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Albany Reform: Start By Changing the Rules


When the State Legislature convenes for a new session this month, it is likely to face the task of determining how much money will be spent on public schools across the state, how to reform the state’s lobbying laws, whether to regulate more closely the plethora of public authorities, and many other legislative issues of concern to New Yorkers.

But in order to tackle these issues properly, lawmakers in Albany will also have to consider changing the way they do business to make the legislative process more effective, more transparent, and more democratic. As New Yorkers, it is our task to ensure that our representatives make a New Year’s resolution to enact meaningful improvements in the legislative rules.

Specifically, each chamber - the Senate and the Assembly - will vote separately to adopt new rules that govern issues such as how committees function or how legislators vote.

Good government groups have long been interested in these issues. But until recently the Brennan Center, and other groups like us, have focused primarily on reforms that were less attainable than rules reforms: constitutional changes, redistricting, and campaign financing, to name a few.

While critically important, those reforms require legislation to be passed (and, in the case of constitutional changes, repeated legislative action). By contrast, rules changes require less sweeping action. In the immediate future, therefore, rules reform is our best hope for substantive changes in the legislative process.

Rules reform has long been seen as a "good government" issue only of interest to those few advocates concerned with questions of process, rather than with bread-and-butter issues like education or jobs. But, as the last few months have demonstrated, voters do in fact care about how and whether their government works.

EVALUATION OF ALBANY: WHICH AREAS NEED REFORM?

The Brennan Center chose to focus on the legislative process in Albany as the result of a rare pattern we noticed in our own work. In discussions with people and organizations across New York State - regardless of which area they were working in or what their ideological bent was - virtually everyone agreed that the current legislative process was standing in the way of real progress in pursuing their own policy agendas whatever they might be.

So we set out on an 18-month research project to understand precisely what, if anything, was "dysfunctional" about New York’s legislative process and to develop recommendations for reform. We interviewed sitting members of the legislature and scores of staffers; we reviewed the transcripts of floor debates, the committee reports, and the committee votes; and we investigated the history of the legislative process over the last century. We also looked at the rules in New York and in every state across the nation, in each chamber, and interviewed people in each state about certain aspects of each state’s legislative process. The result was a report entitled "The New York State Legislative Process: An Evaluation and Blueprint for Reform." That report identified rules changes that together would make the New York State Legislature more representative, more deliberative, more accessible and accountable to the public, and more efficient.

Specifically, our research allowed us to identify at least four major areas in need of reform:

Committees

In most legislatures, of course, committees are where the action is. It is in committees where momentum develops for a bill, and this momentum - and not just the will of the powers that be - decide whether a piece of legislation will make it to the floor: Has enough momentum developed through public hearings, though press attention for a bill etc., for it to go to the floor? Or is the issue not ripe yet?

These sorts of questions do not often arise in New York, because committees rarely perform that function. There is a remarkable lack of sustained discussion on bills in committee in New York’s State Legislature, particularly in the Senate. True, there are public hearings on major issues - though even these are more rare than they should be. But on specific bills there are virtually never hearings - they were held for only 0.5 percent of major bills passed by the Assembly and 0.7 percent of those passed by the Senate from 1997 through 2001. There is little focus on parsing language and on determining from testimony and research as a committee what is the best solution to a problem.

Committees in New York do not produce reports on each piece of legislation. This not only hinders consideration of a bill when and if it reaches the floor; it also robs state courts of invaluable legislative history to interpret laws that are passed.

In the Senate, committee members can (and do) cast their votes on bills by proxy given to the committee chair, i.e., they can indicate how they wish to vote, but are often not even in the room to debate the bill or cast their vote.

In short, committees do not provide the incubation for a bill, opportunities for public and member input into a bill, or the public momentum for a bill that they should.

The sheer number of committee assignments may explain part of this failure: in New York, the number of committees to which each member is assigned dwarfs those of any other state. The average in the Senate is eight committees per member; in the Assembly it is three to four per member. There is simply no way for legislators to perform the work they should if they are required to serve on so many committees.

