Mild-mannered mayoral candidate Bill Thompson has suffered accusations that he lacks a forceful enough personality to make an impression among voters — a take backed up by a new poll showing him with the least-enthusiastic base of support among the leading three Democratic candidates.

Now his new TV ads make a bold gambit: If one personality is not enough for New Yorkers, how about three?

Released on Monday, the commercials, his first in the 2013 campaign, are airing on local TV, where he has bought more than $230,000 of ad time on three broadcast stations.

“That’s the New York we believe in,” he says in one of the two ads, titled “City of Opportunity.”

“He’ll make us proud,” adds an offscreen narrator.

But who exactly is the “he” of the campaign slogan — and by extension “us”?

The Child of Immigrants

“My grandparents were immigrants. They came here for opportunity”

Thompson repeatedly invokes his roots as a Caribbean American, and positions himself in the great story of immigration to New York City. That’s a savvy move: Out of the city’s registered voters, 47 percent are either immigrants themselves or have parents who are, according to an analysis of recent census data by the City University of New York Center for Urban Research. Overall, about one-third of New Yorkers — roughly 3 million people – are first-generation immigrants.

The Brooklynite

“This is the view I grew up with from Brooklyn. Those lights, those buildings stood for something special”

Thompson moved to Manhattan in 2008, but he’s got plenty of reason to show off the borough where he spent most of his life.

First, the sheer size of the outer-borough Democratic block should give any candidate a reason to wear their past as non-Manhattanites as a lapel badge.

Registered Democratic voters in outer boroughs are three times as numerous as those of Manhattan. Brooklyn alone makes up for two-fifths of the outer-borough Democratic vote, the latest enrollment statistics show.

For Thompson, another reason to angle for the sympathy of voters in Brooklyn is the history of his success there the last time he ran for mayor.

During his 2009 primary runoff, three-quarters of Democrats voting in Brooklyn selected Thompson, making the borough one of his two most solid bases of support, alongside Manhattan.

And it didn’t stop there. In the general election that followed, the bulk of voters again – though by a much smaller margin this time around – chose Thompson over the rival that would end up defeating him, Michael Bloomberg.

The middle-class New York civil servant

“My father was a judge, my mother a teacher”

Thompson invokes his parents’ lives as public employees serving their community. Their jobs convey a family that is comfortable yet still middle class. And the hometown history also tells a story Thompson’s leading rivals cannot: Bill De Blasio grew up in Cambridge, Mass., while Christine Quinn spent her childhood on Long Island.

The middle-class vote will matter on primary day in a city where the median household income was last measured at about $51,000. It’s an area where Thompson has lagged. In the July 25 Marist poll – the most recent that sliced voters by income – only 13 percent of registered Democrats making less than $50,000 rooted for Thompson, while a quarter were behind opponent Christine Quinn.

Thompson’s multiple personality syndrome is an occupational hazard of mayoral candidates, who have to assemble many different constituencies to win.

“However you slice and dice the statistics, if you are focusing your campaign pitch on any one particular group, it’s not enough: the numbers aren’t there,” said Steven Romalewski of the City University of New York Center for Urban Research, which has been analyzing voting patterns in New York City politics.

“It’s just inherent in a city as diverse as New York to build coalitions.”