New York, NY. Yesterday, Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, won a vote allowing him to run for an unprecedented 3rd term. He claims that the city needs someone of his expertise and business acumen during the economic downturn, and he is to be saluted for volunteering his steady hand.
It is, however, looking like political suicide.
No one predicts that the economy is going to recover any time soon, and this means that throughout the next mayoral term New York is going to be facing severe deficits. Deficits mean cuts in services, there is no way around it. Every public service, from sanitation to education to pubic safety, is going to be hurting for money and pointing the finger at the next guy saying, ‘We can’t take any more cuts, cut from them.’
This will breed political enemies. It doesn’t matter how clever an administrator Bloomberg is, because when there is no money, someone is going to sieze upon the new policies and use them for political fodder. Look for this to begin in the upcoming election (if it hasn’t started already).
What about all of Bloomberg’s political allies? He has built himself powerful allies over the last few years, but he has now put them under strain. No one was prepared to support a change in the laws of the city – it is an unprecedented move – and it has put his supporters out of their element. So some of his political capital has already been used up, and the election is still in the future.
What about Bloomberg’s enemies? It would look like having him as mayor again would be their worst case scenario. However, if these people are thinking along the lines I am, they are foaming at the mouth. First Bloomberg will have to run for office, which is a nasty process. Then, if he loses, great. If he wins, even better. As soon as something goes wrong over the course of the administration, as something inevitably will, all of his enemies will have the opportunity to attack. They will claim he brought it on himself, which is something they would not be able to say to a fresh face. If they succeed in making him a lame duck, then they will have the power, not the mayor.
So what’s Mike to do? Perhaps he is planning on getting tapped for a position in the next federal administration before he has to fight it out with his local enemies. If so, why bother putting himself and everyone else through the stress of an election campaign? Granted it would take some patience to be out of work (like the rest of us), but I’m sure he could find something to occupy himself with in the intervening months.
However, I suspect that it is too risky to count on a federal appointment. So instead, Mike’s hedging his bets by trying to secure his old job. But why? He says that he is the best qualified to lead the city during these times. This very well may be the case and I am not going to judge his motives; in fact his motives are irrelevant to my point here.
The problem is that he has the money and the power to set up an independent economic council to advise the next administration. He would humbly volunteer to chair it, of course, and this council would provide non-binding, public advice on the best course of action. If the new administration didn’t take the advice, they would have a lot of explaining to do, besides gaining the ill-will of Bloomberg’s supporters.
Such a council would also look real good if he is angling for a federal position in a similar capacity.
So he could accomplish what he says he wants to do, without actually being Mayor. Unfortunately, by putting so much time and effort into getting this historic vote passed, he has locked himself into his current course of action. It really appears that he’s committed a major political error because things can only go downhill from here.