Getting a Bill Out of Committee to the Floor

Even when a bill has the support of a majority of legislators within a chamber, New York’s legislature makes it more difficult than any other legislature in the country to discharge a bill from a committee for the full chamber to consider. Discharge motions are intended to allow supporters of a bill to obtain consideration by the full chamber despite the opposition or inaction of the committee to which the bill was referred or the chair of that committee. New York’s legislature places more restrictions than any other state legislature on motions to discharge a bill from a committee to the floor for a vote.

In addition, New York allows the majority leader and speaker, directly or indirectly, complete control over the legislative calendars to determine whether and when a bill that has been reported out of a committee will be considered by the full Senate or Assembly. The New York Senate and Assembly are two of only three chambers nationwide (out of 99) in which the leader of the chamber determines the order of bills placed on the second reading and special orders calendars; they are also two of only five chambers in which the leader determines the order of bills placed on the third reading calendar.

What are the results of this control? From 1997 through 2001, the Senate voted on 7,109 bills and, from 1997 through 1999, the Assembly voted on 4,365 bills. Not a single bill that reached the floor for a vote was rejected in either chamber. When a bill is brought up for a vote, there is no suspense. Many bills that should be debated and considered do not make it anywhere near the floor.

Voting

In both chambers of the state legislature a member’s vote is automatically counted as a "yes" vote the minute he or she checks in that morning. Members do not have to be in their seats to vote in the affirmative on any bill.

This may not be as great a substantive problem as some of the others mentioned here. But it profoundly undermines the public’s confidence in the process.

So-called absentee voting is rare across the country; it offends a citizen’s sense of what a legislator should be doing. People can differ as to its real substantive import, but it certainly offends many citizens. It should be addressed for that reason alone.

We also think it appropriate to focus on the "message of necessity." This device allows the legislative leaders to circumvent the constitutionally required three-day waiting period before a bill can be voted on. The constitutional intent was to use this tool only in cases of true emergency for swift action. But we found that over a quarter of major pieces of legislation are passed with messages of necessity on average each year. If you cannot wait three days to pass a bill, there should be a compelling justification for it. Besides the obvious need for substantive review by members, a bill needs to be checked for typographical errors that can make a big difference once a bill becomes law. Messages of necessity should be reserved for emergencies.

Conference Committees

Conference committees are widely used in the U.S. Congress and in other state legislatures to reconcile differences between the bills passed by the two houses of a legislature to produce a single law that can be passed by both. In New York, however, conference committees have been used only rarely since the first decades of the 20th century. Instead, to pass a bill into law, one chamber must move to substitute the other chamber’s version of the bill for its own, with the leaders of the two chambers working out any differences directly.

As a result, New York does not have any established mechanism to prevent legislative gridlock if the speaker and majority leader cannot resolve their differences directly in closed-door negotiations. The result, in too many cases, is a failure to pass even legislation that has garnered overwhelming support among legislators and the public. In addition, New York does not obtain the benefits of a conference committee’s review and airing for public scrutiny of the final version of a bill before it is voted into law.

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR CHANGE

The dysfunction in Albany has caused New Yorkers from all over the state, from all lines of work, and from different ideological perspectives, to come together in agreement. It is very rare to reach such a consensus on a problem, and it has allowed people across the state to reach a growing consensus on the solution.

We have tried to form a broad-based coalition of groups, spanning from business groups to environmentalists, and including all the other groups and communities that focus on work in Albany. Many do not necessarily have the resources to focus on process issues, but all are very much affected by them. Given the opportunity, they have agreed to mobilize to advocate for rules reform.

When groups from such different perspectives agree on an issue in such great detail, it makes for a momentous opportunity in New York’s history to reform our government. We have to take advantage of this momentum to give New Yorkers the legislature they deserve.

Jeremy Creelan is the deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

What Can Any Mayor Really Do?


At a recent event in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Mayor Michael Bloomberg offered a list of reasons why New Yorkers should give him another four years in office. He talked about education reform, the rebounding economy, and his commitment to build 65,000 new apartments - but he focused most on the drop in crime, which is at a record low.

