The final total for Mike Bloomberg's re-election campaign comes in at $108,371,685.01, or $185.10 for each vote he received. Top campaign strategists Bradley Tusk, Howard Wolfson, and Patti Harris all picked up a $400,000 bonus, which seems like a lot of money until you consider how much work they had to put in convincing a deeply credulous press corps that this thing was going to be a blowout. Nice job, everyone! 4
But, Basically, Everyone Still Thinks The Guy Is A Dick @9:40 AM
"An article in some editions on Wednesday about Michael R. Bloomberg's narrow victory in the New York mayoral race referred incorrectly to a voter who said Mr. Bloomberg 'ran a smear campaign against a nonexistent opponent.' The voter, Stav Brinbaum, is a woman. The article also misstated, in some copies, the age of a second voter, Gerni Oster, who called Mr. Bloomberg 'egotistical and arrogant,' and misspelled, in some copies, the given name of a professor who said she voted for Mr. Bloomberg's Democratic rival. Ms. Oster is 32, not 34; the professor is Kathryn Krase, not Katherine." 0
Mike Bloomberg's Crushing Loss @10:13 AM
There are many reasons to appreciate Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is now, with just 51% of yesterday's vote, the fourth mayor to be elected to a third term in New York City since Manhattan sucked up the surrounding cities into boroughs in 1898. He is wonderful source of entertainment, because he is so snippy. He is a terrible dresser, particularly for a billionaire, and therefore is fun to watch. At City Hall, he eats cereal in meetings and when he is done he slurps milk from the bowl. As for the matter of his insane overspending on his most recent campaign to the tune of $100 million or so, it must be noted that in 2007 alone, between his foundation, his company's charitable giving and his own pocket, he gave $205 million to charity. READ MORE 21
The Awl Voter Guide for November 3, 2009 @11:19 AM
Choire Sicha: The purpose of this morning's editorial meeting is to discuss our endorsements for tomorrow's election.
Alex Balk: Oh, is that tomorrow?
Choire Sicha: Yes, the world's quietest New York City election.
Alex Balk: It's weird, I haven't even been robo-called. What the fuck is Mike Bloomberg spending $35,000 an hour on?
Choire Sicha: I think I saw a TV ad this one time as I was fast-forwarding on my DVR? READ MORE 21
The First Mayoral Debate @10:35 AM
Hands up, how many of you watched the mayoral debate last night? Really? All of you? Wasn't it amazing? I'm not sure what my favorite part was: the heckling of Mike Bloomberg by the Green party candidate (from the audience), the high school auditorium-level production values, the lightning round—good lord, there really was a lightning round (I'm sure any number of enterprising reporters are currently pounding the pavement to discover evidence that Bloomberg's denial of ever having had a manicure was a flat-out lie)—the extensive back-and-forth on water rates… it was indeed a rich tapestry. But oddly engaging! READ MORE 16
Meet The Other Guys Who Don't Have A Chance Against Bloomberg @4:00 PM
Here is some information about the seven other candidates for Mayor of New York. Did you know that the Libertarian makes his own suits? Neither did I! 2
Virginia Threatened By Scary Ethnic Types @10:22 AM
Did you know that a tiny Jew and his greasy dago buddies are trying to RAPE THE STATE OF VIRGINIA? That seems to be the message of this NRA commercial in support of Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell. Sure, it's never bad politics to attack New York City, but even Virginia has HBO now. These people have seen "The Sopranos." They know what highly-stylized mob brutality looks like. Isn't there a danger that they'll be more insulted by the crappy production values and terrible acting in this ad than convinced by its contentions? Seems risky! 16
Mayor Locks Up Billionaire Irish Celebrity Vote @9:42 AM
Fun fact: Mayor Bloomberg and Bono are approximately the same height. Also, what a world. 8
Mike Bloomberg Is Trying To Kill You With Healthiness @9:00 AM
I have very mixed feelings about this Times Dining piece on Mayor Bloomberg, who wants to reduce the amount of sodium in processed food yet eats plenty of salt himself. Also? He will eat the occasional Big Mac, yet insists that the calorie count be posted. And? He was once a smoker, but continues to make cigarettes more expensive and less socially acceptable. I understand the value of a good "oh, the hypocrisy" piece as well as anyone, and God knows it is plenty easy to look at the mayor and see a tiny Jewish tyrant bent on forcing the people of this city to do his will, but, really, is it that binary? READ MORE 25
Dear Bill Thompson @10:31 AM
Dear Bill Thompson,
I have never met you. As far as I know, no one I know has ever met you. I couldn't pick you out of a lineup—and I can say that because I just now went Googling for a picture of you and I didn't even know you were black, so I didn't even know that saying that would have icky weird racist overtones! Seriously. WTF? And I say this as the kind of primary-voting nerd who briefly got into it with Leslie Crocker Snyder campaigners last night on the street. (So maybe I called her a killer, and maybe a bunch of Aborn campaigners laughed their heads off.) And yet here you are, the Democratic contender for mayor of New York. Right now, you are not going to be the mayor, to put it politely, which is to say, you are barely a blip on the map in a political landscape where the tiny Red Sox-loving mayor is a strangely dominant, compelling and, most importantly, famous entity. So what are you going to do? Who are you going to appeal to? READ MORE 11
Bloomberg's Rich Friends, and His Silence on Affordable Housing @12:01 PM
