Parsing Connor and Squadron's Support for Congestion Pricing

Streetsblog quoted State Senator Marty Connor talking about congestion pricing during a debate this weekend with his challenger, former Chuck Schumer aide Dan Squadron.

The quote went: “Congestion pricing—I supported it. I didn't tell anybody; I didn't take a position on it. I supported it.”

Which would mean that Connor was saying that he secretly harbored support for congestion pricing, but didn't go public with it.

I interpreted the same line of Connor's (from the video above) as, “I didn't tell anybody I didn't take a position on it. I supported it.”

When I asked Connor about it in an interview yesterday, he told me he was, in fact, referring to Squadron's position. “I was talking about him. I was pointing to him,” Connor said.

In April, when I asked Squadron if he would have voted for the congestion pricing bill as it was presented to lawmakers in Albany, he declined to say, calling it a “hypothetical” question. In an e-mail last night, he said he always supported congestion pricing.

This article in The Villager says Connor and Squadron both supported congestion pricing.

UPDATE: Squadron's campaign resent a statement from April 15 (which I just received now) about congestion pricing. In it, Squadron says, "While I thought the bill needed to be fixed, my position is clear: it was a historic opportunity and if I was in Albany I would have voted for the initiative, even while fighting to fix it, not hidden in a backroom and refused to be counted."