"As long as I am mayor," Bloomberg said, "we will keep crime down in the city."

There is no guarantee that Bloomberg will be re-elected. There is a crowded field of challengers, and the political landscape is different from 2001. (See "Will Bloomberg Be Re-Elected?" by Joseph Mercurio) But even if he is, larger questions loom: How much can the mayor (how much can any mayor) claim credit for improvements in the city? How much can a mayor really do for New York?

The mayor would like to take credit for improvements in the schools. Even if everybody agreed that the schools have gotten better -- and not everybody does -- the public school system relies on a variety of variables largely outside of mayoral control: things like the federal No Child Left Behind program, funding from Albany, state standardized testing programs, and the number of immigrant students trying to learn English.

On the economy, the mayor has virtually no control over job gains, unemployment rates, or Wall Street profits, and little influence over whether a company chooses to do business in New York.

On housing, the mayor's commitment to build 65,000 additional apartments over five years will not eliminate the city's housing shortage.

And even on crime, many experts point out that the decrease is nationwide, and single out the decline in the use of crack cocaine, more than the number of police officers or new techniques, as the major factor behind the falling murder statistics.

As the 2005 campaign for mayor gets underway in New York, candidates will make extraordinary promises. But in truth, the next mayor -- as previous mayors -- will have a limited amount of control over many of the most critical issues facing the city.

For example, mayor cannot:
- Raise taxes (except the property tax) without permission from the state
- Set the minimum wage
- Determine the amount of funding schools get from the state
- Extend rent control
- Determine how much to spend on Medicaid
- Or set mass transit fares or build new subway lines.

When David Dinkins was once asked if a mayor could make a difference in the city, he offered a philosophical answer.

"If nothing else, I can change the climate, the atmosphere," he said. "If a mayor can’t make a difference, who can?"

THE ISSUES FACING THE CITY – AND WHAT THE MAYOR CAN DO ABOUT THEM

 

EDUCATION
When Mayor Bloomberg took office in 2002, he argued that if given the power he could improve the city’s schools.

And within seven months, Bloomberg had succeeded in doing what his three predecessors tried and failed to do: He convinced the governor and State Legislature to give him control of the school system, and he abolished the Board of Education.

Then in a 2003 address, Bloomberg outlined three goals of his education reform:
- Cutting bureaucracy to put funds in classrooms
- Ensuring that all students acquire skills in writing and math
- Giving parents the tools to be active partners in their children’s education.

So far, Mayor Bloomberg has received mixed reviews .

Some complain that the old bureaucracy has just been replaced with a new one. Some test scores have risen, but city students still lag behind the statewide averages and more than half of eighth graders failed to pass recent standardized math test. And many parents feel left out of the process without community school boards.

"On the one hand, the Board of Education was a widely loathed institution," said John Mollenkopf, professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. "On the other, one hears as many stories that reforms have created chaos as stories of success or even measurable progress."

Whoever becomes the next mayor must convince the governor and the State Legislature that the system is working. The current governance system will come up for a vote again in 2009.

Another major issue facing the city’s schools is the result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit.

In November, a court-appointed panel recommended that city schools should receive an additional $5.6 billion a year phased in over the next four years. Next year, the panel recommended an increase of $1.4 billion, but did not say how much should come from the state and how much should come from the city. If the city’s funding equals nearly a quarter of the money, it will have to pay an additional $330 million next year and a total of $1.4 billion by 2009.

The next mayor will have to lobby for education funding in Albany, the largest source of money for schools and figure out how to pay the city's share.

ECONOMY AND JOBS
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is often credited with one of the city’s greatest economic transformations. And cutting taxes, Giuliani said, was key.

Giuliani claimed he created 180,000 jobs and stimulated tourism by eliminating the Commercial Rent Tax in most areas of the city, reducing the Hotel Occupancy Tax, and eliminating the Unincorporated Business Tax.

But many believe the national economic expansion fueled the city’s expansion.

