The bad news about Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's budget cuts might be good news for politicians yearning for broader power. The budget cuts provide a unifying issue that could lead borough politicians to higher office, according to political insiders.
While it's still too soon to know which Democrats will line up to run against Giuliani in 1997, the names of two longtime political rivals, Borough President Fernando Ferrer and Rep. Jose Serrano (D-South Bronx) always come up.
But chances that Serrano would give up a seat in Congress for the keys to Gracie Mansion are slim, at least according to some borough residents. "Serrano's comfortable down in Washington," speculated Lilian de Jesus, a Melrose resident.
While Ferrer's spokesman said it is too soon to tell whether the borough president will run, campaign records reveal that Ferrer received $250,000 last year from supporters of his campaign committee, Ferrer '97.
Still, the minute local politicians start venturing off their home turf to take on citywide issues, speculation escalates.
"Moving throughout the city, outside their borough or district, is an early indicator," said Bill Lynch, who ran former mayor David Dinkins' campaigns in 1989 and 1993.
Only Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger has announced an intention to run for mayor.
Lynch cautioned against counting on budget battles to launch any candidate into political orbit.
"I don't know that these new coalitions will turn into electoral coalitions," he said. "This is an issue in 1995. It may not be one in 1997."
No matter what the issues, Hank Morris, a political consultant who ran Alan Hevesi's successful campaign for city comptroller in 1993, thinks Ferrer is a likely candidate. "Is Freddie one of five logical Democrats to run for mayor? Yes. Does he have his work cut out for him? Yes."
Hispanics, Ferrer's power base, are the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the city, projected to make up 52 percent of the borough's and 29 percent of the city's population by the year 2000. But Serrano pointed out that many Hispanics will either be children or new immigrants who do not vote. "As the borough grows Hispanic-wise, it may not grow citizen-wise," he said.
That is why Ferrer supporters are saying the borough president has to build coalitions across racial and ethnic lines.
"If he can get everyone standing up against the budget cuts, that could unite people," said Felix Diaz, a longtime supporter in Belmont. "Giuliani was able to pull everyone together. Ferrer must do the same."
Giuliani rallied the city's white middle class around taxes and crime but was unable to woo the city's blacks and Hispanics.
If a look at one of the most diverse sections of the borough, Community District 6, which includes Belmont, East Tremont and Bathgate, is a valid test for how Ferrer would do, then he faces an uphill battle.
"Al Sharpton has a better chance than Freddie Ferrer," said John Giovanni, a pizza maker at a restaurant on Arthur Avenue where photographs of Giuliani line one wall. "There are so many divisions between the blacks and the Hispanics in this city, he'll never bring them all together."
But the budget cuts have given Ferrer a chance to venture out of the borough to speak to audiences of school board members, education advocates, youth leaders, union workers, environmentalists and political club chiefs from throughout the city.
At City Hall recently, Ferrer lambasted the Giuliani administration as "a government for some of the people some of the time, in some of the communities of New York," and called for New Yorkers to rally against the mayor's proposed budget cuts.
"Everyone who is in this chamber this afternoon needs to get out and contact our network, in the streets, in the community, in the neighborhood, and let them know this is the dismantling of New York," he said to a crowd that included many whites as well as Hispanics and blacks.
He finished to a boisterous ovation.
"You've got to run," said several people as they ran up to him afterward, shaking his hand.
Asked if he would run, Ferrer didn't say yes. But, he didn't say no either.