{"id":467,"date":"2005-11-09T16:30:19","date_gmt":"2005-11-10T00:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2005\/11\/smoke_em_if_you_got_em.html"},"modified":"2005-11-09T16:30:19","modified_gmt":"2005-11-10T00:30:19","slug":"smoke_em_if_you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/11\/smoke_em_if_you.html","title":{"rendered":"Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

With his smashing victory, Bloomberg ensures himself a place in New York political lore with Giuliani and Fiorello La Guardia \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Republicans who won whopping wins in the heavily Democratic city.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, who among us has not from time to time considered his or her place in history?<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

And then there was the money. Lots of it.<\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, in the end it begs the question: He spent $80 million and only won by 20 points?<\/em> What went wrong?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}