December 18, 2003 The Businessman Mayor By URIEL HEILMAN NEW YORK When billionaire Michael R. Bloomberg first announced he was running for mayor of New York City, must New Yorkers dismissed him as just another wealthy businessman with fantastic political ambitions. Sure, millionaire Goldman Sachs executive Jon Corzine had managed to win a Senate seat in New Jersey with a $60 million campaign, but Corzine was a lifelong Democratic activist running for a Democratic seat. Bloomberg, by contrast, was a lifelong Democrat who had switched his party membership to Republican shortly before announcing his candidacy simply to avoid elimination in the early rounds of New York's Democratic primaries. And Bloomberg, with his thick Boston accent and stony look, lacked the charisma New Yorkers had come to expect from their mayors. Indeed, early polls showed the Bloomberg trailing the pack of candidates by steep double-digit figures. He was spending millions on television commercials, but the financial mogul appeared awkward in the 30-second spots, which pictured him standing on city streets delivering an insipid pitch to the camera as New Yorkers hurried by. Bloomberg's campaign was flat, and few New Yorkers expected it to go anywhere. Then came the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and everything changed. The attacks on the World Trade Center actually fell on the day of the party primaries, and the terrorist attacks ended up reconfiguring not only primary day, but the political landscape of New York City. Rudolph Giuliani, the polarizing mayor of the city who, prior to Sept. 11, had been maligned by as many people as he was loved, immediately was transformed after the attacks into a widely popular mayor and a national hero. He embodied New York's courage and grief, rushing to the site of the World Trade Center, tirelessly consoling New Yorkers and reassuring a frightened city that New York somehow would endure. But having served two mayoral terms, Giuliani was not eligible for a third, and the city had to look elsewhere for its political future. Giuliani endorsed Bloomberg, the owner of the financial-data company Bloomberg L.P., and with the city facing its worst recession since the fiscal crisis of the 1970s-made worse by a terrorist attack that had eliminated thousands of jobs and drove business away from the city-the candidacy of a savvy businessman suddenly seemed more appealing. It didn't hurt Bloomberg that his Democratic opponent, Public Advocate Mark Green, was considered a political lightweight running a moribund campaign. Green had beaten Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer in a vitriolic primary campaign that had alienated many voters, and in the final stretch against Bloomberg, Green had a hard time lining up even his Democratic friends behind him. In the weeks leading up to the election, Bloomberg closed the gap with Green, pulling neck and neck with his Democratic opponent. On Nov. 6, 2001, Bloomberg won by a 5-point margin, or 68,000 votes. The billionaire businessman said he never doubted himself for a minute. In the two years since then, Bloomberg has steered the city through a potentially crippling fiscal crisis; wrested control of the city's school system from the Board of Education; reduced crime by 10 percent as crime rates elsewhere rose; maintained calm during the first citywide blackout since a 1977 one left the city burning and broken; and brought the 2004 Republican National Convention to New York. In that time, Bloomberg also passed the biggest property-tax increase in city history, outlawed smoking in city bars and almost anywhere indoors, stood tough against the city's unions and lost a drive to outlaw political primaries in city elections. Meanwhile, he also has remained an enigmatic figure for many New Yorkers. Midway through his four-year term, Bloomberg has an abysmal 37 percent approval rating; only 23 percent of New Yorkers would like to see him re-elected in 2005; he trails Ferrer in a theoretical head-to-head match-up by an 18-point margin; and 61 percent of New Yorkers said they would not like to have Thanksgiving dinner with the mayor. The Quinnipiac University poll, taken Nov. 17-23 in a survey of 1,147 registered New York City voters, had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. "You have to focus not on polls, but on performance," said Mitchell Moss, director of the Taub Urban Research Center at New York University. "It's a weak economy, and the poll numbers reflect that," he said. "I think the poll numbers are a huge distraction." The attitudes behind political poll numbers, while not insignificant, are fickle, and a surveys' importance two years away from the next election is debatable. What's more telling, in some ways, was the survey's question about Thanksgiving. The fact that only 38 percent of New Yorkers said they would want to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner with the mayor is a reflection of the difficulty Bloomberg has had in developing a personal relationship with his constituents-a key thing in a city where politicians often carry celebrity status. For his part, the mayor says he's not very concerned about the polls. "I don't think I've ever asked anybody to dinner and they've said no," the mayor quipped. "I think those polls are designed to provide some fun and fodder for a circulation war." If Giuliani was the mayor of personality-you either loved him or you hated him-Bloomberg is the mayor of un-personality. Giuliani, a firebrand, regularly appeared in the New York Post's gossip columns, and New Yorkers were fed a regular diet of information about Giuliani's marriage and divorce, his girlfriend, his difficulties performing sexually in the wake of his treatment for prostate cancer and his stormy fights with political