During this year’s final mayoral debate, Bill Thompson was said by the local commentariat to have made two grievous errors, which were only not said to be fatal in and of themselves because his candidacy was pronounced by the same wise-men to be in a state of extremis, for which the local press had already administered the rite of extreme unction.
Now, in light of the fact that Mr. Thompson lost an election to a man who received less than 51% of the votes, the wise-men have been proven to be a little less wise, and perhaps it is time to subject these assertions to a more rigorous analysis, if only because if the wise-men were right about them, these purported errors may have actually turned the course of history.
Error number one is said to be Mr. Thompson’s assertion that Bloomberg’s performance in the Office of Mayor rated a grade of D minus.
I too thought this statement by Thompson was a mistake, not only on the substance (a minor concern), but also electorally, since it indicated a fundamental misunderstanding of Mr. Thompson’s base.
There are basically two types of voters in City elections; those who think that Mr. Bloomberg is a better Mayor than was Rudolph Giuliani, and there are those who prefer Luca Brasi. As someone who found even Mike Huckabee a preferable candidate for President, I am in the former category.
Moreover, I suspect that if one were to take a poll, one would find that Mr. Bloomberg achieved his victory by cleaning up among those who find him a less attractive Mayor than Giuliani, while Thompson’s base was among those who preferred Bloomberg to his predecessor.
As such, Thompson’s offhand remark probably hurt him most among his base, as well as among his seemingly most promising pool of undecideds, white, left of center voters.
Better Thompson should have said something like, “First term, B; second term C; but the times demand that we do better; we can and we must.”
I will be the first to admit that part of the reason for Bloomberg’s small margin of victory was the fact that the Mayor did unexpectedly poorly among those voters who preferred Giuliani’s administration to his own.Bloomberg’s declining fortunes among Hasidic voters was only one example of this phenomenon.
As I pointed out before the election:
“…there is a lot of dissatisfaction from other quarters, not all of them liberal. To try to carve out a middle class existence in a City like New York is a constant battle in which residents often feel besieged by forces seemingly intent upon driving them to embark upon a suburban existence. Some of those forces are beyond the realm of government to even impact upon. But some, like the multiple and manifold forms of taxation by summons, are enough to drive even the City’s most ardent lovers into the arms of another.
I hate Rudy Giuliani liker poison, but he is, in living memory, the Mayor of New York who best understood this phenomena. In this regard, Bloomberg is the Mayor who most does not get it. It is why even worthy proposals of his like Congestion Pricing so drive middle class outer borough New Yorkers out of their minds.
There is a out there a great seething resentment, not all of it rational, but much of it quite on the mark, for the sort of clueless lack of concern over this legitimate frustration. And for many, Bloomberg is its personification. In fact, the perception that there is nothing to be done about Bloomberg only fuels the fury of those so afflicted.”
I think the secret of Thompson’s good showing was, that unlike the local press, Thompson understood all this extremely well. The problem was that this phenomenon was strongest in our local equivalent of the “red states,” and as Barack Obama has discovered, the fact that people in places like Arkansas and Louisiana have large populations in need of health insurance does not make those people more likely to support a black man who may actually be sensitive to their concerns. Bill Thompson did far better in our local “red states” than anyone expected, but there was a point which he could not get beyond. Perhaps the winner needed to be a Weiner.
Anyway, even in such areas, it is doubtful that voters got excited by the D minus; I suspect that a C would have been bad enough for them, and far more credible.
Thompson’s other great faux pas of the debate was said to be his response to a lightning round question which asked:
“…is Pedro Espada a better majority leader of the state Senate than Joe Bruno?"
Mr. Thompson said yes, Bloomberg said no. Local commentators were almost unanimous in condemning this as a major Thompson blunder.
I yield to no one in my contempt for Pedro Espada, as I’ve previously noted, my first post concerning Espada’s perfidy was posted on another blog in May 2007, and I later posted on it here in October of that year. Since then I condemned Mr. Espada here, here, here (where I actually endorsed the indicted incumbent Espada was running against), and these were all well before the Four Horsemen of the Preposterous (AKA, “The Amigos“) announced they were opening up their own business. Afterwards, I continued my abuse of Espada, among other places, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. And even that was before last summer’s Times of Troubles, which I documented here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here (in which Mr. Espada is compared unfavorably to dog excrement) and here, among other places.