As you might expect, today's big story on Mike Bloomberg's financial tentacles and the city, from the Voice's Wayne Barrett, is long and winding, and not nearly as exciting as one brave bird's suicide attack on the mayor's plane. Much of it is innuendo and unanswered questions. (That's sort of fine and right, though: it's important, with such a mayor as ours, that you acknowledge that there's lots we cannot find out!) But there are a couple of things that, if you can parse them, you might want to give some attention. READ MORE 7
Swine Flu: The Repanicking @4:00 PM
A study showing that 1 in 10 New Yorkers was infected with swine flu earlier this year will be released this week. (Of that group, 47 died.) The estimate comes in advance of a press conference tomorrow from Mayor Bloomberg which will outline the city's plans to deal with the expected fall outbreak. Details are scarce, but some sources suggest that the Mayor will announce that pieces from the voluminous collection of brochures he has sent out to every city resident in support of his re-election campaign can be easily manipulated to serve as surgical masks. 5
The Uber-Rich Lose All Perspective, Mike Bloomberg Edition @12:35 PM
Oh, Mike Bloomberg: "You know, last time I checked, pharmaceutical companies don't make a lot of money, their executives don't make a lot of money – not that they couldn't do better." That was on the radio this morning, says Liz Benjamin. Oh but. After a commercial break, "the mayor said he had done a quick Google search and discovered that some big drug company execs are actually 'making a decent amount and more than a decent amount.'" So this is one of the ways in which having the richest man in New York City as mayor is extremely unhelpful. 9
The Top Three NYC Wonks: It's Lonely at the Top @10:29 AM
This is a very sad story about the top three wonks in New York City: Jefrey Pollock, Howard Wolfson and Josh Isay, all campaign ops super-spooks. Oh, they were friends, and then not friends, and then friends again, and sometimes their wives worked out together, and they were very young and now less young, and some of them got weird and now only eat salads and don't talk to people much, and some of them were already weird and phobic and just got weirder and more phobic, and sometimes Howard was making $40,000 a month (like right now!) to manage the talking points for the hotly-contested (kidding!) Bloomberg mayoral campaign. (Note to all of you with your sub-$40K a month income: you're doing it wrong.) This is the perfect primer for those looking to understand how New York City politics works now, but you are warned, you won't feel happy when you know. 8
Mike Bloomberg: The Richest Man in New York City @2:40 PM
I'm not really sure this was the time for an immense Michael Bloomberg profile, but I'm not un-convinced? (Have you heard? He is still mayor of New York.) In any event: it is here in the New Yorker, it is very long and it ate my afternoon. It seems a lot mushy around the edges? There are some great things? If you are looking for a leisurely read, this is it. There are two minor things that got my attention. READ MORE 4
How Bloomberg City Hall Ops Work @1:45 PM
I enjoyed this very matter-of-fact slideshow of how a Mike Bloomberg press event is put together. It reflects the extreme, absurd anality of New York City's current City Hall, when a little speech to thank some volunteers is staffed by a cast of thousands and basically orchestrated like the assault on the beaches of Normandy (which, for the record, Walter Cronkite covered from an airplane, not from the actual beaches). 6
The Great Lies of New York City's Affordable Housing @11:25 AM
The last two administrations of New York City government have done a unbelievably poor job with their contracts for affordable housing. Back in 2000, Battery Park City, then 25 years old, was to have provided, on-site or off, 60,000 units of affordable housing, but had only provided a bit more than 1500. That has not improved much! More recently, buildings like 10 Barclay St., a 58-story residential building in lower Manhattan, with 451 units, and a cost of around $185 million, which was recently renting 3-bedrooms for 9+ grand per month, was to have 15 apartments set aside as "affordable housing." In exchange for those units, in 2005, the developers received $135 million in Liberty Bonds. These crazy scams—yes, they are actual scams— are not the aberration; they are business as usual. Now, sometime today comes a report tracking the Bloomberg administration's Cornerstone program. READ MORE 9
The Great American Homeless Shuffle @3:10 PM
Some people are apparently SHOCKED that New York City mayor Mike "Mikey" Bloomberg is shipping homeless people out of town, or, "home," or "to wherever." It is, after all, a sort of program that's worked everywhere from Lancaster, California to, uh, San Francisco, California and also pretty much every other town in California. (In San Francisco, you can get a bus ticket home (not a plane ticket!) if there's someone there who, like, says on the phone they want you.) Today Bloomberg was like "What are you all chirping about?" basically. Of course, New York City's program will buy anyone a one-way ticket out of town, if some alleged "family member" says they will house them. (Though the state of Georgia is pissed, for no apparent reason?) This is all sort of more stern than the plan Hawaii was considering, code name "Back to the Mainland With You," which was just going to deport homeless people. In any event, this is why we need to start flying back to the moon, so that somewhere there will be a happy place for the homeless and they can stop hopscotching the country, trying to take our houses. 6
