Did Bloomberg Pay Street Money To Get Reelected?

Street money? Are you kidding me? Was he watching that Cory Booker movie or something? That’s what some are suggesting after details of a mysterious campaign expenditure emerged in the Post:

A $750,000 personal campaign contribution that Mayor Bloomberg channeled through the state Independence Party during last year’s mayoral election landed in the hands of a top aide, The Post has learned.

The aide, John Haggerty Jr., served as a Bloomberg “volunteer involved in some of the activities” of Special Election Operations LLC, a hastily formed company that hired 200 to 300 workers to do poll watching on Election Day, according to Ken Gross, counsel to the campaign.

. . .

One veteran GOP consultant said he believed Special Election Operations was designed to dispense “street money” — cash that’s spread around on Election Day to volunteers and for such incidentals as lunch.

But Howard Wolfson, the mayor’s campaign spokesman, insisted the $750,000 — part of a $1.2 million personal contribution Bloomberg made to the state Independence Party right before the election — didn’t go for that purpose.

“The [Independence Party] made the same Election Day expenses that all party committees make every election for Election Day workers,” he said in an e-mail.

“Because the IP does not have the infrastructure to handle this kind of activity in-house, it used Special Election Operations to handle the payroll payments to all these individuals.”

Wolfson’s “explanation” even sounds like it’s street money. And $750,000? That’s not even close to what was suggested Obama would have to spend to get elected in Philadelphia. We’re taking a lot of pizza parties!

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Bermuda Was Settled By Privateers

Tom Robbins notes what you may have missed regarding Bloomberg’s tenure now that the media has moved away from producing investigative journalism including NYC-TV, Stuyvesant Town and Mayoral Control. And then there’s this:

Actually, the joke’s on us. Even as newspaper fortunes sank in recent years, Bloomberg diligently courted media barons like Zuckerman, Murdoch, and Sulzberger, who he understood could make his life difficult if they so chose. Minus their support, as Joyce Purnick’s new Bloomberg biography proves, he would have never risked his end run around term limits. But he knew he had little to fear. As Purnick’s book also tells us, even his weekend disappearing act to go to his mansion in Bermuda has gone unchallenged.

“He does his radio show Friday morning,” a former aide told her. “At 11:05, the latest, he’s in his car. At 11:30 he is at the airport. His plane is in the air at 11:40, he’s in Bermuda at 2:10. He’s on the golf course by 2:30. . . . Almost every weekend, spring and fall.”

There’s a photo op that’s been even more closely guarded than military caskets arriving at Dover Air Force Base: Mayor Mike, golf bags over his shoulder, striding across the tarmac toward Air Bloomberg.

But of course all that golfing had a purpose — like puff pieces about the mayor’s golf score. And then there are the I [heart] NY golf balls. And of course the mayor’s own vision of immigration reform . . .

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Tastes Great, Less Filling: More Choices, More Democracy, With Significantly Fewer Voters!

Since the beginning, the mayor and his editorial board lackeys argued that allowing the mayor to buy a third term constituted “more choices” or “more democracy”. Apparently that won’t also translate to more voters:

And a number of political analysts say that a predicted record-low turnout next Tuesday may jeopardize Mr. Bloomberg’s projected double-digit victory margin and even deliver him a third term with the lowest total vote received by a New York City mayor in nearly a century.

. . .

Mr. Bloomberg won in 2001 with 744,000 votes. He won a second term four years later with 753,000 of the 1.3 million cast. If as few as 20 percent of eligible voters turn out and Mr. Bloomberg wins even by a 10-percentage-point landslide, he would be re-elected with fewer than 500,000 votes — the lowest total since John F. Hylan’s in 1917.

That, by the way, was before women were allowed to vote and when the city’s population was smaller by nearly three million.

Which is all funny, in a ha-ha funny kind of way, as Clyde Haberman reports:

Buoyed by the polls and his own astonishing campaign spending, Mr. Bloomberg seems confident that four more years at City Hall are in the bag for him. Monday morning, he spoke about the New York that he envisioned in 2013, when his third term would end. This was in a speech to students attending New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service.

He was pleased, he told them, to speak at a school named for “a distinguished three-term mayor.”

That produced thin laughter. Maybe the students had the Monday morning blahs. Or maybe they simply didn’t think it was funny.

“I thought I’d get a better laugh than that,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “It’s not easy to do three-term jokes, folks.”

There’s a reason for that.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Bloomberg, Stay The Hell Out Of My Baseball Playoffs

It’s bad enough that your crappy ads are on every half inning, but this, too? Let’s get this horrible campaign over with already:

Following the Yankees’ clinching win over the Los Angeles Angels, the Fox cameras were trained on the podium, as various presentations were made and interviews conducted. And just to the right, Mayor Bloomberg held his position on the podium, so long that it almost seemed awkward.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Starvin’ To Be Alone And Independent From The Scene That I’ve Known

Will the mayoral race in New York look anything like the one in Albuquerque? Tonight’s the night:

The Thompson campaign seems to think [the term limit extension issue is salient for voters], and they’re looking at the recent mayor’s race in Albuquerque, where the mayor, Martin Chavez, was defeated after he successfully sued to throw out the law barring him from seeking another term.

. . .

Three days after Chavez’s defeat, a reporter asked Bloomberg if he was afraid the same thing would happen to him. Bloomberg, standing in his campaign headquarters with the term-limited mayor of Miami, Manny Diaz, said he wasn’t, because “the politics there are different than the politics here.”

Some differences:

In Albuquerque, there were three candidates.

In Albuquerque, the third candidate in the race was a Democrat, like the incumbent. One siphoned votes from the other while the Republican candidate, Berry, consolidated his base. Also, both Berry and the other challenger, Romero, focused their attacks on Chavez.

In Albuquerque, the election was nonpartisan.

And most notably, in Albuquerque, all the candidates participated in a public financing program that capped their spending.

That last difference — spending — explains the absurdity of Bloomberg arguing that it “costs a lot of money to get a message out” — this despite the fact that he has had eight years to craft said message, and that he has the best name recognition of any other mayor in America.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.