"There is almost no Giuliani policy that has anything to do with the economic boom," Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett wrote in an essay for Gotham Gazette. "Wall Street drove the boom."

After September 11, 2001 the city went into a recession and lost thousands of jobs. Now three years later, the city is beginning to recover. The city is expected to gain 23,000 jobs this year and analysts are projecting more job growth in the years to come.

Still, the city will not fully recover all of the jobs lost in the recession until 2008, according to one report.

And there are reasons for concern as the high cost of real estate and taxes, outsourcing and security concerns make it more difficult to attract and keep jobs in the city.

Verizon, for example, recently announced it will be leaving Manhattan for New Jersey and taking 500 jobs with it.

THE BUDGET
In the late 1960’s under Mayor John Lindsay, the city faced difficult times. Unions went out on strike, crime increased, poverty devastated many neighborhoods, an economic recession set in, and many people left the city.

Tax revenues declined and city expenses increased. Lindsay, without the power to raise taxes himself, resorted to borrowing (as had his predecessor Robert Wagner). By 1975 the city was nearly bankrupt.

To resolve the crisis, the state created the Emergency Financial Control Board to monitor municipal spending and tell the city how to manage its money. Lindsay’s successor, Mayor Abe Beame was forced to make massive cuts in the city's capital budget and to lay off 65,000 city workers.

It was not until 1981 that the city’s budget was balanced and even today, the city pays $500 million a year in interest on the money borrowed in the 1970's.

In the last three years, operating under a set of rules that the state imposed after Lindsay, Mayor Bloomberg has balanced New York City budgets by cutting expenses and raising taxes, but also by taking on additional debt. Even though the city’s economy has improved, the city still faces difficult budget problems in the future. Next year, the city will have another deficit of $2 billion followed by a $3 billion deficit the year after.

Still, all of the debate between the mayor and City Council over issues such as fire house closings, library hours, city university scholarships, and youth job programs only affects about $750 million out of the city's $47 billion annual budget.

In contrast, budget items like debt payments, labor pensions, and funding for Medicaid – all of which the city cannot control - cost about $17 billion a year.

Future budgets will also be harder to close with less tax revenue.

This year, the mayor and the City Council voted to give $400 rebates to homeowners. Two other current taxes - the personal income tax surcharge and the sales tax increase - are set to expire in 2005.

Not only must the mayor and the City Council pass a balanced budget, they must lobby in Albany and Washington D.C. for aid for housing, transportation, and schools. And the power to raise all taxes in New York City, with the exception of the property taxes, resides in Albany, not City Hall.

And candidates are reluctant to make radical changes to the way things have been done in the past.

"Addressing the city’s fiscal problems is hard," said Marcia Van Wagner of the Citizens Budget Commission. "And most people don’t run on things that are hard."

LABOR
New York City teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other municipal employees are currently working without a contract. Contracts with DC 37, which represents about 125,000 municipal unions, expire next summer.

Mayor Bloomberg has said there is no money for raises unless unions make concessions to work longer hours and implement other ways to save money; the unions argue that they are already paid less than workers in the suburbs and are losing their best employees.

Still the cost of labor is largely out of control of the current mayor.

Despite cuts in recent years, the city's overall labor costs have risen 20 percent. Part of the reason is that New York's overtime, benefit and pension packages are more expensive than elsewhere in the country and the costs continue to rise.

Pension costs are the fastest rising share of the budget. According to the mayor's office, pension and fringe benefit costs rise five percent each year; by the year 2008, the city will pay $10 billion a year in pensions or about 20 percent of the annual budget. In addition to the city's active workforce, New York also supports 180,000 people who have already retired.

While the mayor negotiates issues like pay and work hours with municipal workers, the terms of pensions are decided in Albany.

HOUSING
In 1986, Mayor Ed Koch promised to build 100,000 new homes. It was the largest commitment to city housing since Mayor Fiorella La Guardia established the city’s public housing program.

Housing remains one of the most critical issues facing the city.

