mostly right.

      Two purebred liberals, male and female (Quinn and Weiner), an anti-administration class warrior (DeBlasio), a crook (Liu), and a distinguished gentlemanly public servant (Thompson). Just switch the races around a bit and combine some of the roles and you have every single Democratic primary since 1996. Well, except for the extinct conservative Democrat.

      I left New York before Lhota became head of the MTA. It was such a mess that almost any change in leadership would have been an improvement, but I have not heard any claims that the system is operated any better than it was when I lived there (1994-2009).

    • posted by Jorge on

      Oh, I left something out.

      I think the fare hike policies have been a little tamer in recent years. The fare hike hearings as they’ve been reported have been a little more substantive, less prone to criticism of really bad budgeting or something.

      I was utterly astonuded at how fast the transit system came back after the hurricane. I was hearing all sorts of horror stories about all the damage that sea water would do, and thinking it would be worse than after that great blizzard. The subways and buses came back like lightning.

      • posted by Houndentenor on

        At one end of the platform on W4th St (A line) you can see one of the control rooms for the system. It looks very high tech circa 1960. It’s honestly a wonder the system functions at all considering how old it is and how few upgrades have happened in the last 50 years or so. They actually had to rewire the entire system to make it possible to have card-swipes instead of tokens to enter the turnstiles. So yes, we were all surprised at how fast the system was back up and running after Sandy. A lot of people must have put in a lot of hard work to make that happen.

        As for the fare hikes. After one of them, the MTA suddenly found millions of dollars that they claimed they didn’t have in order to raise rates and deny raises to striking workers. (I remember this as being late 2005 but I could be off by a year or two.) The problem is that there is no accountability in the MTA to anyone, not the riders nor any government agency. The structure couldn’t be set up to allow more corruption. Since I was not there during Lhota’s tenure I have no comment about how he ran things, but fraud, corruption and outright theft have been common in the system for decades and there’s not much people can do. Boycotting the trains and buses is not an option unless you want to quit your job which most people cannot afford to do. I miss the convenience of public transportation since I left but I don’t miss the frustration of not knowing if a train is coming or not as I wait on a blistering hot or freezing cold platform. I don’t miss being lied to that another train is right behind this one when it most definitely is not (they say this when it’s too full and people are blocking the doors preventing the train from being able to move). And so many other issues. I don’t miss those at all. If Lhota made any of that better I’d be impressed but I’d think that would have gotten so much as a tweet or status update if he had and I’d have remembered such.

  6. posted by Pro-equality Republican runs for NY mayor | The Purple Elephant on

    […] to Stephen Miller at the Independent Gay Forum for his post on this which tipped me […]

  7. posted by TomJeffersonIII on

    It is interesting to see a Republican party candidate who is socially liberal — at least when it comes to abortion, gay marriage and pot. Although, the first two issues are probably not going to shift much in terms of city/state law and I have mixed sentiment about the entire ‘legalize it’ mantra I hear about “victimless” crimes.

    If I were a New York city voter, I would be impressed that both major parties have are less likely to overtly pander to sexism homophobia in local politics.

    However, many other parts of the nation (as has been said) are not in the same sort of political situation — if you are a LGBT voter or a straight ally. This these cases the GOP candidate is almost always very overtly sexism/homophobic and the Democratic is either somewhat supportive or trying not to say too much one way or the other.

  8. posted by Wilberforce on

    I’m fiscally conservative and support efficient government.
    I object to you’re use of the words. Republicans have always been fine with a huge nanny state for themselves and bupkis for everyone else. That’s the real meaning of their ‘limited government.’

    • posted by TomJeffesron III on

      Yes, ‘limited government’ is a nice buzz word, but when you get into the nitty gritty, the reality gets a bit less ‘apple pie-aw-sucks’ and a bit more ‘WTF’.

      Typically, the ‘limited government’ mantra really means less government oversight/regulation of the big business/private sector. It does not preclude ‘big government’ in terms of attacks on civil rights and liberties. It does not preclude ‘big government’ handouts to big business, while cutting funding for the poor.

      • posted by David Lampo on

        It all depends on who’s using the phrase, doesn’t it? I mean, Obama said he’s a free market kind of guy. Talk about ruining the brand. The fact that some hypocrites say they’re for limited government, when they’re not, is hardly a case against limited government.

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