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The GC Advocate Guide to the 2009 NYC Mayoral Elections

by Advocate Staff

Let’s face it. The pick­ings in this year’s may­oral race are pretty slim. Bloomberg has out­spent every other can­di­date in the field by a good $60 mil­lion, and the Democ­rats have hardly put their best foot for­ward by nom­i­nat­ing the lack­lus­ter under­dog Bill Thomp­son. Mean­while, the Greens have cho­sen a celebrity can­di­date who may or not actu­ally want to be mayor, while most of the other voices in the fray are either slightly wacko, inex­pe­ri­enced, or com­pletely invis­i­ble to most voters.

Although their can­di­date Jimmy McMil­lan has no real chance of win­ning, at the end of the day The Rent is Too Damn High Party might actu­ally be the best vote this year since it would at least send a mes­sage to both Bloomberg and Thomp­son, the Democ­rats and the Repub­li­cans, that some­thing rad­i­cal must indeed be done about the cost of liv­ing in NYC. Despite all of this, or per­haps because of it, the GC Advo­cate offers you this guide, some­what tongue in cheek, to the 2009 can­di­dates for the mayor of New York City.

Cur­rent Mayor — Michael Bloomberg:

Mayor of New York from 2002 to the present, Bloomberg is the multi-billionaire (cur­rently ranked sev­en­teen among the world’s wealth­i­est bil­lion­aires) owner of Bloomberg LP — an infor­ma­tion, news, and media com­pany that pro­vides infor­ma­tion ser­vices to invest­ment firms such as Mer­rill Lynch. Bloomberg also owns a sub­stan­tial radio net­work whose flag­ship sta­tion, WBBR reaches thou­sands of New York­ers every day. His great wealth has made it easy for him to abstain from the stan­dard may­oral salary and accepts just $1 a year for his services.

The Good:

Although his crit­ics say his poli­cies have con­tributed to gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, out of con­trol rents, and the loss of neigh­bor­hood cul­ture, many would argue that the mayor has made the city a much more pleas­ant and arguably safer and much health­ier place to live (if you can afford it).

GUN CONTROL: The mayor has been a staunch advo­cate of gun con­trol ever since his elec­tion in 2002, recently fund­ing a highly reported pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tion of out of state gun shows (where guns are often sold with­out back­ground checks or wait­ing peri­ods). Bloomberg blames the ille­gal prac­tices uncov­ered at these shows for con­tribut­ing to gun vio­lence in the city, and has argued that such shows should be out­lawed. Bloomberg is also the co-founder of “May­ors against Ille­gal Guns,” an orga­ni­za­tion of city may­ors ded­i­cated to the elim­i­na­tion of ille­gal gun sales. Although some spec­u­late the Mayor’s recent inves­ti­ga­tion was a polit­i­cal stunt designed pre­cisely to influ­ence lib­eral vot­ers, other can­di­dates would nonethe­less do well to take up the man­tle of gun con­trol advo­cacy the way that Bloomberg has.

ENVIRONMENT: As those who like to bike to the Grad­u­ate Cen­ter already know, the mayor has been as active as any pre­vi­ous mayor in mak­ing New York City a safe city for bicy­cle com­muters as well as a much safer and more pleas­ant place for pedes­tri­ans. Under Bloomberg, who is a large con­trib­u­tor to the Cen­tral Park Con­ser­vancy, the city has cre­ated more green spaces, more pedes­trian malls (includ­ing sev­eral pedes­trian malls on Broad­way), and more ded­i­cated bike lanes than any mayor in recent his­tory. Bloomberg plans to con­tinue to cre­ate as much as fifty miles of new bike lanes every year. Bloomberg was also the man respon­si­ble for out­law­ing smok­ing in New York City bars and restau­rants and imple­ment­ing a ban on the use of trans fats in New York City Restau­rants (both of which, unless you’re a smoker or really like Krispy Kreme, are good things in the end).

311: Say what you will about Bloomberg’s meth­ods or his empha­sis on employ­ing tac­tics and pro­ce­dures from the pri­vate sec­tor, but the cre­ation of the offi­cial 311 city infor­ma­tion line was a thought­ful and con­struc­tive way to help city res­i­dents find help and answers to press­ing needs and ques­tions about city ser­vices. In addi­tion, 311 has helped res­i­dents become more directly involved in report­ing upon issues such as unsafe work­ing con­di­tions, graf­fiti, garbage dump­ing, and other low level city nuisances.

