Analysis: NYC Mayor Not Humbled by Close Election
Analysis: NYC mayor not humbled by close election, won't change governing style
After Mayor Michael Bloomberg was nearly unseated by his little-known challenger, the ever-confident billionaire declared it a "great week" and threw a ticker-tape parade.
Granted, the over-the-top celebration was for the Yankees, who had just won the World Series for the first time in Bloomberg's eight years.
But it might as well have been a bash for the 67-year-old mayor, who associates say has not been even slightly humbled by the closer-than-expected finish to his re-election bid Tuesday, and has no qualms about governing the way he pleases.
The associates say that Bloomberg believes that once you win, people expect you to lead whether you got there by 5 points, as he did this year, or 3 points or nearly 20 points, as he did in his first two elections.
"This is New York — people might not like your attitude, but what New Yorkers will not accept is a mayor who is gazing at his navel and wondering about how he got where he is," said Bill Cunningham, a former Bloomberg adviser. "They expect leadership."
The founder of Bloomberg LP, whose fortune is estimated at $17.5 billion, is likely to have poured more than $100 million into his bid for a third term, when all the expenses come in. That's more than 10 times what his Democratic challenger, William Thompson Jr., was able to spend, relying on a mix of donations and public matching funds.
Bloomberg's record-setting spending — more than any other self-financed bid for office in U.S. history — only got him a five-point win, a difference of about 50,000 votes. While close re-elections can sometimes cause the winners to second-guess themselves and do some soul-searching about how to go forward, the mayor is not that type.
"I am who I am, I say what I believe," Bloomberg said this week. "My only focus is to try to make this city better."
Bloomberg has never really believed that he needed overwhelming support to get things done. Sometimes that instinct has been right; other times it has bred overconfidence and led to failure.
