Results tagged “term limits”

Though the end result of last night's mayoral election doesn't come as much of a surprise, the closeness of the race shocked a lot of onlookers. After running a record-breaking $100 million campaign that won major endorsements and blanketed the city in nearly non-stop advertising, Mayor Bloomberg defeated the underfunded Democratic candidate Bill Thompson by only 5 percent of the vote, winning with 51 percent to his rival's 46. This comes after polls from the days before the election predicted Bloomberg ahead by double digit — some even anticipating a win almost as large as his 20 percent victory in 2005. The pollsters might have some explaining to do.

Last night, after an 11 minute takedown of Fox News, The Daily Show set its sights on our own mayoral race. Term limits turnaround? Check. President Obama's, uh, endorsement of Thompson? Check. And, yes, they did totally put Mayor Bloomberg next to a graphic of Richie Rich—and Jon Stewart did say they were the same height.

Yesterday, the city's largest Spanish newspaper, El Diario, endorsed City Comptroller Bill Thompson for Mayor. In its front page editorial, it says, "After a decade misspent lionizing the rich and their excesses, too many New Yorkers are paying the price for the decisions made in Washington, on Wall Street and in City Hall. What New York City needs is an executive with a balanced perspective towards development and growth, where families most in need are a high priority. This leader is Bill Thompson."

It's been just over a year since Mayor Bloomberg made his pitch for extending term limits to three terms and since then, the City Council approved it and the Mayor launched a (pricey) third term re-election bid. With a month to go before the election, the NY Times finds that while New Yorkers like Bloomberg, but many are still sore about term limits.

Now that President Obama has officially opened himself up for criticism about the role he has taken in shaping New York's local politics, some Democrats are openly questioning where the presidential love for Bill Thompson is. One Democrat today is quoted as saying, "The first black President who tells the first black governor to get out, and he won't help the guy who wants to be the second black mayor? The irony is thick."

Governor Paterson finally endorsed Bill Thompson for mayor in a press conference yesterday. In what seemed to be a guarded statement not meant to attack Mayor Bloomberg, Paterson said, "I don’t find the mayor’s policies necessarily to be negative, but I think that it is time for a change, and we get someone such as Bill Thompson."

Can we get Mayor Bloomberg to say that he will not run for a fourth term in writing? A couple of weeks after the mayor left the door open about the possibility of extending term limits a second time and attempting to stay in office for a total of sixteen years, he once again alluded to the notion of four more (more) years. This time the slip came during his weekly radio broadcast while the mayor was discussing a campaign initiative which would have 120,000 New Yorkers graduating community colleges by 2020. He said, "Community colleges are really a step for a lot of people. We did it as part of something where I was trying to lay out in the campaign [what] you would do in a fourth term, which I think you have a responsibility to do." Just as with the last instance of the mayor expanding his horizons, a spokesman was quick to insist afterward that Bloomberg intended to say his third term. The city college graduation plan would actually come at the end of a fifth Bloomberg term, which the mayor has not yet commented on.

A day after Mayor Bloomberg got people talking with some comments that seemed to leave the door open for the possibility of bonus term in office in four years time, he took out any room for the imagination. On his weekly radio show, the mayor said, "12 years would be quite enough. I would be 71 ... not that there's anything wrong with 71." On Thursday Bloomberg gave the sort of vague response to a question about a possible fourth term that rekindled the sort of speculation that kept him in the headlines as a potential third party candidate for president in 2008. His answer also conjured up his last reversal on term limits—Politico said he was "looking a little like Putin." On the airwaves yesterday, Bloomberg said, "N-O. Under any circumstances," and said he thinks he'd get "tired and bored" with sixteen years as mayor.

Now we may have some insight as to why Mayor Bloomberg isn't exactly, um, fond of answering questions on term limits. Throughout the mayor's gradual reversal of his term limits stance last year, he made it clear that he was for the concept, but had begun having doubts on whether the limit should be two or three. Yesterday, when asked whether he would guarantee not running for a fourth term, the mayor gave a standard answer of the law not allowing it...and then responded to a follow-up pushing him this way, "But it does now. It permits only three terms, so I don’t know. Talk to your City Council. Let me point out that I had no intention of running for a (third) term up until near the end, as you know. The City Council changed the law. It’s up to the voters whether they want four more years." Is it time to cue The Price is Right Ciffhangers yodeling music?

Some follow-up to Mayor Bloomberg's exchange with Observer (and PolitickerNY) reporter Azi Paybarah. The NY Times described that the mayor "seemed to reach new heights of peevishness, calling a reporter who posed a question he did not like 'a disgrace.'" (The question was whether the mayor, who spoke of an economic turnaround, oversold his pitch for overturning term limits.) CBS 2 reported, "Many would say the reporter's question was relevant, especially since the city's failing economy is one of the reasons Bloomberg sought an exemption from term limits." Paybarah's editor Josh Benson told the Daily News, "It was a reasonable question. We're comfortable leaving it to everyone else to judge the quality of the response." A spokewoman for City Comptroller and mayoral hopeful Bill Thompson said, "What’s disgraceful is the Mayor’s refusal to answer the tough questions. Calling people names, having staff block cameras and bullying the press aren’t going to stop people from asking the mayor to explain his term limits bait and switch." The Mayor apologized, though indirectly; according to Paybarah, Bloomberg's press secretary Stu Loeser "called to relay an apology from the mayor."