opponents. Bloomberg, on the other hand, likes to keep his private life private. The bachelor mayor, 61, has his girlfriends, but few know who they are. Bloomberg jets away on his private plane for the weekend and nobody-especially the press corps-knows exactly where he is going. The coterie of people around Bloomberg, his staff and his friends, are closed-mouthed when it comes to what the mayor does in his off hours, and they often have trouble convincing others that the mayor is likeable. "The press, for example, always wants me to go and have a public fight," Bloomberg said in an exclusive interview with the Jerusalem Post at New York's City Hall earlier this month. "I wasn't elected to create fights. If you want entertainment, you should go to a different industry. I was hired to do a job." "He isn't a performer," political consultant George Arzt observed. "There have been many mayors who could go right out there and they were very outgoing and extroverted," he said, citing mayors Giuliani, Ed Koch and Fiorello LaGuardia, the last of whom could pander to voters in three languages: Italian, Yiddish and English. "These were people who were larger-than-life figures. They were out there constantly. There was give and take with the press." "Mike is a very guarded man," Arzt said. "His sessions with the press are more or less carefully planned. He is a businessman after all, and not someone with experience in the realm of politics." Koch said, "He's never been in politics before and politics is a touchy-feely operation. People have to feel you're partisan." Non-partisanship has its benefits, of course. Unlike Giuliani, Bloomberg gets along well with the city's minorities, and there haven't been any major racial or ethnic incidents under his watch. He's also been able to establish a relatively good relationship between City Hall and the City Council, a rarity in New York. City Hall has changed a lot since Bloomberg became mayor. When Giuliani was in office, he closed off the area in front of City Hall to the public until a court order forced him to reopen it. Even inside the building, there was a sense of a reign of terror around the mayor-a feeling that was perpetuated by the wrath of some of Giuliani's confrontational aides. When Bloomberg took over, he transformed Giuliani's ornate office into a ceremonial room and instead set up shop in the "bullpen," a massive hall that is filled with dozens of cubicles and resembles a newsroom. Bloomberg sits at one of the cubicles near the center, where he has installed a pair of Bloomberg screens-a contraption invented years ago by his company, Bloomberg L.P., to monitor the stock market. Early one recent Monday morning, the mayor sat quietly at his cubicle sipping coffee out of a paper cup and reading the newspaper while aides and deputy mayors trickled into the room. The mayor also has refurbished parts of the 191-year-old building, sometimes by hitting up his friends for charity. The mayor is an avid art lover, and he has plastered the walls of City Hall with many of his favorite pieces, some of them on loan from city museums. Roy Lichtenstein is one of the mayor's favorites. As aides take visitors around the building, they sound like guides at an art museum. Aides say the mayor's lack of an office is a reflection of the humility with which he views his job. His billions notwithstanding, Bloomberg is a public servant. He takes the subway to work every morning, and he takes only a ceremonial salary from the city: At his request, the mayor's salary has been reduced for the current term to $1 a year. And Bloomberg still hasn't cashed the paycheck for his first year of service. Instead, the check for 93 cents (seven cents were deducted for taxes) hangs framed on a wall in City Hall. "I've shared the great American dream almost more than anybody else, and it's time to give back," Bloomberg said. "That's why I went into public service." Perhaps most importantly, however, Bloomberg's wealth means that he does not do much of what is a hallmark of the life of nearly every other politician in America: fund raising. Because Bloomberg does not need to rely on others to finance his campaigns-he is worth an estimated $4.5 billion and has shown his willingness to spend plenty of cash to finance his campaigns-the mayor does not need to cow-tow to many of the special-interest groups that typically hold mayors hostage. "Every other politician I've ever dealt with has had to maintain active relationships with a range of individuals to raise funds for their re-election or their election campaigns," said Michael Miller, the executive vice president of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. "That's not true with Mike Bloomberg. Mike Bloomberg is not dependent on individuals for the funding of his campaign. So he can cut to the chase, and he takes a different approach than all his predecessors. He is not worried about where his dollars can come from for his next campaign." In his two years in office, Bloomberg has run the city much like he ran his financial-services empire: as a businessman. Insiders say that strategy has paid off. The biggest challenge Bloomberg faced when he was sworn in at midnight on January 1, 2002 was the city's budget deficit, which stood at a projected $6 billion for the year. The Sept. 11 attacks had hit the city hard, but New York was suffering more from the loss of jobs and tax revenue that followed the dot.com bust. The markets had fallen, unemployment was up and many businesses had relocated out of the city and downsized their New York offices and staffs. Like any good businessman, Bloomberg knew he needed to cut spending and increase revenues. But New York City is not a corporation, and the mayor recognized that only so many services could be cut in New York before the city of 8 million