So, did anyone think the race would be so close? According to an article in the New York Times, the Bloomberg campaign seems to have had an idea but hid it lest the Democrats supporting him or straddling the fence go back where they belong; to their own party’s candidate. Just politics as usual. But isn’t “politics as usual” what Bloomberg was railing about throughout his campaign? Why didn’t the Democrats have a clue? Why did Bill Thompson and his people run such a lackluster campaign? As it turned out, only a bit more effort would have removed the scourge of working class New Yorkers from City Hall.
Personal observation indicated that most people actively (and honestly) involved in or concerned with community affairs were against Bloomberg’s policies as were many disaffected by his steamrolling over term limits. A recent article in the NY Times about rampant development criticized his shortsightedness concerning many of these projects, noting that with his background and expertise, he should have foreseen the economic turndown, if not its severity. On financial issues, the article was balanced although, as often the case, the negative social consequences of his zeal for development were omitted. Readers’ comments (a benefit of online news) were overwhelmingly anti-Bloomberg. Still, these are the people who are active, interested and aware and with his cronies in the major media firmly behind him and his greater than lavish spending, Bloomberg seemed destined to charge full ahead into a third term. Instead, despite spending about $200 per vote to about $14 by Thompson he crawled in with a margin of victory less than 5% and lost Brooklyn, the city’s most populous borough. And that was with little effort on the part of the Thompson campaign.
A problem with the Thompson campaign was the defection or inaction of many of the party “unfaithful.” Bloomberg’s tactics of “buy, bully or ignore” had been working with the majority of council members and other city officials for eight years and it surely persisted as many actively campaigned for him while others sat on their hands. But still, where was Thompson all those months while we were being swamped with Bloomberg ads and mailings? Without the money to finance anything like that kind of media blitz, surely Thompson was at a major disadvantage. But there was no reason to be invisible.
Why didn’t the local clubs, backbone of the Democratic Party in the city, send out the troops to spread the word from the start? Surely, they could afford to pass out flyers, hang posters and talk it up around the city. Bloomberg’s transgressions against the poor and middle class have been so great, drumming the word to his victims surely would have been enough to shift the less than 3% necessary into the Thompson camp or bring that many more to the polls; an effort far from insurmountable.
And then there were those who weren’t totally enamored with Bloomberg but voted for him rather than for the “unknown political hack”. When Thompson did get going, he managed to say the right things about Bloomberg’s exploitation of the city’s resources on behalf of the wealthy but made little note of his own accomplishments or of his platform. All he told us was that he was President of the Board of Education, which, by his own admission, was a relatively powerless position, and that his father was a judge. In most people’s minds, that spells “political hack”. A bit of information about him would have been appropriate. And did anyone really know what he stood for? Expounding on the evils of the Bloomberg administration, he never provided real alternatives. Of course, with the money put into the campaign, whatever Thompson said was a mere whisper compared to the blaring of Bloomberg’s billions but that whisper could have been heard to the affect of 3% of the electorate.
As a result, we have another four years for Bloomberg to dismantle our city for the benefit of the rich. He is on a mission to do so and acts as though his slim margin of victory is a mandate. Do the poor and middle class have any hope of surviving in the big city? How many more will be driven out as our affordable housing, shopping and entertainment are replaced by Bloomberg’s “affordable only if you can afford it”? Hope possibly rests in the new City Council, where 13 new members, constituting a fourth of the membership, will take their seats and hopefully be more responsive to the general public and place restrictions on the tyranny that has occupied City Hall for the past eight years.
But we will always have to ask, “What if Thompson and his people actually ran a viable campaign?”
The Divide Deepens
You have read on this page several times about the growing divide between rich and poor in this city and nation. The reported unemployment rate is at an unacceptably high 10.2%, but that includes only those who collect benefits or report in. The Times recently reported that the real unemployment rate, those who are truly out of work, is actually 17.5%, the highest since the Great Depression…but the stock market continues to rise.
I. Friedin