Is the unofficial first rule of Mayor Bloomberg-Press Fight Club "Don't ask Mayor Bloomberg about term limits"? That's what it seems like when you watch this video from PolitickerNY's Azi Paybarah. Bloomberg, at a press conference touting how the city received $32 million in federal stimulus money for job training, said of the economy, "I’m reasonably optimistic that we’ve turned the corner" on the recession. So Paybarah asked if, since the economy was turning around, that meant Bloomberg oversold his pitch for overturning term limits—which the mayor didn't think was a "serious" question.

Many months after the City Council voted to approve extending term limits, an appeals court has upheld a lower court's ruling that Mayor Bloomberg can run for a third term. CityRoom says, "To the term limits opponents who hoped the courts would overthrow a law allowing city elected officials to run for a third term this fall, the fight is essentially over." One lawyer for the plaintiffs, Norman Siegel, wasn't sure if there would be another appeal but did say it was "a dark day for democracy and for the voters of New York City." Last November, Mayor Bloomberg had signed the bill after hearing from angry as well as pleased New Yorkers.

Opponents of extending term limits staged a rally on the steps of City Hall today as a last ditch plea to the Department of Justice to get in the way of Mayor Bloomberg's hopes for a third term. Tomorrow is the deadline for the Department to decide whether the term limits extension passed by City Council in November should be tossed out on the grounds that it unfairly impedes minority voters.

Today isn't the best news day in Bloomberg '09 headquarters. The mayor met the GOP's borough chairs and didn't leave with anything close to the stamp of approval—aka three of five votes—to get back on the Republican line on the November ballot. Bloomberg told reporters after, "We talked about elections and politics obviously, and I said the last two times I ran, I ran on the Republican line and I’d be honored to run again. We’ll see what they decide to do."

While few seem to believe that Mayor Bloomberg is very vulnerable in his quest for a third term, today's Daily News suggests that there quietly is a sound rival stepping up to keep his power in check—believe it or not, Speaker Christine Quinn. Quinn has long been viewed by critics as a "Deputy Mayor of the City Council" due to her close allegiance with Bloomberg. But some think that their political marriage is in the past since it might have been partially motivated by Quinn's hopes to ride the mayor's coattails into her own mayoral run, something she was planning on before term limits were extended (incidentally, a bill she backed). The News cites her spurning Bloomberg's plan to raise the sales tax in favor of a half-millionaire's tax instead, her overriding Bloomberg's veto of a bill easing residency requirements on DC37 members and pressuring the mayor to junk a $117 million plan to revamp the city's senior centers. The column says that her recent behavior "makes you wish she was running after all." Quinn 2013?

Yesterday began Mark Green's quest to become Public Advocate once again. And he can already claim one victory, apparently pushing out Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell who said, "I don't think Mark Green can be beaten." That still leaves a crowded field of Democrats vying for the office including Councilmen Bill DiBlasio, Eric Giola and John Liu who all appear to be pushing forward in their bids.

Fancy that: After kicking open the doors to a third term bid, Mayor Bloomberg's approval rating has gone up to 69%, from 66% in November, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. Quinnipiac points out this "puts him back on a track of 69 percent or higher approval ratings in every other poll since he began his second term." Interestingly enough, respondents still approved of term limits 69-25% and disapproved of the City Council's decision to extend them 56-42% (they just seem like to Mayor Bloomberg?).

Former mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared on Good Day, New York this morning, and immediately Rosanna Scotto asked him if it wasn't a blessing in disguise that he's not president, given how crappy everything seems to be right now. Giuliani hastily said, "You don't look at it that way," and spoke of the honor of serving the country. He also called Obama "very nice guy" and that after an election, everyone "becomes an American again" (as opposed to being partisan) and that he's rooting for him. He demurred on the 2010 question, pointing out that there are lots of things happening before then—like the 2009 mayoral election—and said that starting a campaign now, with the economy so terrible, wasn't a great idea. As for term limits, Giuliani (who only mentioned September 11th once!) said that he supported Mayor Bloomberg and think he's the man for the job.

Federal Judge Charles Sifton dismissed a lawsuit challenging the Mayor's (oh, and City Council's) extension of term limits that paves the way for Mayor Bloomberg to run for a third term. According to the AP, the judge found "the lawsuit's claim that the mayor and current second-term City Council members merely want to maintain their hold on power has no foundation in the record." Plus, CityRoom reports, Sifton "found that under state law, the Council was not required to conduct a referendum before adopting the term limits amendment." So, suck it, voters! Update: The plaintiffs, who include former SI Beep Guy Molinari and City Comptroller Bill Thompson, will decide whether to appeal later this week.

