The Many Lives of Michael Bloomberg

by Eleanor Randolph

  For the Times editorial board, the voice of the paper’s management, the third term for Mike Bloomberg would become a subject of intense internal debate. Over the years, Times editorials had stressed that term limits limited voters’ choices. But the Bloomberg case was a little different. Some editorial writers were adamant that Bloomberg should not get a third term unless the question went back to voters. The first editorial about the mayor’s bid for term three in June 2008 hinted at the paper’s opposition. It concluded, “We are wary of changing the rules just to suit the ambition of a particular politician.”14 The Times brass was not so wary, as it turned out. The publisher and managers wanted another Bloomberg term, especially as the economic downturn had started to look worse. The final editorial restated the paper’s established policy against term limits and enthusiastically endorsed Bloomberg in 2009 as a “first-rate steady hand during unsteady times.”15

  Behind the scenes, Bloomberg and his aides unabashedly solicited the support of charities and civic organizations that he had funded over the years. One administrator of a social service group that had received Bloomberg money and a city contract received a phone call from Linda Gibbs, deputy mayor for health and human services. Gibbs asked the administrator to lobby city council members still unconvinced about Bloomberg’s third term. Other recipients of Bloomberg’s generosity—the Doe Fund, the Public Art Fund, the Alliance of Resident Theatres, the St. Nicholas Neighborhood Preservation Corporation, and Jazz at Lincoln Center—helped pitch the idea of four extra years to their friends in the city council.16

  Still, there was one powerful and very strident proponent of term limits in Bloomberg’s path—Ronald Lauder. Lauder, the son of cosmetics tycoon Estée Lauder, had already bankrolled the two city referendums when New Yorkers had approved term limits. When Lauder realized that Bloomberg was trying to overturn his work, he put out a TV commercial that compared politicians (like the mayor) to dirty diapers “They need to be changed regularly.”17

  Bloomberg’s high-powered friends began trying to talk Lauder over to their side, making the pitch that the city needed a manager, a businessman at this economically fragile moment. Financier Henry Kravis, Richard Parsons, developer Jerry Speyer, public relations executive Howard J. Rubenstein, and Ronald’s own brother, Leonard Lauder, former chairman of the Estée Lauder firm, were among those trying to convince Lauder not to fight a one-time exception for Bloomberg.18

  Bloomberg invited Lauder to Gracie Mansion, where, over coffee and cookies, the two moguls eventually agreed on a one-term extension just for Bloomberg. For his part, Bloomberg promised to help engineer another vote on city term limits in 2010. (Term limits would pass for a third time. When that did indeed happen by a vote of 73.9 percent for limits and 26.1 percent against,19 the Times headline in 2010 was all you needed to know: “Bloomberg’s Latest on Terms: 3 for Him, but only 2 for Everyone Else.”)20

  With Lauder out of the way, Bloomberg had to convince the city council to allow this one-time extension. He needed a majority, or twenty-six of fifty-one votes. One by one, he and his advisers found ways to get them to go along. For many, the idea of another term was too enticing to turn down. The council speaker, Christine Quinn, who planned to run for mayor herself when Bloomberg quit and who wanted his support, signed on. A delay of four years could also bring her some distance from a scandal in her office when staff members were indicted as part of a scheme to hold money in fake accounts during budget negotiations.21 Some council members were reluctant to help themselves to another four years, but Bloomberg assured them that “people do forget about things like this.”22

  What really helped Bloomberg make his case for more time on the job was the economy. Lehman Brothers collapsed in early September 2008, Washington was talking about bailouts, and New York once again seemed to be in trouble. He felt that it strengthened the argument that he needed to be the one guiding the city because he had already done it once after September 11.

  On October 2, a year before the 2009 election, Michael Bloomberg announced his plan to run for another four years as mayor. He used the economy as his main reason, and when a reporter noted that he was courting yet another heated controversy about term limits, Bloomberg shot back, “Everything we do is controversial. That’s what democracy is all about.”

