The Gifford Miller Rule

The City Council is apparently moving forward on plans to extend term limits, which voters long ago and far away once approved. The plan — dubbed the Gifford Miller Rule — is designed to prevent council members from having to run for higher office before their time. Good government groups are dubious:

Twelve years after New York City voters adopted term limits for many of their local officials, the City Council is poised to allow its members to serve one more term, – without asking voters how they feel about changing the term limits law.

A majority of the Council supports a change that would allow the members to serve another four-year term in office, instead of the current limit of two terms. Six of the seven members vying to become the next Council speaker said last week that they favor making the change through legislation rather than putting it before voters, and the seventh did not rule out such a step.

Term limits were imposed after a 1993 citywide referendum, and reaffirmed by voters in 1996 when the Council similarly sought to allow a third term. In doing so, the voters largely swept aside political tradition and party loyalties to impose new limits on how long the mayor, other citywide elected officials, and council members could serve.

But now, council members, who are considering increasing term limits for themselves but not the mayor or other officials, say the two-term limit has left the Council bereft of experienced leadership and undermined its ability to act as a check on the mayor. They also say such matters should not be decided by the voters, claiming that the referendum process has often been corrupted by moneyed special interests.

To be fair to Mr. Miller, who received just under 10 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary for Mayor, said that no changes to the law will be made in the remaining month of his Speakership.

Historic Blunders Were Committed

As official results are tallied, it turns out that Bloomberg’s victory actually wasn’t the widest margin ever for a Republican. That, and Fernando Ferrer’s unsportsmanlike whining, may unfortunately sabtoage Bloomberg’s “place in history” bona fides. In fact, I think Ferrer is doing it on purpose:

Mr. Ferrer, who does not place blame on himself at any point in the El Diario interview, said the news media did not sufficiently cover the issues he had raised in the campaign. Reporters, he said, “will always assert that there was nothing persuasive to report.” He added, “Aren’t hunger and housing persuasive issues?”

He also suggested that he might have been taken more seriously and could have closed in on Mr. Bloomberg if the polls had not forecast an inevitable runaway victory by the mayor. Some newspapers used opinion polls to predict a Bloomberg blowout, with The New York Post declaring “It’s Over” in a headline three days before the election. Polls suggested that the mayor would win by up to 38 percentage points.

“Historic blunders were committed, but they’ll never be held responsible for the harm that they did to me with the public and the fund-raising,” Mr. Ferrer said.

Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em

Only after the results are in do you start to understand why Michael Bloomberg would spend an “obscene” amount of money in a non-race — stories like this that cement your place in history:

Mayor Bloomberg romped to a record-shattering victory last night as he steamrolled an overmatched and outspent Fernando Ferrer on his way to a second term in City Hall.

Bloomberg trounced Ferrer 59 percent to 39 percent with 100 percent of precincts reporting, obliterating the record for a Republican mayoral victory in New York City.

. . .

With his smashing victory, Bloomberg ensures himself a place in New York political lore with Giuliani and Fiorello La Guardia — Republicans who won whopping wins in the heavily Democratic city.

Of course, who among us has not from time to time considered his or her place in history?

But seriously, if the guy is a billionaire, what is a few million (er, a few million times, say, 10 or 15) . . . smoke ’em if you got ’em, right? So once he defeats his challenger by 20 points, the only question will be whether in the history books his victory will include a small ($80 million) asterisk:

And then there was the money. Lots of it.

Though he said years ago that spending anywhere close to the $75 million he doled out in 2001 would be “obscene,” Bloomberg went beyond even that massive total with at least $80 million.

Of course, in the end it begs the question: He spent $80 million and only won by 20 points? What went wrong?

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!]

Ferrer Campaign Finally Sees Boost; Escort-Seeking Demographic Wrapped Up

Mayoral hopeful Fernando Ferrer has scored the New York Press’ endorsement, in effect sewing up the escort-seeking demographic:

And so it is that Freddy needs our help. His newspaper endorsements consist of El Diario, Amsterdam News and Gay City News. We’re honored to add our name to this list, and offer the all-important escort-seeking demographic.

As the largest English-language paper to endorse Ferrer, we’re offering him this next sentence.

Fernando Ferrer is the mayor New York needs to ensure the well-being and prosperity of all New Yorkers.

And, we might add, to ensure that we no longer have two New Yorks, but one grand city to rival Newark, we need Freddy Ferrer.

We invite Ferrer to use either of the above sentences in his advertising, should he manage to actually place ads on the air, rather than merely show them to reporters. We’d recommend using the first one, though.

(Love that self-deprecating style!)