would suffer. The last time New York faced such a huge budget deficit, in the 1970s, services were cut and quality of life in the city dropped markedly. Things really only got significantly better under Giuliani, who earned much praise for doing little things that raised quality of life (famously, he cracked down on the squeegee men who cleaned drivers' windshields at red lights and then demanded money) and helped bring crime to historic lows. So Bloomberg did not want to see the city decline by foregoing the little things. So he did a few big things. He raised property taxes by 18.5 percent, the largest property tax hike in New York City history. He slashed spending, trimmed municipal jobs and played hardball with the city's unions, some of the nation's largest. And when he pushed a little too far-as when he decided to reduce trash collection to what many city residents considered unmanageably infrequent intervals-city residents' protests brought him back in line. And sometimes they didn't. One of the mayor's cost-cutting measures was the closure of a few of the city's fire departments-a huge political no-no in New York after the deaths of hundreds of firefighters on Sept. 11. Demonstrators protested, but Bloomberg held firm. The sober businessman looked at everything as black or red. Even when New York was blanketed in white under near-record snowfalls last winter, Bloomberg put things in perspective by announcing that every inch of snow to fall in New York would cost the city approximately $1 million. The mayor also announced cutbacks in police hiring, and many worried that fewer police on the streets combined with rising unemployment and an enduring recession would bring crime back up in the city. But crime continued to drop, thanks in large part to the continued implementation of Compstat, a computer mapping system that identifies crime patterns based on place, time and type of crime and allocates police resources accordingly. Under Bloomberg, crime has dropped about 10 percent. Another major achievement was Bloomberg's success in taking over control of the city's schools, an accomplishment that 20 years' worth of mayors had tried and failed to do. Now the mayor faces a looming battle with Gov. George Pataki over financing for education, after a recent court decision determined that the state was shortchanging the city when it came to the city's schools. The matter of where the money would come from to repair those funding inequities was left unclear, and the mayor's interests are pitted against the governor's in this political confrontation. With over 1 million children in the city's public education system, Bloomberg's future could hinge on the outcome of this struggle with the state, and on his management of the city's schools. "Taking over the school system was a historic accomplishment," Arzt said. "Koch tried, other mayors tried, but they were not able to accomplish it in the legislature," the state assembly in Albany. "The assembly was not a fan of Giuliani, but they agreed to give that authority to Bloomberg." The upshot, Arzt said, is that with the mayor now in direct control of schools, the city has someone to blame if they fail. "Previously, you had an amorphous Board of Education," he said. "Now, the mayor's reputation in the educational arena rises and falls on the schools' performance." By most measures, Bloomberg has done a good job. The city's finances largely have stabilized without a significant impact on city services. The problem for Bloomberg, say many pollsters and political observers, is that corporate bosses don't make very good politicians, and Bloomberg still has a lot to learn. "He's basically done the difficult things," said NYU's Moss. "Bloomberg's personality is that of a guy who does the tough things and is non-confrontational with public. Part of the problem is he doesn't really work hard to pander to people." That could make the difference come re-election time in 2005. "The first problem in public life is getting elected," said Henry Sheinkopf, a Democratic political consultant. "People don't vote for people they don't like, and people don't like him. I don't know why." Bloomberg only was able to get elected the first time only because he spent nearly $80 million and because 3,000 New Yorkers had just been killed, Sheinkopf said. But Bloomberg's immense wealth and his proven willingness to use it for political campaigning is no small matter. Already, observers say, potential candidates are ruling out runs for mayor in 2005 because they have little hope of raising enough funds to match the power of Bloomberg's formidable war chest. Now, Bloomberg's reputation with voters rests not so much on what he has or hasn't done for the city, but on the public's perception of him. That's why the Thanksgiving dinner question in the Quinnipiac poll pointed to the crux of Bloomberg's problem. "On substance he's No. 1," said Koch, who counts himself among Bloomberg's fans. As for Bloomberg's popularity among voters, Koch said, "He's better with people now than he had been." Sheinkopf explained, "New Yorkers expect their mayor to be every place at all times-that if there is a fire at three in the morning, the mayor will be there. The problem is that they don't get the sense from Bloomberg that he is," Sheinkopf said. "He needs to convince people he's likeable and he's doing some nice things. He has done some nice things, but he is not likeable, so they're not crediting him sufficiently." Residents of the city who live outside of Manhattan feel neglected by the mayor, Sheinkopf said. Bloomberg needs to shed that image if he is to be re-elected. The mayor seems to be trying. On a recent Sunday, Bloomberg started off the day visiting a police officer in the hospital who had been shot the night before, then gave a speech