But, to compare Pedro Espada to Joe Bruno would be like comparing a Three Card Monte dealer to Bernie Madoff.
Yet, the local commentariat was been nearly unanimous in bemoaning Mr. Bruno’s departure, and mourning his absence. Given that such commentary came from the same places which turned a blind eye to the reality of the Mayoral race, perhaps it is not coincidental that the State Senate Republican are basically a wholly owned subsidiary of Bloomberg, L.P.
This morning, someone in the Press finally removed their blinders about Mr. Bruno.
Unlike his colleagues, Jim Dwyer actually seems to get it. In what I think are the money points of his column, Mr. Dwyer complains not of allegations of illegality (on which, as always, I will refrain from comment), but about the crimes which were found to be legal, and the press's insane coverage of them.
JIM DWYER: As a legislator, Mr. Bruno led a party that is in the minority in New York State but was in the majority in the State Senate, weaving the protective web of incumbency and gerrymandering. Major banks paid to keep Mr. Bruno and his people in place, casually writing checks of $50,000 or so for seasonal campaign galas. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars from his personal fortune to Bruno-run political funds, hoping to fortify Mr. Bruno’s shaky hold on power.
And two years ago, when the public was afforded a glimpse of Mr. Bruno’s sense of entitlement — he was being flown in state helicopters to political fund-raisers and meetings at racetracks — nearly all of Albany rose to his defense.
Like a few other senior public officials, Mr. Bruno could whistle up a state helicopter and State Police pilots pretty much anytime he wanted. In 2007, the logs of these trips were requested under the Freedom of Information Law by James Odato, a reporter with The Times Union of Albany. Drawing on the records, the paper published an article about Mr. Bruno’s frequent use of the helicopters when he had political fund-raisers and about police drivers taking him around when he landed.
At first, the story had a modest impact. Then Mr. Bruno complained he was the victim of police surveillance. A series of articles and editorials in The New York Post took up the theme that the revelations about Mr. Bruno’s travels were an evisceration of his civil liberties that bordered on Stalinism.
After all, who would want to live in a country where a politician can’t command state helicopters and police for what are essentially political fund-raising junkets?
Finally, the state’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, began an investigation. His report quickly disposed of any questions about the legitimacy of Mr. Bruno’s helicopter travels; under the rules in place, even a modest fig leaf of official business could justify them.The vast bulk of Mr. Cuomo’s report was devoted to the question of how the Bruno flight logs were disclosed. It turns out, unsurprisingly, that they were leaked by the office of Mr. Bruno’s bitter adversary, Eliot Spitzer, who was then governor. The governor’s staff pretty much issued a gold-plated invitation to the Times Union reporter to ask for the documents.
So The Times Union was cast as a stooge for reporting the information about the trips. Now, though, with the hindsight about Mr. Bruno’s sense of entitlement afforded by the federal trial, the helicopter saga is particularly revealing. The scandal was defined not as the possible abuse of public resources by Mr. Bruno, but as malignant leaks by the governor’s office. The truth of the matter was not the problem, but telling the truth was.
Of course, as always, I made these points far, far earlier. I do wonder where Mr. Dwyer was in 2008 or 2006 (not to mention 2004 and earlier). But at least Dwyer has learned something; by contrast, Michael Goodwin, the schmuck who wrote the article lamenting Joe Bruno's departure is, on this very day, still complaining about "Troopergate."
Let me sum up.
Mr. Bruno was the architect of a completely corrupt, but thoroughly legal system, which robbed the voters of the state not only of their tax revenues and the benefits for which they were supposed to pay, but of democracy itself in any meaningful form. The fact that he may or may not have attempted to enrich himself (whether in a legal manner, or not) is almost incidental.
By contrast, Mr. Espada seems entirely focused on his own enrichment, with any damage to our body politic merely a collateral by-product of his evil and his avarice.
James Brown once said of disco musicians that "I taught them everything they know, but not everything that I know." Mr. Bruno can truthfully say the same of the lessons he imparted to Mr. Espada.
To which I can only say, Praised be the Lord for small favors.
So, I agree with Bill Thompson.
Pedro. Better.