  Opponents quickly pounced. The comptroller, Bill Thompson, who would run against Bloomberg in the 2009 race, said this was “an attempt to suspend democracy.” Gene Russianoff, the reform prophet at the New York Public Interest Research Group, lamented, “Sadly, the move is worthy of ‘democracy’ in a banana republic.”23 Fran Lebowitz, one of the city’w Times: “The overturning of term limits—when this happens in another country, we call this a coup.”

  Later that month, the city council began to hold hearings on the mayor’s and their third terms. The sessions were like something straight out of a wrestling arena—democracy at its noisiest. The mayor’s people had already packed the chamber with about fifty supporters to applaud speeches by the likes of former governor Mario Cuomo and former mayor Ed Koch, who both backed Bloomberg.24 But opponents lined up for a chance to bellow at the council during these open hearings—a total of twenty hours of testimony before the council dared to vote. People were furious, and they expressed their fury again and again, in the two-minute intervals permitted to mere citizens. One fourteen-year-old captured the tone for the adults when he pleaded with the council to choose “honesty over bribery”—a line that drew raucous applause from the gallery.

  The council eventually voted 29–22 as the crowd booed and someone yelled “Shame on you” from the audience. City councilman from Brooklyn, Bill de Blasio, sounding like a prophet of doom, warned that “the people of this city will long remember what we’ve done here today, and the people will rightfully be unforgiving. We are stealing like a thief in the night their right to decide the shape of democracy.” (Four years later, de Blasio was still hammering that outrage into the political weapon he would use against Michael Bloomberg’s favored candidate to replace him as mayor, Christine Quinn. Quinn, who had voted for a third term, lost badly in the Democratic primary for mayor in 2013.)

  On November 4, 2008, what was usually a pro forma bill-signing ceremony became another angry public forum. By tradition, the public is allowed to make a last-minute appeal to the mayor at these events, and normally a protester or two would show up and then quickly disappear. This time 137 people came to speak. The mayor sat, his face tight with obvious irritation and resolve, as 68 New Yorkers displayed their outrage in a variety of accents, idioms, and decibels.

  “To hell with your agenda,” yelled one participant. “Please don’t make me and countless other parents explain to our children that good men craving power pushed aside the people’s voice,” pleaded another. Others were far less polite.

  George Arzt, former press secretary to Ed Koch and a seasoned expert on New York City politics, said he had seen nothing like it, “not even close.” As the marathon ended, a somber Bloomberg then said he had, over a period of time, changed his view about how long somebody could be in office. “Nobody is irreplaceable,” he said, “but I do think that if you take a look at the real world, at how long it takes to do things, I do think that three terms makes more sense than two.” Then, with his left hand, he picked up a pen and, “with a flick of his wrist, rewrote New York City’s term limits law,” as the Times reported that day.25

  * * *

  For some pundits, New York’s 2009 election would be another ho-hum, lopsided race with Bloomberg’s money wiping out the competition. As a result, most of them would miss the real story—how Bloomberg almost lost the election, even with all his money and all his success curbing smoking and creating 311 and controlling schools and managing the difficult city.

  It was not for lack of funds. Bloomberg spent about $74 million for his race in 2001 and $85 million for his second term in 2005 and, as it would turn out, a stunning $102 million on the 2009 race, or $174 per vote.26

/>   The money went to pollsters, advisers, consultants, helpers of all kinds. Even Goodfella’s Brick Oven Pizza, which provided numerous meals for the campaign staff, was $8,892 richer by the end of the campaign. At one point, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz said, “Now that term limits have been extended, so many in the city are looking forward to the mayor’s massive job creation program. By the way, it’s also known as the Bloomberg re-election campaign.”27

  Bloomberg not only hired the best political operators he could find; he also hired some of the most effective members of the Democratic opposition. Howard Wolfson, who had been Hillary Clinton’s tough guy during her 2008 presidential campaign, was the Democratic operative famous for the quick, biting jab, even at Mike Bloomberg. Wolfson had criticized Bloomberg’s effort to make city government nonpartisan as a “cynical power grab.” He scorned Bloomberg’s stadium plans for the West Side and the Bloomberg money replenishing various party slush funds. In the art world, Wolfson became famous as the one who criticized the bright orange panels that the artist Christo installed in February 2005 along the pathways in Central Park. Wolfson called them “schmattas on sticks.”28 The Bloomberg team hired him in time for the 2009 reelection, and he eventually became deputy mayor for governmental affairs from 2010 to 2013, then moved to run Bloomberg’s political fund-raising arm once he left city hall.