The Bad:

Fol­low­ing Giuliani’s lead, Bloomberg seems more con­cerned with mak­ing New York a thriv­ing inter­na­tional metrop­o­lis than an eco­nom­i­cally sus­tain­able, liv­able, and afford­able city. In the process the mayor has pri­or­i­tized cor­po­rate inter­ests, gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, and devel­op­ment over job cre­ation and housing.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING: Although the New York Times reported that Bloomberg increased afford­able hous­ing units by 165,000 between 2002 – 2007, under his lead­er­ship — and in part because of his pro-market poli­cies — the city lost more than 200,000 low income hous­ing units dur­ing that same period, for a net loss of 35,000 units. This loss is in large part due to the mayor’s priv­i­leg­ing of pri­vate inter­ests over the pub­lic good and his intense gen­tri­fi­ca­tion and devel­op­ment efforts, which have resulted in the con­ver­sion of sev­eral for­merly rent sta­bi­lized com­mu­ni­ties, such as Stuyvesant Town, into lux­ury condominiums.

GOOD JOBS: In his 2009 state of the city address, Bloomberg noted that he had cre­ated 227,000 more jobs from 2002 – 2009. But it turns out that most of those new jobs will be in the grow­ing but low pay­ing dead end ser­vice sec­tor. The New York Times reports that New York City lost 43 per­cent of its man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs under Bloomberg from Jan­u­ary 2002 to August 2009. “In 2008, these jobs paid on aver­age $52,758 a year.” As the city increas­ingly gen­tri­fies, there will surely be a greater call for wait­ers, bar­tenders, baris­tas, sales­per­sons, cashiers, and pedi­curists, but few of these jobs actu­ally pro­vide a wage con­sis­tent with the cost of liv­ing in NYC, and most pro­vide very lim­ited ben­e­fits, if any.

The Ugly:

Bloomberg may want to be Mayor for life.

THIRD TERM SCANDAL: Despite his reas­sur­ances at the recent may­oral debate (from which all can­di­dates but Bill Thomp­son were barred) that he would not seek another term after his third, Bloomberg has had a hard time allay­ing fears that he’s play­ing out some regal fan­tasy where he has been anointed King of New York. Locals aren’t con­cerned yet about a fourth term; they’re still fum­ing about the way in which Bloomberg rewrote the law to allow him to run for reelec­tion this time around. When for­mer mayor Rudolph Giu­liani tested the same waters in 2001 to accom­plish the sim­i­lar ends, Bloomberg labeled the idea of extend­ing term lim­its a “dis­grace.” Yet in the after­math of the finan­cial cri­sis, Bloomberg expe­ri­enced a change of heart, appar­ently moti­vated by the belief that he alone could save the city from finan­cial dis­as­ter. His hench­men in the city coun­cil appar­ently agreed, and in a sin­gle act of munic­i­pal dis­grace voted to over­ride two pub­lic ref­er­en­dums where vot­ers clearly expressed their oppo­si­tion to term limit exten­sions. Since then, the mayor has poured tens of mil­lions into a cam­paign where he faces no seri­ous chal­lenge, increas­ing spec­u­la­tion fur­ther that Mayor Mike is more con­cerned about his legacy than hon­or­ing the basic prin­ci­ples of local democracy.

Demo­c­ra­tic Party — Bill Thompson:

Bill Thomp­son has served as both the pres­i­dent of the New York City Board of Edu­ca­tion from 1996 to 2001 as well as the New York City comp­trol­ler from 2002 until the present. Thomp­son defeated his pri­mary oppo­nent Tony Avella in a land­slide vic­tory to win the Demo­c­ra­tic Party nom­i­na­tion for mayor in Sep­tem­ber. Thomp­son is run­ning as a Demo­c­rat but also has the back­ing of the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Party.

The Good:

As comp­trol­ler, it is Thompson’s job to over­see the use of the city’s finances, and on that count Thomp­son appears to have done a good job defend­ing the city’s funds against the cor­rup­tion and graft of pri­vate interests.

EDUCATION: As city comp­trol­ler, Thomp­son exposed sev­eral endemic prob­lems at the board of edu­ca­tion includ­ing an audit of the no-bid con­trac­tors Alvarez and Mar­shall, which exposed exces­sive over­charg­ing to the city. Thomp­son has also pro­posed, if elected, to fire schools chan­cel­lor Joel Klein, and to end the pri­va­ti­za­tion of NYC’s pub­lic schools.

