Battle of the Sunlamp Tans, or the 2001 New York Municipal Elections

Who could vote for a Bostonian to run New York. And the best part of elections in NYC is to see what sort of slime oozes from the wall to endorse what candidate, an honor which Mike dubiously "won" when Ed Koch popped up in front of the cameras.

By the way, what are Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee doing on the Bloomberg endorsement list? Is this a bizarre tactic to exact revenge after the Ferrar debacle.

And what kind of prick would vote against the amendment to alter the language in the state constitution to be non-sexist? With the continuing rise of the crackpot judges who falsely call themselves "strict constructionists," leaving any sign of ambiguity in foundational documents is inviting reactionary lunatics to create a theocracy.

I voted for Mark Green. If Bloomberg actually wins I will be fucking SHOCKED and VERY disappointed, because the number one issue on my agenda is getting the firecrackers back into Chinese New Year! 2nd - cabaret licenses made obsolete or as easy to get as a liquor license. 3rd - small stuff like spending for mental health and urban housing.

I have really high hopes for Green. He impresses me.

He has literally been fighting fo the people of New York for years, against the policies of the Guiliani administration. Don't let G's grace under pressure fool you - he was one of the meanest men ever to hold the office.

It seems very strange that the right to dance would need to be high on my issues list, but there's Giuliani New York in a nutshell (that and racist cops who are now, it would seem, "heroes" gunning down black people who aren't doing anything wrong). I don't expect to recover my right to drink beer on the sidewalk/subway/stoop as long as I stay in NYC, though.

But moreover, my union bargains on the pattern of the District Council 37, whose corrupt former president stuffed the ballot box to allow an obscenely poor contract from Giuliani to pass, damning nearly every union member in the tri-state area to miniscule wage increases while the late 90s boom made living in NYC incredibly expensive (of course, civil service rules in New York necessitate that city employees, excepting cops and firefighters, live in NYC). Then, without having the DC37 in his pocket, Giuliani offered insulting wage increases to unions (e.g., teachers asked for a 15% wage increase, and the counteroffer was a ZERO PERCENT INCREASE and MORE HOURS) and threw almost every labor contract negotiation into an impasse. It's not as well-publicized an issue as Giuliani's more spectacular atrocities, but were it not for the two-term limit, we would be facing the possibility of massive strikes.

Bloomberg would bring more of the same, maybe worse. Green will have pressure to hold the line thanks to looming budget problems, but a Bloomberg administration would bring labor unrest not seen in NYC for decades.

Which makes me think I'd love, or maybe hate, to see a Gini index for income inequality over the last, say, forty years in New York. I bet it got really ugly in the Giuliani era.

Ummmmmm (!!!!!!!!!) FUCK I am not happy about this. In a city of 8 million people, the zillionaire w/no experience in government won with 750,000 total votes. Over NY's "public advocate", the #2 position in city government. Who's a Democrat in a region where Democrats outnumber Republicans 4 to 1. Whose positions match up with the issues that voters say they care about. What is going on here??? Is it really as simple to "buy" an election as all that?

"Whose positions match up with the issues that voters say they care about" = Green's positions I mean, on local spending, tax policy, welfare, etc.

Has anyone seen that Bloomie announced he'd forgo the $14M in city tax breaks for his Bloomberg Corp, to avoid any "conflict of interest"? C'mon, if the tax break was above- board then, why isn't it now??

It's gonna be a mess. Green's scorched earth approach to the primary campaign set him up for the yawns he got from a good part of the usual party activists, and ethnic politics mess that regularly consumes the Democrats is raging again, with fingers being pointed every which way. That vaunted advantage in party registration makes a lot of folks really complacent and smug, demanding a large share of the stakes in exchange for making an effort to get out the vote. Of course, pricks like Koch, alleged Democrats who exacerbate the situation by playing on race (ethnic/racial minority Democrats tend to be described as back-biting and woefully disorganized), make the situation even worse.

It becomes much easier and more politically useful for a politician who is thought to "control" a bloc of votes to switch parties to endorse a Giuliani or a Bloomberg than it is to stick with a smug Democratic establishment. It's this sort of thing that drove me to join the Green Party.

Ben you are depresingly OTM re cynical race maneuvering. The Democrats are such fuck-ups. I think it's because none of them will actually, when push comes to shove, stand up for what they actually say they believe in (position papers; stump speeches to the faithful, etc). Which is when it matters most, and when people will most respect you for it.

Well it's really ironic to hear local party officials (particularly those from a minority group, and black or latino at that) described on the one hand as heelers obsessed only with their own power yet too inept to get anything done, then on the other hand are decried for not using their organizational power and competence to compel 'their' people to vote a certain way. And it's the largely white ex-Dem establishment that make these sorts of charges, generally in the Daily News. Hello Koch and Esther Fuchs.

Green's fatally flawed primary campaign is this in miniature: try to get in good with the large number of white voters by trying to associate your rival with a racist characature (usually Sharpton, but Gore did this in the 1988 presidential primary by attacking Jesse Jackson!) then demand that the people who've offended support you. I do like Mark Green, but he had the same cynics telling him what to do to win (at all costs) as every other Democratic candidate who loses or very nearly loses in NY.