  Poaching the other side’s talent is always good business. Bloomberg had already hired the man who had done all the opposition research on him in his first race in 2001. Stu Loeser, who was Mark Green’s oppo-man that year, had become Bloomberg’s press secretary four years later. Loeser was too good, too dangerous, to stay with the Democrats, the Bloomberg people figured. Although many in the press grumbled about Loeser’s bruising tactics, he was one of the few people who could berate Bloomberg in private.29

  Another hire, Bradley Tusk, had worked in city hall with Bloomberg before moving to Chicago to help Rod Blagojevich, the pretty boy governor of Illinois who was later impeached and imprisoned for taking bribes. Tusk was not tainted by the actions of his “sociopath”30 boss, as he eventually labeled Blagojevich. And when Tusk returned to New York, Bloomberg welcomed him with a “gift”31—making him campaign manager for the 2009 race. Tusk said he saw early on that his prize came with a heavy burden—the Bloomberg team knew their man was vulnerable. After two terms, almost everybody is mad at city hall about something, water bills, property taxes, rising costs of parking tickets, the construction noise next door.

  But this was different. Early focus groups revealed a raw and stubborn anger about what people saw as Bloomberg’s brazen power grab to get that third term. Some of Bloomberg’s regular supporters threatened to sit out the vote.32

  Tusk was particularly worried about who would oppose his man, and the team figured then Congressman Anthony Weiner would be the most dangerous challenger. This was long before Weiner became an international figure for texting photos of his private parts to women who then shared those unsavory disclosures with the world. And it was almost ten years before Weiner went to prison for texting pornography to a minor.33

  Back in 2008, however, Weiner was a “wisecracking policy wonk,” as one writer cooed approvingly,34 a five-term congressman who had his eye on the top city job. The Bloomberg campaign figured they had to convince Weiner it was a lost cause. Or, as the relentless Tusk put it less artfully, they had to “strangle the baby in the crib.”35 (Tusk insisted that Bloomberg was not told of this strategy until later. In that way, Bloomberg’s campaign team used a favorite adage from the mayor himself—it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.)

  The goal was to make Bloomberg look invincible. They had social media targeted to Weiner’s zip code, and campaign aides knocked on doors to promote the mayor in Weiner’s neighborhood (and his parents’ neighborhood) long before the normal political armies came through. They leaked stories to the New York Post, where editors salivated at any headline denigrating Democrats. A favorite was Weiner’s congressional record. He had passed only one bill in his decade in the house—to help foreign models get visas.36 Another item revealed how Weiner missed votes in Washington every Tuesday for his local ice hockey game in the city. The Post headline: “Weiner’s a Pucking Goof-Off.”37 The Bloomberg team ran pro-Bloomberg ads early and got Weiner’s supporters including his one-time mentor, Senator Chuck Schumer, to call and try to talk him out of running. In late May 2009, Weiner finally took the hint and announced that he’d prefer to stay in Congress.38

  Outgoing city comptroller William Thompson became the Democratic nominee and he ran a gentlemanly race but could not resist riding the anger over Bloomberg’s term-limits vote. “Does the richest man in New York City get to live by one set of rules while the rest of us live by another?”39 he asked in one campaign speech.

  A Marist Poll three days after the only debate gave Bloomberg a 15-point lead with the election a week away. But Bloomberg’s approval rate was falling and Thompson’s support was ticking up. The trend lines did not look great.40 In the end, Bloomberg’s winning margin of nearly 20 points in 2005 had narrowed to a scant 4.4 points in 2009—from a healthy landslide to an embarrassing trickle. (Of the 1.178 million votes, 585,466 went to Bloomberg and 534,869 to William Thompson.) Some voters clearly believed polls that showed Bloomberg ahead and simply decided to skip the vote. Many others were still angry that a rich and powerful man could bend the rules in his favor.