LABOR: Thomp­son also inves­ti­gated sev­eral labor abuses, includ­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion which led to a $750,000 set­tle­ment against JC Man­del Secu­rity who had been under­pay­ing their employ­ees. Accord­ing to his own cam­paign state­ments, Thomp­son claims to have “ini­ti­ated more cases and penal­ized more con­trac­tors than any comp­trol­ler before. Thomp­son also has the endorse­ments of sev­eral labor unions, includ­ing the Trans­porta­tion Work­ers Union local, which Thomp­son has vocally sup­ported. This endorse­ment, how­ever, may have as much to do with the union’s anger at Bloomberg’s crit­i­cism as it does with Thompson’s poten­tial as mayor.

The Bad:

Thomp­son has been char­ac­ter­ized as a career machine party politi­cian, and while he has been a staunch defender of the city’s cof­fers, he has not always been as good at mak­ing them grow as much as they should.

POOR MANAGEMENT: Per­haps the biggest crit­i­cism of Thompson’s per­for­mance as comp­trol­ler is the repeated claim that he mis­man­aged the New York City Employ­ees’ Retire­ment Sys­tem, which, over the last seven years has per­formed in the bot­tom third among sim­i­lar large pen­sion funds. All of this hap­pened even asThomp­son was receiv­ing large cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions from sev­eral of the fund’s money man­agers. “In some cases,” reported the New York Times, “the exec­u­tives gave to Mr. Thomp­son just months before the pen­sion funds hired them to man­age tens of mil­lions of dol­lars, accord­ing to inter­views and pub­lic records.”

BIKE LANES: Thomp­son seems to be ambiva­lent about the idea of fur­ther increases in bike lanes and pedes­trian plazas. In a debate with Tony Avella, Thomp­son said: “I favor bicy­cle lanes; how­ever, you are hear­ing the com­plaint all over the city of New York, because the com­mu­ni­ties have not been con­sulted. They’ve been ignored. Bicy­cle lanes have been dropped upon them and there has been no dis­cus­sion. That’s wrong and that shouldn’t con­tinue.” Thomp­son also told a group of Chi­na­town res­i­dents that were he elected he would tear up the ded­i­cated bike lane on Grand Street.

The Ugly:

Even with Obama’s “endorse­ment,” Thomp­son doesn’t stand a chance against Bloomberg’s $65 mil­lion campaign.

OBAMA OBSESSED: Thomp­son has shame­lessly attempted to ride the coat­tails of Barack Obama’s pop­u­lar­ity by insist­ing that he had received the president’s bless­ing and sup­port in the may­oral race. In fact, Obama has never spo­ken pub­licly on the issue, but his spokesper­son said that the pres­i­dent sup­ports can­di­dates in the Demo­c­ra­tic Party. He refused, after being pressed, to pro­nounce Bill Thompson’s name. Thomp­son, though, took it as noth­ing less than a ring­ing endorse­ment, issu­ing a press release stat­ing: “Yes we can in New York: Barack Obama sup­ports Bill Thomp­son for mayor.”

Green Party — Rev­erend Billy Talen:

Rev­erend Billy (a.k.a. Billy Talen) is a vet­eran polit­i­cal activist and per­former and is the charis­matic and irrev­er­ent leader of the Church of Life After Shop­ping, which preaches an anti-consumer gospel based on a gift econ­omy of love and com­mu­nity. Talen announced his bid for mayor at a Union Square rally in March of this year.

The Good:

Talen’s plat­form, though not ter­ri­bly detailed, focuses on the cre­ation and rein­vig­o­ra­tion of greater com­mu­nity space and a greater empha­sis on local neigh­bor­hood control.

LOCAL CULTURE: Like a twenty-first cen­tury Jane Jacobs, Rev­erend Billy sup­ports the pro­mo­tion of local cul­ture against what he calls the “devel­oper inva­sion” and “upzon­ing” tak­ing place in New York City today. Were he to be elected Rev­erend Billy vows that “all new devel­op­ments must be community-driven and community-approved.” Talen also sup­ports pro­vid­ing incen­tives for the cre­ation and pro­mo­tion of locally-owned small busi­nesses, which he argues help to keep money within the local economies and to cre­ate a sense of place and com­mu­nity. One inter­est­ing plan to improve local con­trol laid out in Talen’s plat­form would be to “dis­en­gage Com­mu­nity Boards from the appointive pow­ers of Bor­ough Pres­i­dents. In Brook­lyn we have seen sum­mary purges from Com­mu­nity Boards by Marty Markowitz, usu­ally of peo­ple who didn’t sup­port his posi­tion on the Atlantic Yards and For­est City Ratner.”

