Joe Lhota, the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time — OTHERWISE LHOTA WAS A GREAT CANDIDATE ON PAPER

Mayor of the City of New York is not the kind of job for which anybody should submit their resume  —   Why weren't Joe Lhota and his campaign people told ?

Nobody loved Lhota, but the people who probably loved him the least were the ones who rolled him out to take one for their team, whoever that might be

The narrative of the Lhota campaign for 2013 looked too much like the words and music of one of Cole Porter’s later melancholy songs especially at the start: “It's the wrong time and the wrong place ***  Though your face is charming, it's the wrong face *** [Not a winners face], but such a charming face ***  And it's alright with me”

When you come down to it, was there any point in the 2013 election cycle that Joe Lhota looked like the right man to be Mayor  —  or for that matter, was there any point in the 2013 election cycle that Joe Lhota looked like the right man to be the Republican candidate for Mayor  — almost half of all Republicans clearly thought not.

Did anybody ever buy-into the resume reasoning that was the biggest part of the early argument in favor of Joseph Lhota ?  Can anybody name any NYC deputy mayor, head of the OMB and/or MTA Chairman that later was elected Mayor of the City of New York ?  Even when Rudy Giuliani was introducing the relatively unknown Joe Lhota back in January, his introduction was a dry as sawdust recitation of various job titles  –  it was a verbal resume. When finished, Rudy added this: “I told him [Lhota] very directly it's hard, very difficult. Electing a Republican is always a longshot. I got elected in '93, but only by 2.5 percent. Mike [Bloomberg] got elected in 2001, only by 3 percent. And we had a lot of things going for us when we got elected. But the reality is, I think it would be very good for the campaign, it would be very good for the city, because I think Joe will raise the level of the debate....” ( See “Giuliani Introduces Joe Lhota on NY1” by Dana Rubenstein, 1/9/13, Capital [http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/politics/2013/01/7124814/giuliani-introduces-joe-lhota-ny1]). For all that, when did Joe Lhota’s campaign ever raise the level of the debate from January through November 2013 ?  The answer is never.

Republican activists should have listened to Giuliani’s testimonial a little closer, because in that one paragraph above he nearly accomplished a rhetorical impossibility  —  he raised expectations at the same time that he diminished expectations. An equally important revelation in the article was that even at that early date, based on a Quinnipiac poll, Joe Lhota was losing to a generic Democrat 60% to 9% with 24% having no opinion. ( Don’t those numbers look oddly familiar to those from election day ?)

Near the end of the summer, even before the general election campaign had started, a formally neutral editorial board, which had interviewed Mr. Lhota, pointed out that a mere superior resume was not by itself a qualification to be mayor or a guarantee of election (See “For Mayor: Joe Lhota – The Republican Nominee” by The Editorial Board, 9/3/13, NY Observer [http://observer.com/2013/09/for-mayor-joe-lhota/]). The same point was even driven home with some of the post-election commentary.  “[Lhota] has a business degree from Harvard, a Wall Street background, major experience as a Deputy Mayor, and service as Chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. ***  But even that kind of pedigree wasn’t enough for 59-year old Joe Lhota to make a significant dent in Bill DeBlasio’s lead in the race for Mayor of New York City....” (See “Even with ‘perfect’ resume, Lhota lost big” by Mary Murphy, 11/5/13, PIX (11) [http://pix11.com/2013/11/05/joe-lhota-gives-brief-speech-concedes-mayoral-race-to-bill-de-blasio/#axzz2k0yxX925]).

When else has anybody tried to become the mayor of New York by pitching their resume ?  It just isn’t the way that it’s done. It makes me wonder if the consultants and Lhota’s other insiders knew something that they still haven’t said even with the election behind us. Maybe, it’s that Lhota can’t come across to the typical voter  —   or that Lhota is a bit detached from the things he’s talking about  —  or that Lhota has to be the hands on boss regardless how mundane the task  —  or that for some reason, Lhota is a much better candidate on paper than he ever could be in the flesh.

By the time this was all over on Tuesday night, all that was left of the Lhota campaign was the knowledge that almost nothing worked-out the way it was supposed to. Clearly, there was no outpouring of love and affection for either this candidate or what he was trying to sell. Even as Lhota gamely went through the motions on Sunday at various stops here in Brooklyn, he seemed to have a far away look about him, even when trying to seem impassioned about this or that. It’s almost like he was looking back through a telescope to where this all started and was wondering  — “Who got me into this ? And why ?”

Everybody else who touched this campaign need to be asking the same questions after campaigning with the guy who got 24% of the vote, but otherwise seemed like such a good candidate on paper.