Hizzoner Earns Second Term As Ferrer Loses Unwinnable Race

Michael R. Bloomberg has won his second term as New York City mayor, overwhelmingly defeating Democratic candidate Fernando Ferrer:

Michael R. Bloomberg was re-elected mayor of New York by a historic margin yesterday, beating back Fernando Ferrer’s attempt to build a multiethnic coalition and giving Republicans a fourth straight victory over a Democratic Party that had controlled city politics for much of the last century.

Mr. Bloomberg’s 20-point margin of victory, based on unofficial total results, appeared to set a Republican record by smashing Rudolph W. Giuliani’s 16-point win in 1997 and even exceeding Fiorello H. La Guardia’s 19-point landslide in 1937. Mr. Ferrer seemed to have the lowest number of votes of a Democratic candidate for mayor, since 1917, when John F. Hylan won office with 313,956 votes.

The outcome also consigned Democratic leaders, who were unusually united behind Mr. Ferrer, to a season of soul-searching about their political strategy as they face 16 years of exile from City Hall through the 2009 election.

In the interest of learning from the past, know that whenever a party is “unusually united,” it probably means that they’re going down bigtime — just try Googling “unusually united Democratic pary” and “Kerry.” (Here, I’ll do it for you! (In fact, you almost wonder if Times writer Patrick Healy is slipping in an inside joke here!)

Buried in the piece is this sad nugget:

With hindsight setting in fully, Ferrer aides said they concluded by late September that the race was not winnable. Public polling and some campaign surveys showed that, even if Mr. Ferrer managed to land every blow even as he championed a positive message of his own, the mayor was still likely to win. [Emphasis sadly added!]