GREEN PARTY: Talen is run­ning on the Green Party ticket and all votes for Talen are a vote for the con­tin­ued rel­e­vance and power of the greater Green Party.

The Bad:

Rev­erend Billy is a sea­soned activist but not a politician.

THEATRE OR POLITICS?: While Talen’s cam­paign and party affil­i­a­tion make him appear like a seri­ous, even legit­i­mately viable can­di­date for the office, it is hard to know how will­ing Talen would be to really set aside his Rev­erend Billy per­sona and get down to the seri­ous busi­ness of run­ning the largest city in the United States.

The Ugly:

His hair.

Con­ser­v­a­tive Party — Stephen Christopher:

Christo­pher is the Pas­tor of the Memo­r­ial Bap­tist Church in Brook­lyn. He also ran unsuc­cess­fully for the New York State Sen­ate in 2008.

The Good:

Sup­ports restric­tions on use of emi­nent domain.

The Bad:

He’s a con­ser­v­a­tive, and his bid for mayor is prob­a­bly noth­ing more than an attempt to keep his name alive in the Con­ser­v­a­tive Party and among con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles.

The Ugly:

His plat­form is ret­ro­gres­sive and dan­ger­ous. Christo­pher and the con­ser­v­a­tives are pri­mar­ily con­cerned with issues of tax­a­tion, but he also advo­cates for a fully pri­va­tized health insur­ance sys­tem, wants to restore the death penalty, pro­hibit stem cell research, roll back abor­tion rights, not rec­og­nize trans­gen­der peo­ples as spe­cial cat­e­gories of human beings in human rights law, etc. etc. etc.

Social­ism and Lib­er­a­tion Party — Frances Villar:

One of City University’s very own, Frances Vil­lar has been a pres­ence on the activist scene in New York City since 2006. The Dominican-born Vil­lar is a stu­dent at Lehman Col­lege where she helped orga­nize stu­dents to sup­port the Jena Six, and to resist tuition increases in 2008. The 26-year-old Vil­lar is run­ning as mayor for the newly formed Social­ism and Lib­er­a­tion Party whose plat­form advo­cates an explic­itly rev­o­lu­tion­ary politics.

The Good:

She’s a social­ist; she has a pretty rad­i­cal platform

The Bad:

No real plan for how to imple­ment change. Like many rev­o­lu­tion­ary par­ties, the SLP empha­sizes rev­o­lu­tion at the expense of actual change with all prob­lems traced back to the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem. Because of this, Villar’s plat­form is filled with com­plaint but almost devoid of any solu­tions to the prob­lems out­side of over­throw­ing the cap­i­tal­ist system.

The Ugly:

party, the SLP, is the off­spring of a split from the Worker’s World Party and is a largely a sec­tar­ian organization.

Social­ist Worker Party — Dan Fein:

Dan Fein is a 64-year-old sewing machine operator. Villar’s

The Good:

He’s a social­ist, and we’re not talk­ing about the Obama vari­ety of socialism.

A MAN OF THE PEOPLE: As a mem­ber of the Social­ist Worker’s Party, Fein’s plat­form includes guar­an­teed unem­ploy­ment com­pen­sa­tion at union scale, an increase in the min­i­mum wage to union scale, and an end to all income taxes on workers.

The Bad:

He’s a social­ist: too much in the way of tired rhetoric, not much in the way of clear pri­or­i­ties for a bet­ter New York.

The Ugly:

Has not both­ered to limit his agenda to issues actu­ally hav­ing to do with New York City pol­i­tics. Issues of national pol­i­tics and the Iraq and Afghan wars is a higher pri­or­ity, for exam­ple, than nuts and bolts solu­tions to issues directly affect­ing New York work­ing class folks.

Rent is Too Damn High Can­di­date — Jimmy McMillan:

What can you say about Jimmy McMillan’s plat­form that you can’t put into five sim­ple words: “Rent is too damn high!” McMil­lan, who is a retired postal worker and a Viet­nam vet, has been a peren­nial can­di­date for mayor and has been run­ning on this same plat­form since at least 1993, when he was arrested for scal­ing one of the cables on the Brook­lyn Bridge with a “Rambo knife” demand­ing that a tele­vi­sion crew be brought to broad­cast his message.

The Good:

McMil­lan is offi­cially on the bal­lot this time around.

The Bad:

“Rent is too damn high.”

The Ugly:

“Rent is too damn high.”

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Posted by Advocate Staff on Oct 21st, 2009 and filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site

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