  At a very modest swearing-in ceremony, Bloomberg promised to work on immigration reform and promote innovation. “Conventional wisdom holds that by a third term, mayors run out of energy and ideas,” Bloomberg told the crowd of about four thousand. “But we have proved conventional wisdom wrong time and again, and I promise you, we will do it once more.”41

  * * *

  Bloomberg’s four-year extension as mayor would not be conventional, he promised. He did not coast. He overscheduled himself and those around him, shortening deadlines and lengthening workdays for almost everybody. This was a last chance to build on his legacy as mayor and to make good on the hundreds of promises he had made eight years earlier. There would be mistakes that would haunt him, especially as he considered a future as a public figure. And when the countdown clock stopped at midnight on December 31, 2013, his supporters and opponents busily charted his many wins and notable failures.

  The success side of the ledger was heavier. For starters, he had steadied New York City after 9/11 and helped New Yorkers weather the Great Recession from late 2007 to June 2009. He inherited a deficit and left his successor a balanced budget with a surplus of $2.4 billion.42

  The crime rate kept going down, and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s army foiled sixteen terrorist attempts on the city.43 At the same time, incarceration rates were down by more than about a third.44 He organized other mayors to fight gun violence and illegal guns, and he challenged the powerful National Rifle Association at a time when the very idea of being anti-NRA terrified most politicians into silence.

  Bloomberg created the city’s 311 telephone service, New Yorkers’ much-needed way to call and complain to a real human being. Then his team took on a more politically hazardous task—consolidating the way the city responded to emergency 911 calls. Before he left, police, fire, and emergency management services were all working in the same place and mostly starting to use the same systems.

  He focused on improving the public’s health—a ban on smoking indoors (and later in parks), no more trans fats in restaurants, and the elimination of the dirtiest heating oils fouling the city’s air. His health officials gave restaurants letter grades beginning in 2010, and cases of salmonella went down 14 percent.45 He required comprehensive sex education in schools, gave out free condoms, and tried to warn Orthodox parents about a dangerous and ancient circumcision ritual. Overall, he took a great deal of heat as “nanny mayor” and “Grandma Mike,” but he also claimed credit for increasing the life expectancy of New Yorkers by three extra years.

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p; Mayoral control of city schools allowed Bloomberg to abolish layers of turgid bureaucracy, closing 164 failing schools and opening more than 650 new smaller schools including new pubic charter schools.46, 47 He increased teachers’ base salaries by more than 40 percent and almost doubled the amount of city funding for schools during his years in office.48 His team gave principals more control of schools. He increased graduation rates and cut dropout rates.

  He opened streets for bikes, pedestrians, and even weary tourists who could often find a seat on the twenty acres49 of new open plazas like the ones along the busiest sections of Broadway. Under his watch, his team created more than four hundred miles of bike lanes, and Citi Bike began offering short-term rentals. He made it possible for the city to add an extension on the number 7 subway line and create a new station, in a public-private deal that became the road map for big projects in other cities. He opened the way for more taxis and the apps like Uber and Lyft.

  His administration added more than eight hundred acres of parkland, almost half of it along the waterfront. He gained control of a neglected Governors Island from the federal and state governments. Then he hired Leslie Koch to repair and transform the 172-acre island into an urban oasis and the dramatic 40-acre park off Manhattan’s southern tip. Brooklyn Bridge Park, long a dream caught in government inertia and community squabbles, finally morphed from a seedy row of wharfs and warehouses into an elaborate park and play space. The High Line railroad, set for destruction in 2002, was turned into a gracious walkway through Manhattan that lured more development and tourists every year after Bloomberg left office.50 And the High Bridge, the oldest in the city, was restored as a walkway across the Harlem River between the Bronx and Upper Manhattan.