A recent report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition estimated that the fair market rent for a two bedroom apartment is $945 a month. In order to afford such an apartment, a full-time worker must make at least $18.18 an hour.

Although rents in New York City's controlled and stabilized apartments are set by a city body, the Rent Guidelines Board, the state determines whether rent control should exist at all. Federal subsidies for housing are also shrinking and there is a long waiting list for public housing and Section 8 vouchers.

Mayor Bloomberg has outlined an ambitious proposal to build 65,000 new homes over five years. In order to afford such an ambition plan, Bloomberg is also helping allowing developers to create market rate housing, which is unaffordable to many New Yorkers.

In lower Manhattan, for example, of the 6,000 of the apartments that have been authorized or financed, only about one percent are affordable.

HEALTH CARE
There are two major government health care programs: Medicare and Medicaid.

Medicare affects people over 65 years old regardless of income and is funded by the federal government. Medicaid offers medical coverage for low-income people and is funded by federal, state, and local governments.

Unlike most states, New York requires local governments to pay a major portion of the Medicaid bill. New York City's costs have risen dramatically in recent years. Over the next two years, the city’s share of Medicaid spending will grow from $4.7 billion in 2005 to just over $5.0 billion in 2008.

The mayor does not have the power to change the Medicaid funding formula and must lobby lawmakers in Albany in order to ease the growing financial burden it puts on local governments.

WEST SIDE DEVELOPMENT
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has outlined an ambitious plan for redeveloping the 360-acre area in Manhattan west of Eighth Avenue from 30th to 42nd Streets, which he calls the Hudson Yards plan.

The $2.8 billion development proposal would nearly double the size of the Jacob Javits Convention Center and include a 75,000-seat stadium for the New York Jets. Officials says the expanded convention center and new stadium as well as office buildings and residential high-rises would help create more than 15,000 jobs for the city and provide more than 500,000 days of additional hotel stays per year.

The big question is how the city will pay for it.

The stadium would be financed with $600 million from the city and state, which would pay for the retractable roof and the platform over the rail yards. The Javits Center expansion would be financed by $600 million from the city and the state, and $500 million from a $1.50-per-night hotel tax. The extension of the number 7-subway line from Times Square to the far West Side would cost about $2 billion, which would come from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

But some predict the stadium will cost the city more than just $300 million, because of debt, additional tax breaks on construction bonds and property taxes, and cost overruns.

City Comptroller Bill Thompson called it an "extremely risky" strategy that could jeopardize the city finances.

The state legislature has already approved the expansion of the Javits Center and will vote on the stadium proposal in early 2005. Even if the stadium is approved, there will still be many unresolved issues. Several lawsuits have already been filed to stop the plan.

Others warn the Jets stadium could also set a dangerous precedent. The Yankees and the Mets also want new stadiums and will likely want taxpayers to help pay for them.

Many believe the Yankees got the best of Mayor Ed Koch, who negotiated their current deal on Yankee Stadium. The city owns the building, but the Yankees pay a relatively small amount in rent. David Dinkins, in contrast, is credited with making a more lucrative deal for the city on the U.S. Tennis Center in Flushing.

TRANSPORTATION
In December, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted to raise fares on weekly and monthly Metrocards and commuter rails, increase tolls on bridges and tunnels, and close 164 token booths. The fare hike came just 19 months after the base fare for a subway ride increased from $1.50 to $2.00.

Mayor Bloomberg, who opposed the fare hike, instructed his appointees to the MTA board to vote against it. But it did not affect the outcome of the decision.

Such fare increases and service cuts are needed, the MTA maintains, because the authority has a millions of dollars in deficits; it estimates a $586 million deficit in 2006, rising to $988 million in 2008.

In addition, the MTA’s is unclear how it will pay for $17 billion of the projects outlined in its five-year capital plan to build new projects like the Second Avenue subway, a rail link from lower Manhattan to JFK airport, an extension of the number 7 subway line to the west side of Manhattan.

The state legislature determines how much taxpayer money the MTA will get each year.

