Conventional Wisdom
November 5th, 2009
After predicting for months that Mayor Michael Bloomberg was invincible and would win by a double-digit margin, the pundits now offer their explanation for why the mayor did so much worse on Tuesday than they had anticipated. A consensus seems to have emerged: People were furious about term limits, the angry voters went to the polls in disproportionate numbers, and the mayor’s supporter were complacent.
“There are only two plausible possibilities for the depressed Bloomberg turnout: over-confidence or protest,” Joyce Purnick wrote on Huffington Post. “And it was probably both. With most polls predicting he would win by double digits, some of the mayor’s supporters must have assumed he did not need their votes. Others clearly were turned off by his over-the-top spending, especially in a bad economy, and the mayor’s self-interested push to change the term limits law.”
Undoubtedly that played a substantial role, as did a campaign that many saw as mean-spirited (very much politics as usual). But as an issue-oriented publication (and one that has examined the Bloomberg Record in a number of key areas), can we offer another explanation for at least part of the non-Bloomberg vote? Some New Yorkers may not like what the mayor has done on the issues. The commentators generally have either not addressed that or, if they have, say people like what Mayor Mike has done. The Times in its post mortem, the Observer’s Azi Paybarah pointed out, did not even mention taxes or the economy.
City council and parts of the press offer a kind of hallelujah choir for the mayor. But that does not mean all New Yorkers are singing.
Many are, of course. But one does not have to go very far in this city, for example, to find people angry at development deals: Atlantic Yards, Yankee Stadium, the stalled luxury apartment buildings that dot the city and for now feel very much like blight. Hearings on mayoral control of public schools earlier this year highlighted that, while many New Yorkers applaud what Bloomberg has done on education, a large number of others oppose the testing, the baffling system of applying to junior and senior high schools, and the attitude of the bureaucracy that runs the school system. And as the president of the Correction Officer’s Union, Norman Seabrook, put it in an election night outburst, “16,000 families sleeping in shelters, there’s something wrong.”
Sure Bill Thompson’s “affordability gap” was a campaign line and many people benefited from the city’s boom, but Bloomberg’s record of trying to make New York a “luxury brand” undoubtedly made life tougher for some New Yorkers and forced some to leave. New York’s magazine Chris Smith implied this might be an issue, observing, “The rank and file, particularly those making less than $200,000 a year — and those among the 10 percent unemployed — went strongly for Thompson, or at least against Bloomberg.”
New York Times exit poll results offer evidence that issues may have influenced voters on both sides. New Yorkers calling themselves liberal went 59 percent to 39 percent for Thompson, while conservatives split even more lopsidedly for Bloomberg: 75 percent for the mayor versus 22 percent for Thompson.
The issues people cited as “most important” may have swayed their vote, according to the Times poll. So, for example, voters who cared most about crime, went decisively for Bloomberg, while those who said the issue of housing loomed largest cast ballots for Thompson. This might be expected given that crime decreased dramatically under Bloomberg’s tenure, while the housing market became even tighter and more expensive.
Many voters probably did not know what Thompson would have done if elected. But they did know what Bloomberg had done. For some that presented the best reason to give the mayor four more years. But for others, the Bloomberg record — and not just on term limits and campaign spending — offered reason to vote for the other guy.
By Gail Robinson on November 5, 2009, 2:57 pmIn category: Crime & Safety, Economy, Education, Electoral Politics, Housing | No Comments »