in a Haitain church, attended a breakfast at the Jewish community council in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, went sledding in a public park, took his youngest daughter to a hockey game, gave away toys at a charity event, and delivered a lecture at a historical center in Bayside, Queens. He said he made it home by 11. Observers say Bloomberg has gotten better at showing his warmth and compassion-and he's even started to pander a little bit more. And now he has Koch pledging to be his advance man on the next campaign. So can Bloomberg win again? Judging from the wide disagreement among experts about his chances, it's anybody's guess. "Last time I promised things," Bloomberg said of the 2001 campaign. "This time, I will be judged by whether I delivered on those promises. And I think the record is going to show that, number one, we did, and number two, this city is going in the right direction and that people will want to continue the leadership that has taken them there." ----------------------- Bloomberg and the Jews By URIEL HEILMAN Mayor Michael Bloomberg may be Jewish, but in a city where even the non-Jews speak some Yiddish, where bagels are the bread of choice, and where no-parking rules are suspended for the Jewish holidays, being a Jew doesn't mean that much. Bloomberg is New York's third Jewish mayor, and he beat a Jewish opponent to win the election. He grew up in a Conservative synagogue, came from a kosher home, and is a member of one of Manhattan's most prestigious Reform congregations, Temple Emanu-El. But few Jewish voters point to religious background anymore as a reason for voting for a Jewish candidate, and the Jewish vote in the last mayoral election split roughly evenly between Bloomberg and Mark Green. More important than faith, Jewish voters care about what their mayor can do for them. On that count, community insiders say the mayor generally has been quick to respond to the needs of the city's 1 million Jews. "I think he's learned a lot about the Jewish community," said William Rapfogel, the executive director of Metropolitan Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty. "From what I've seen, he's been very responsive to us." The mayor also has been applauded by the city's Jews for his steadfast support of Israel. Bloomberg has been to the Jewish state three times since he was elected, and on his most recent trip, at the end of November, the mayor donated a new wing at Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital in honor of his mother's birthday. "These are times that really require Americans, particularly Jewish Americans, to stand up and be counted," Bloomberg said in a recent interview. Especially in light of the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe, Bloomberg said, "It's important for the Israeli people to understand that they have a friend in America. It's also important for Americans to know and be reminded that their freedoms depend on Israel's survival as well. Terrorism in anyplace is terrorism everyplace." "On the issues of concern to our community," observed Michael Miller, the executive vice president of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, "the mayor has said the right things, done the right things, and the Jewish community is appreciative of where he has been." Bloomberg has given away hundreds of million of dollars to charity, with some of that going to Jewish causes. He is vice chairman of the board of New York's Jewish Museum, and during the campaign his staff said Bloomberg gave money to the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish World Service and American Friends of the Israel Museum, among others. But some say Bloomberg was not very involved in Jewish causes or Jewish communal life in the city before he became mayor, which is unusual for such a wealthy, philanthropic Jew. And there are some things the mayor has been slow to learn, they say, particularly when it comes to Jews outside of Manhattan. "He doesn't know much about the Russian Jew living in Brighton Beach, or the chasid living in Brooklyn, or the Holocaust survivor living in Queens," said one Jewish community official. Observers say Bloomberg's lack of pandering has hurt him in the boroughs outside of Manhattan. "Giuliani pandered a hell of a lot more, and he had the economy working with him," said a Jewish community official. "But you can't pander when you're making budget cuts." But Miller said the mayor is getting better. "He's been at it for almost two years and he's hit his stride," Miller said. "He does participate more actively now in community-based events than when he first started." Even though he's not the mayor's official Jewish community liaison, most Jewish leaders still use Jonathan Greenspun, commissioner of the mayor's community assistance unit, to get their concerns through to City Hall. Greenspun, an Orthodox Jew, used to be Gov. George Pataki's outreach person to the Jewish community, and the community assistance unit is the mayor's central address for community complaints, so in many ways Greenspun represents the perfect address for the city's Jews to kvetch. The young commissioner, who as a child went to a Lubavitcher yeshiva in Brooklyn, said he understands the Jewish community will continue to use him to access the mayor, even though that is not explicitly part of his job. "People get comfortable with a person's management style, and Jews are generally nervous about changes," Greenspun said. "The best thing you can offer the Jewish community-and the general community-is access." On that count, Miller says, Bloomberg has done a good job. "We have a high level of access to the mayor and to his administration," Miller said. "I think that's the pivotal issue for members of our community: whether we can get the ear of the mayor."