Stile: Why Obama is ignoring Buono

Bill de Blasio, a liberal Demo­crat once dismissed as a long shot, was warmly endorsed by President Obama on Tuesday “as the next mayor of New York City.”

Across the river, Barbara Buono, a liberal long shot hoping to score a victory over Governor Christie, is getting the cold shoulder.

With less than six weeks left in the race, chances that Obama will bestow a political blessing on Buono are slim to none, Democratic Party observers and officials say — no “Yes We Can!” pep rally, no star-studded fundraiser at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, not even a drop-in news conference on a Newark Airport tarmac.

Some analysts say Obama and the Democratic National Committee don’t want to waste time, money and prestige on a candidate who is likely to lose, possibly by landslide numbers. A Quinnipiac University poll this week gave Christie a 34-point lead.

But others say there is something more basic at work. Obama’s reluctance is rooted in his relationship with Christie, forged in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. Both men boosted each other’s careers by that famous tour of the devastated shoreline last November, and to a certain degree, both men are indebted to each other. They’ve established a working business relationship. Why would Obama want to ruin that by throwing his weight behind a long shot, one Democratic consultant asked.

“Chris Christie made no trouble for Barack Obama and Barack Obama is making no trouble for Chris Christie,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran of New York, New Jersey and presidential campaigns. “Why create a risk if you don’t have to and make an enemy” out of an ally, he added.

But the leaders of Team Buono are boiling over with frustration. They can’t see why Obama would not lend a hand to a fellow Democrat and help her defeat Christie, or at least slow his steady rise to the Republican nomination for president in 2016. New Jersey, after all, is the only state in the country where Obama’s victory last year exceeded the margin of his 2008 victory in the state.

New Jersey is also a state where Democrats have a 700,000 margin in registered voters. It’s a state where the Democratic nominee is running with a strong liberal voting record against the most conservative Republican governor in modern New Jersey history.

“I have to say it is very, very frustrating,” said John Currie, the New Jersey Democratic state chairman. “I just believe you support your team, regardless. I have been thoroughly disappointed that they have not been more thoroughly involved.”

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg of Teaneck wrote to New Jersey’s Democratic National Committee members, urging them to pressure the White House to visit New Jersey. Only one, she said, “gave me the courtesy of a reply.”