Draftsman Somehow Causes Mild Amusement @9:24 AM
File this under things I thought I would never type, but today's cartoon by Sean Delonas, the New York Post "illustrator" whose crimes against both art and taste are too numerous to elaborate upon in this small space, actually induced something almost resembling a chuckle this morning. I hope I'm not getting sick. 4
Annals of Narcissism: Mayor Mike Bloomberg, The Ideal New Yorker, But Not The Ideal Mayor @3:10 PM
It would be a shame if the mumbo-jumbo up in Albany entirely distracted us from the really remarkable new Times/Cornell/NY1 poll. Though I wouldn't blame someone for thinking that Times reporter David Chen and his top boss Bill Keller made up the results at lunch on Monday, and though I doubt that Bill Thompson's mayoral campaign will do much to take advantage of what a less dully genial candidate might think of as an unmatched opportunity, it is nonetheless the first tangible victory for democracy in the city this year—the first time it seems even possible that Michael Bloomberg's millions might be spent in vain. READ MORE 10
The Tide Is Rising Against Lord God King Mayor Mike! @9:10 AM
In a recent poll of New Yorkers, the number one thing they thought Mayor Mike has done wrong is change term limits so that he can install himself as Lord God King of New York City, because clearly he thinks he is the only person who can see us through this economic shit-show, even though he was a fundamental part of laying the groundwork for this economic shit-show. Another interesting data point: his insane plan to spend $80 million to get elected for a third term? A full quarter of people surveyed say that they are less likely to vote for him because of that. 4
Mike Bloomberg Toasts Peter Kaplan, While The Observer Roasts Him @2:40 PM
Mildly funny story! While New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg was flipping out on Observer reporter Azi Paybarah, calling him "a disgrace" in front of tons of reporters, the Mayor had apparently already penned a moving tribute to outgoing Observer editor Peter Kaplan. That's right: Mayor Mike stars on the front page—sandwiched between Tom Wolfe and Candace Bushnell—of a Kaplan tribute paper released last night at Kaplan's farewell party. READ MORE 3
Bloomberg: "That Was Just Mike Being Mike" @3:12 PM
"I think most people seem to like the mayor, which is great," the mayor told reporters today as he explained that his dickish behavior last Thursday was actually a result of the Talmudic scholarship in which he must engage to determine whether he is attending a city event, in which case he will not answer campaign questions, or a campaign event, where he presumably will not answer city questions. Are we all clear now? 2
Mike Bloomberg Will Take No Questions About His Third Term–Calls Reporter A "Disgrace" @4:35 PM
Mike Bloomberg: kind of a dick. Today he was asked: if the economy turns around, would that invalidate his plan to have a third-term, which of course he's only planning so as to save New York City from disaster? So he got all snarly and asked for a serious question. Sounds like someone's wearing his little shorts a bit too tight. IMPORTANT UPDATE! MAYOR CALLS REPORTER A "DISGRACE"! READ MORE 16
First Drafts: Anthony Weiner's Times Op-Ed @3:15 PM
I WAS the kind of New York kid who played stickball in the street, made pocket change working at the local bagel store, kissed a nurse in Times Square when they announced the end of the war, and handed out leaflets on Election Day. I loved New York. I couldn't imagine why people would live anywhere else, particularly someplace like Medford, Mass., which is right outside of Boston, home of the hated Red Sox. You ever hear people from Medford talk? That accent is insane. It just grates, right? I'm trying to think of someone you might know from Medford who talks like that, just for illustration purposes. I'll keep thinking about it and get back to you. READ MORE 7
Bloomberg's Insane Spendy Campaign PSYCHO HORRORSHOW @8:46 AM
Short and Boston-ey New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg has already spent $18 million on his reelection campaign this year. Against NO ONE. And so this results in what is most likely the greatest story ever written, about the Bloomberg campaign's army of consultants and volunteers, who are basically spending the election eating pizza and, like many people in City Hall, waiting for potential jobs at the Bloomberg Foundation, which is where all good loyal Bloomberg soldiers go to work-retire and attend conferences and take people out to lunch and recline in splendor. Not that things aren't so cushy now at the campaign, when you are making $16,000 a month to pursue labor endorsements, or your web company is billing Bloomberg $1.7 million for, like, a website. Hahahaha! EVERYONE IN THE WORLD MUST STOP AND READ THIS! 4
Bloomberg's Newest Technocrat @3:37 PM
New York City's Housing Authority, whose buildings house 400,000 residents and are plagued with electrical outages pretty much every time day it rains, has a new boss! John Rhea is the former managing director of the Lehman Brothers global consumer retail group, but also worked at JP Morgan Chase. Also he gives money to political campaigns completely indiscriminately. John Edwards and Mitt Romney, wow. Bloomberg's point in hiring him was that he take the deficit-riddled nightmare of NYCHA into hand. It would be some sort of fallacy-addled argument for me to point out that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy just last September, right? 2
Mike Bloomberg Addresses The Hispanic Community Natively And With Ease @5:01 PM
Certain short, pushy lord-god-king mayors REALLY need to work on their Spanish accents! 0
