New London’s mayoral election is still five months away and certainly much can happen, but at this point Mayor Daryl Justin Finizio appears to be the clear underdog.

The recent budget debate was a complete and utter disaster for the incumbent Democrat. It began in late March with the mayor calling for a 6 percent increase in spending and 12.5 percent hike in taxes. It continued with Councilor Michael Passero — who is seeking the Democratic nomination in an effort to unseat Finizio — taking the leadership role as the City Council chipped away at spending.

Finizio kept backtracking, offering alternative budget proposals with smaller tax increases. The council ignored the mayor in favor of following Passero’s lead.

To make matters worse, in the middle of the budget debate arrived the attorney’s report rejecting all 10 of Finizio’s arguments for having suspended his police chief, Margaret Ackley, last July. Instead of firing the chief, Finizio had to send her back to work. The entire affair added to the perception of an administration out of control.

The budget process ended last Monday with the council — six Democrats and one Republican — voting 7-0 to override Finizio’s veto of the council’s spending plan. The budget will raise the tax rate 3.9 percent, largely due to increases in education spending.

At a blatantly political news conference Tuesday, officially called to “discuss executive actions … to correct the deficit contained in the City Council's adopted budget,” Finizio outlined how he will try to spin this budget debacle into a campaign asset.

Finizio wants to make the case that electing Passero as mayor would mean a return to the bad old days of fiscal mismanagement in the city.

“I believe the choice in the current election could not be clearer. If the city is to maintain a stable financial path this administration must be returned to office,” said Finizio, abandoning any pretense that the press conference was something other than a campaign event. “Should Mr. Passero be elected, he has clearly declared what he will do, which is return the city to budgets with faulty numbers, denying the advice of our financial team and incurring deficits in the city of New London.”

At the heart of the mayor’s argument is Passero’s refusal to address in the budget a $685,000 shortfall that Finance Director Jeff Smith attributed to inadequately funding mandated expenses, most prominently health insurance premiums. Passero’s defense was that he did not trust Smith’s numbers and that, even if a shortfall exists, it is so small — about 1.5 percent of the municipal side of the budget — as to be easily managed.

Indeed, it is hard to reconcile a 1.5 percent discrepancy with the kind of rhetoric Finizio tossed out at the press conference.

“With a goal on political gain and certainly an eye on the coming mayoral election, (Passero) decided — and the council followed his lead — to charge ahead on this path anyway. This is a dangerous and unsustainable path, and one I will not allow,” Finizio said.

The problem for Finizio is that the public is focused not on the minutia of line-item budgeting, but on the fact Finizio again proposed a big tax increase and Passero led the fight to beat it back. The chamber gallery, filled with merchants from the downtown business community, cheered the budget’s adoption and the override of the Finizio veto.

The mayor does deserve credit for attacking the serious fiscal problems he inherited when elected in 2011 — from a council Passero served on — and for his plan to rebuild the city’s fund balance. Passero voted against portions of that plan.

But trying to translate those facts into a campaign narrative that Passero will be the city’s fiscal ruin is one heck of a stretch. And Passero has a lot of material for returning fire — the mess at the Public Works Department, the police chief debacle, the mayor’s controversial appointments, the overall perception that the Finizio administration is in perpetual disarray.

In the 2011 election Finizio, a resident of the city for only a couple of years, ran a tremendous campaign to easily win the mayor’s race, the city’s first such election in nearly a century, a result of a charter change. But that challenge pales compared to the one he now faces in seeking re-election.

Paul Choiniere is the editorial page editor.

Twitter: @Paul_Choiniere