Peter Kalikow, the head of the MTA, said recently he would abandon transit expansion projects such as the Second Avenue subway, if the authority does not get funding from the state. Kalikow warned that without new tax revenues the subways could enter a period of decline similar to that of the late 1970s.

While riders are being asked to pay more, the city and the state government want to chip in less for mass transit. Both Mayor Bloomberg and George Pataki have cut funding in recent years.

It has been more than 60 years since any new subway line has opened in the city. But in 2005, mayoral candidates will once again promise that, if elected, they can get it done.

 

 

 

 

Will Bloomberg Be Re-Elected?


"Tonight is not about Republicans or Democrats. It's about New Yorkers," Michael Bloomberg told cheering supporters chanting, “USA, USA” on election night of 2001. The photograph on the front page of The New York Times was the city’s new mayor standing beside the new “Mayor of the World” Rudy Giuliani. No one expected Bloomberg to win that election. Six months earlier, in May 2001, Fernando Ferrer had been ahead of Bloomberg by two to one and Mark Green had been beating Bloomberg by three to one.

The terrorist attack on the city changed everything. Giuliani, whose polling numbers were in the toilet before he dropped out of the US Senate race, was now enjoying his highest approval ratings -- 79 percent in the Quinnipiac poll just after the attack. The city’s voters wanted to pull together, not separate along partisan lines. An innocuous businessman who was not caught up in a partisan battle or a tribal political fight typical of the Democrats, seemed like the person to pull us together while the city rebuilt. And he was also supported by Giuliani, who left the impression that Bloomberg would carry on his good works and be able to consult with the master who won his last race in a landslide. Bloomberg promised to carry on what Giuliani started and to expand into areas Giuliani had more or less ignored – he would rebuild the city, keep crime and taxes down, build affordable housing and improve the public schools.

Ferrer that year came from behind, raising the money needed to close the polling gap. He went on to win the primary, but Green rebounded to win a close runoff. Hispanic voters were upset at this loss by their favorite son, and at the tactics used to defeat him. There were also virtually no other contested elections citywide or in minority neighborhoods. All this contributed to a lower than normal Democratic turnout -- about 400,000 votes shy of the turnout in Giuliani’s first two races. Still, the new mayor won with less than fifty thousand votes, less than the margin he received on the Independence Party line, even though he spent almost 75 million dollars of his own money on the campaign.

As we begin the 2005 election, conditions could not be more different. If crime has stayed low, and worries over terrorism have abated, Bloomberg

  • raised taxes, some say more than necessary when citizens needed money in hard times;
  • gained control of public schools, but has shown little progress in education;
  • held press conferences announcing housing, but built virtually no affordable housing;
  • and embarked on grand schemes to build things like the West Side stadium with an attitude that says “I know what’s good for the city; the public be damned.”

Demographics

To win reelection, Bloomberg will have to cover up the fact that he is a Republican who has donated heavily to Republican causes. (He has already announced that he will not be attending George W. Bush’s second inauguration.) Even Bloomberg’s support from Giuliani is tainted not only by the Bernard Kerik fiasco, but also because he was a major supporter of the Bush campaign. In the 2005 election, being a Republican will be noticed and it will be a drag on Bloomberg’s ability to win votes. More than most places, New York City elections start with demographics. The city is overwhelmingly Democratic: There are nearly three million registered Democrats, compared to fewer than 600,000 Republicans. Turnout is heavily female (even when there is no woman in the race), and minority voters make up half the electorate.

 

Also, over the past decade the non-Hispanic white population had decreased by more than ten percent, while the black population has gone up ten percent and Hispanics have gone up 20 percent. When Dinkins first ran for mayor in 1989, the general election was 61 percent white and 28 percent Catholic; in the 2001 election, the white vote was down to 52 percent and the Catholic vote was down to 20 percent. Over the last four elections, the exit polls also showed that self-described conservative voters declined by almost ten percent in each election. The city has also enrolled 13 times as many new Democrats as it enrolled new Republicans. (In the past, enrollment was only five to one). Add to that the increased partisanship in the city following the Bush-Kerry election, and Bloomberg is at a disadvantage.

