Why Bloomberg snapped: The real reason he must hate de Blasio
OPINION - Michael Bloomberg is not enjoying de Blasio’s campaign — and there’s a pretty good reason why..
Over the weekend, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg drew attention for allegedly suggesting that Democratic candidate Bill de Blasio was running a “racist” campaign in his bid to succeed him. This wasn’t necessarily the most revealing thing he said in the interview, and it’s not even clear he meant to use that word.
But the flap did reveal a central truth.
Michael Bloomberg is not enjoying de Blasio’s campaign — and there’s a pretty good reason why: The Democrat’s campaign represents one of the first sustained, publicly damaging attacks on his mayoralty that the billionaire has not been able to silence using an arsenal of personal relationships, political leverage and lots of money. For Bloomberg’s political and policy legacies, de Blasio’s impassioned critique (and its dramatic political success) pose a formidable threat he has not faced before.
First, some context. When Bloomberg entered office in 2001, the default setting for running City Hall was that at any given moment, you were likely to be hated by a sizable portion of the city, no matter what you did. It simply wasn’t possible to run New York in a way that would avoid vocal criticism from editorial pages, unions, business elites, leaders of numerous ethnic and cultural communities, nonprofits, good government groups, other politicians, the city council, and the organization of the opposition party (let alone your own) all at the same time.
To some extent, Michael Bloomberg managed to change that — partly through laudable ways, partly through less laudable ones. But either way, the result was he was able — until now — to prevent a climate of noisy pushback that most New York mayors do not.
Since his first term, the editorial pages helped set the tone. Sure, the New York Post, Daily News and New York Times hardly agree on anything. But all have owners who admire the fellow media-owning executive Bloomberg. While each took issue with him occasionally, all three would not only effusively endorse his second term, but pave the way to overturn the law that helped him land a third one (and each endorsed his tacit choice for a successor, Christine Quinn, this year).
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