In the first poll to come out after his maneuvering to extend term limits from two terms to three, Mayor Bloomberg's approval ratings have fallen 9 points. The Marist poll puts him at 59%, and Politicker NY's Azi Paybarah writes, "It's not a bad number by any means, but it's the farthest he’s dropped since Marist’s August 2005 poll, which had him at 53 percent." He had a 68% rating from Marist last month and in July, he had 71% from a Quinnipiac poll.

Today's Times looks at how rapidly Mayor Bloomberg has moved from the controversial and dragged out term limits issue headfirst into proposing potentially unpopular solutions that would deal with the city's dire financial picture. The mayor's moves to take away the property tax rebate, cut city jobs, close low-income dental clinics and suggest new taxes not only make for strange actions from someone in an election year, but also are creating a strained relationship with City Council members who are up for re-election as well. Councilman Vincent Gentile told the paper, “People are just holding on by their fingertips. (They have) a tin ear when it comes to the concerns of everyday New Yorkers.” But Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler defended the moves, “It’s hard to argue that a mayor who is proposing fewer police officers and the elimination of a property tax rebate is making decisions based on politics, rather than the best interest of the city.”

NY1 reports that State Senator Kevin Parker (D-Brooklyn) introduced legislation preventing "city officials from running for a third term without the approval of voters." He said, "To brazenly push them aside and attempt to silence their voices is not what we should do as elected officials. For this, I am sponsoring a bill on the state level that will change term limits for the entire state." Last week, Assembly Member Hakeem Jeffries also introduced a bill that would require a public referendum fora term limits extension; Jeffries' stance: "A few dozen politicians should not determine the fate of term limits in a city of eight million when the public has spoken – not once but twice."

City Council Christine Quinn joined a protest over a plan to restructure senior centers. Given how Quinn put her political future on the line by supporting the term limits extension, PolitickerNY's Azi Paybarah asked her "what she’d say to critics who’d see this protest more for its symbolism--to separate herself from Bloomberg--than for its substance," to which Quinn said, "If I had worn closed-toed shoes, you would have said that was a desire to have a tougher shoe so I could kick somebody in the tuchas, to seem tough." Still Fordham professor Bruce Berg tells the Times, "She has to demonstrate to the 22 who voted against term limits that she can lead independently from the mayor. What she’s doing is as much for internal consumption for the Council as it is for the mayor and the press."

It's the case of Guy Molinari vs. Michael Bloomberg: Former Staten Island Borough President Molinari tells the Advance he will be the "lead plaintiff in the civil action against Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who sought the extension to three terms."

After hours of hearing from the public, Mayor Bloomberg signed the controversial term limits extension bill. The bill was passed by the City Council a week and a half ago, in a vote of 29 to 22. It allows elected officials, including himself and City Council members, to run for a third term.

NY1 has a video stream of the term limits bill signing hearing (besides airing it on TV) and it's amazing--it's a November 3 Festivus airing of grievances! So far, regular citizens have testified alongside Representative Weiner, City Council members (Charles Barron is more ashamed of the members who voted than he is of the Mayor), and former Parks commissioner Henry Stern--many asking him not to sign the bill, but a few people support it. Animal's Bucky Turco is waiting to speak and says City Comptroller Bill Thompson is outside, waiting as well. Rachel Trachtenberg, 14, spoke and got applause (she pointed out how she waited 7 hours to speak at the City Council), but we were moved by the former nun who urged Mayor Bloomberg leave office and work with her for affordable housing. CityRoom has a liveblog.

This morning at 9:30 a.m., Mayor Bloomberg will get to hear from the public before signing the term limits extension legislation that will allow him and other elected officials to run for a third term. Extremely vocal critic Representative Anthony Weiner, who is eyeing a mayoral run in 2009, will be speaking and blasted the timing of the bill signing, "Even the time and date of the hearing makes it difficult for people to come, 9:30 on a workday. It's the day before a presidential election. If they were trying to hide this action, they couldn't have done a better job." WCBS 2 reports the mayor has been trying to mend fences with City Council members by calling them, but Council member Bill de Blasio said, "He's almost never talked to council members, suddenly he's calling all of us and [asking] can't we all get along? ...After seven years it's hard to believe a sudden revelation he wants to be cooperative."

">encouraging NYers to sign up for 2-minute speaking slots at the 9:30 a.m. event (at City Hall's Blue Room)-- you can sign up at LetNYCVote. The Times also points out that Mayor Bloomberg did change his mind about signing a bill passed by the City Council last year.

If the events of City Councilwoman Darlene Mealy's day on Thursday are any indication of what went into garnering the necessary votes in order to pass term limits legislation that same day, it doesn't paint a pretty picture. The Post reports that Mealy was so upset over changing her vote in favor of extending term limits due to pressure put on her that she vomited twice beforehand and got into a car accident on her way home from it. Mealy told another councilman that "people she considered to be political allies were threatening her" that actions would be taken against her for trying to sponsor a $25,000 grant for a Brooklyn block association run by her sister. Meanwhile New York 1 talked to people in Mealy's district who could not make sense of her about face. One constituent said, "I'm like, wow. I was like, she's on the right road, and then she just switched back I don't understand it."