PRO-CHOICE, PRO-GAY, ANTI-GUN
The new Republican mayor of New York has some conservatives gagging,
says Philip Delves Broughton
New York AT the end of May, about a week before Mike Bloomberg declared he would be running to be mayor of New York, I interviewed him in his office, just off the newsroom of his media company. It was early, but Bloomberg, being the alpha male, billionaire type, had been up for hours, running in Central Park, reading the papers at his local coffee shop, then shaming his employees by getting in to work before them. His every tic, fidget and sinewy subclause suggested that financial news services, the source of his fortune, waited for no man.
Say he became mayor. I asked, though it seemed a highly unlikely proposition at the time. Sitting behind a desk and applying a businessman's scalpel to the fatty bureaucracy of city services was one thing. Becoming the city's rock and consoler, showing up when the bad stuff happened, was quite another. 'Do you look forward to riding the ambulances, turning up at JFK when a plane goes down?' I asked.
I dug out the tape of this interview after 11 September because I remembered being surprised by his answer. 'Look, nobody likes to go to tragic things,' he said in his chewy, Boston accent. 'But the fact of the matter is, the number of times a plane goes down, the number of times a cop gets shot, is very, very small. I think there were half-adozen cops killed last year, some number like that, single digits OK. Planes, probably none last year. So, you know, everybody focuses on whether you're going to rush to the bedside at three in the morning, and yes, you have to do that, but how often do you think that happens? I mean there are enough crises in life.'
He went on: 'I'm simply saying that either the requirement or the opportunity to handle a major crisis], depending on how you want to phrase it, is limited. Most of the time, the mayor's job is to be a manager of a $40 billion, 250,000 employee organisation that has to deliver services, most of which are specified by law or court decisions.'
Since we spoke. Bloomberg has been elected mayor and New York has been traumatised by the attacks on the World Trade Center, anthrax scares and now another plane crash. Next January, the popular and accomplished Mayor Rudolph Giuliani will step down and be succeeded by a man with no political experience and an embroidered cushion in his bedroom which reads: 'How many heterosexual billionaires can there be for Chrissakes?' On the plus side, Mike Bloomberg is selfmade, gives $100 million a year to good causes, and is said by friends to be clever, loyal and built to win.
Also to his credit. Bloomberg pulled off one of the great political heists in American history, seizing victory in the final few hours from a candidate who fell asleep on the job. Mark Green. the Democratic candidate, was 16 points ahead in the polls with just two weeks to go, and he blew it.
While Bloomberg kept on writing cheques until he had spent more than $60 million — roughly $100 per voter — on advertising, direct mail and 250,000 promotional videotapes. Green offered lame jokes in shopping malls. In a shoe store in Brooklyn, a few days before the election, he cried out to a thin, bemused crowd: 'If you vote for me on 7 November, all the shoes in here will be free! Trust me! I'm a politician!'
In addition to unlimited financial resources. Bloomberg had the good fortune to be spending his money during an advertising bust. Into the void, he thrust the advertisement which snagged him the mayoralty. Ten days before the election, Mayor Giuliani came out in support of his fellow Republican. It was a little late, but in a television advertisement Giuliani reassured New Yorkers that they would be safe with Mike Bloomberg. The hero of 11 September had anointed his successor, and the city listened.
It is hard to imagine a bachelor billionaire who boasts of his success with women going almost unchallenged on the subject in Britain, but in an astonishing media triumph the man New Yorkers chose to be mayor was the almost cartoonish 'Bloomberg — Man of Action' they saw in the advertisements.
Because of the distraction of 11 September, Bloomberg has been barely scrutinised in the press. There was some criticism of his inexperience and his apparent attempt to buy office. But there has been only a cursory examination of his record of paying off women employees who have threatened or filed sexualharassment suits against him. While he has never admitted wrongdoing, his tendency to write big cheques to knock these problems on the head would have raised feminist hackles in any other year.
In the week following his election, Bloomberg has made good on his promise to try to be a non-partisan mayor. He shook hands with the black demagogue the Revd Al Sharpton — something Mayor Giuliani has refused to do during his eight years as mayor. He has also met union leaders and appointed a Democrat to be his transition chief. His critics call this the usual drill for a political naif who will soon find out how swampy and vicious New York politics really are. Right-wing Republicans, meanwhile, are gagging on his latest boast: 'I am pro-choice, I am progay rights. I am in favour of gun control and against the death penalty.'
But, overall, there is an enormous amount of goodwill for Bloomberg, not just because New York is sick of mourning and worrying about its future, but also because people admire his pluck and luck and the fact that his campaign never turned dirty, even when lagging. 'You can question somebody's sanity if they want to spend their own money, whether it's to buy a steak, a Renoir or to get a job,' said Bloomberg in May, defending using his own money to campaign. 'But why you would think that would make them less qualified never made any sense to me whatsoever.'
Bloomberg has left his comfortable life for an uncomfortable one, but, given the madness which has descended on New York, no one is questioning his sanity.
Previous page
