REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE FOR MAYOR OF NEW YORK THINKS STOP-AND-FRISK IS CHARACTER-BUILDING

Get stopped and frisked? It's your fault:

... the leading Republican candidates on Wednesday said they would not mind if their own son or daughter were stopped and frisked by the police.

In a live televised debate, John A. Catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of the Gristedes supermarket chain, described the stops as a "temporary thing," until technology allowed officers to detect guns from afar. And while he said rookie officers should receive additional training, he shrugged off the prospect of his son being stopped.

"I would say to him, 'Well, what did you do to provoke it?'" he said. "I would say to him, 'Were you dressed funny? Were you walking funny? Did you look funny?'" He added of the policing tactic, "I would sit down, have a father-to-son talk with him and say to him that we need it."

His rivals were equally dismissive:

Joe Lhota said he would give his daughter a copy of Terry v. Ohio, the Supreme Court case outlining reasonable stops, and, if the protocols weren't followed, "then I would actually say that we have a situation here."

"But the reality is that 90 percent of the millions of stops that have happened in the city of New York have happened in compliance with the constitutional rights that have been put forward by the Supreme Court," Lhota said.

"My son John isn't going to get stopped," said George McDonald, the founder of the Doe Fund. "That's the whole point."

Well, you're right about that, white man. (Though you'd think there'd be more sympathy on this from the founder of the Doe Fund, which gives training and jobs, many of them menial, to ex-prisoners and homeless people, many of them people of color. Then again, McDonald is a Republican, so I guess we can't assume that he's actually asked any of his group's beneficiaries about this.)

It matters what these men think, because "deep-blue" New York hasn't elected a Democratic mayor since 1989, and there really is no guarantee that the streak will be broken this year. McDonald is unlikely to win the primary, and Giuliani pal Lhota has consistently led in the polls, but supermarket mogul Catsimatidis -- the guy who thinks stop-and-frisk would be a swell teachable moment for his son -- is within striking distance. (What about being stopped over and over again, as most young black males are in this city in their teens and twenties? In 2011, there were more stops of young black men in the city than there are young black men.)

And with the most progressive Democrat in the race, Bill de Blasio, now holding a significant lead in his party's race, I predict that much of the establishment in the city will back Lhota or Catsimatidis in the general election. We know the New York Post will, but so will the Daily News, I assume (it blasted the recent judicial ruling that put curbs on stop-and-frisk).

I suppose the Times will endorse de Blasio, but I bet it will be with so many qualifications and "however"s that the endorsement will be read as just the opposite. (Did I mention the fact that de Blasio would like to raise taxes on the rich? Even though the state government would probably block a city tax increase, the movers and shakers don't like people who make proposals like that.)

New York could elect another Republican mayor. Don't rule it out.