Adds William O' Reilly, spokesman for Turner:

"If David Weprin can't recognize the placement of this mosque as an insult, then he needs to snap out of it. "A majority of New Yorkers made it perfectly clear that building a mosque that close to Ground Zero so soon after 9/11 was disrespectful and hurtful, yet the developer and his questionable backers refused to budge. It begs the question 'Why?'  In a city as large as New York, why does this Mosque have to be built there? Why is the developer intentionally wounding the feelings of so many New Yorkers?"

The Turner must have polling that shows that this is an issue that resonates with voters in the district, but harping on it seems to defy political common sense. Just ask Rick Lazio, who made the Ground Zero Mosque a centerpiece of his gubernatorial campaign, and that was when the issue was on the front-burner of the news cycle.