Money

Bloomberg has unlimited money, which helped him win his first election. The political campaign trails are littered with the corpses of rich candidates who did not win despite spending vast sums of money. In reelections, money is actually less of a factor since the incumbent is already a known quantity, with a record of both accomplishments and failures. There is a point where additional money does not get you any additional advantage in audience or message. Given how close the last race was, it is hard to argue Bloomberg spent too much money, but his last $5 million was not as effective as his first $5 million. The Democrats will have a massive enrollment, as well as gender and ethnic advantages, which mean they need far less money to get the same communications job accomplished. The Democrat who emerges from the primary will have enough money to make a winning case.

 

Issues and Experience

After demographics and money, issues and experience create the margin of victory. The Democrats are all current or former elected officials, three of them – former Bronx borough president Fernando Ferrer, current Manhattan borough president C. Virginia Fields and City Council Speaker A. Gifford Miller -- with substantial city government experience. The issues will range from the West Side stadium and its financing to how little Bloomberg has done to improve public education and get state Republicans to respond to city needs. Though the city has been safe since 9/11 and crime continues to drop, there is a sense that a Democrat would have the same success, while fighting for more Homeland Security money from Bush Republicans. Though Bloomberg presses for economic development, he seems to lack concern for jobs and affordable housing for average working families.

 

Public polls have shown him scoring poorly on diverse issues like taxes, budget priorities, public schools, mass transportation, unemployment and poverty. Voters consistently say that he works hard and fights for the city, but that he does not care about people like them. They approve of him as a person a little more than before, but significant majorities still disapprove of him and more importantly think it is time for a new mayor to take office.

IF NOT HE, WHO?

For any of the Democrats to challenge the mayor they first have to get out of the Democratic primary and the runoff. (If a candidate does not receive 40 percent in the primary the top two contenders duke it out in a runoff election.) Fundraising in a media market as expensive as New York City is a daunting task, though if each Democrat is able to raise the maximum allowed, they enter a level playing field, thanks to the city matching funds program and the limit on spending.

 

In the last election, conventional wisdom said Ferrer would not be able to raise all the money allowed. Not only did he accomplish this task, he was quick enough on his feet to raise it again after 9/11 to be competitive in the runoff. One would expect that all the Democrats will raise the money this year, though conventional wisdom will question the fundraising ability of Fields, because she is a woman candidate and because she entered the race late; her January fundraising and cash-on-hand figures will probably be the weakest. But I believe (and not because she has hired me as a consultant) that conventional wisdom will turn out to be wrong.

Ferrer needs to keep at least some of the black voters he had in the last election, and again get the unusually high favorite-son vote out in the Hispanic community. He will also have to improve his position with the Catholic and Jewish voters he failed to get last time, which might be a challenge since there are two non-Hispanic white candidates in the race. Fields will have to increase turnout among black voters and women in general. She will need to get a disproportionate share of the black votes, and also enjoy a favorable gender gap against her male colleagues.

With Congressman Anthony Weiner in the race, Speaker Miller will have even more trouble getting into the runoff than Speaker Vallone did in the last race, since Fields comes from the same borough as Miller, Manhattan, and Miller does not have Vallone’s access to Italians or Catholic voters. Weiner for his part needs to be the more conservative outer borough Jewish candidate -- conservative in the Koch-for-the-death-penalty sense (Outside the city, Weiner would be considered a left-wing Democrat). Weiner’s problem, shared by Miller, is the decline in the non-Hispanic white population since Koch ran for office.

Bloomberg can win reelection, but he is more vulnerable than past incumbents. Current polling shows two Democrats, Ferrer and Fields, tied or ahead of him at the start of the year, which was never the case at any time during the last mayor’s reelection campaign. A spirited Democratic primary will result in a unified Democratic Party bent on change and an electorate willing to give them the win.

Joseph Mercurio, a political consultant for more than 30 years, is acting director of New York University’s M.A. program in Political Campaign Management. His clients include C. Virginia Fields.



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