Independence Makes Bloomberg's Day

By Jacqueline Salit - Newsday -  Nov 14, 2001

  Last week I got a call from a well-placed political consultant who observed that Mike Bloomberg's margin of victory was the 60,000 votes that had come in on the Independence Party line. Noting that the Liberal party had provided the margin for Rudy Giuliani in 1993, catapulting party leader Ray Harding to a position of quasi-kingmaker, this caller offered me some advice on what I should do to fill Harding's shoes.

            "You have to drink your scotch neat, smoke Camels without filters and put on weight," he said. I replied that I currently drink my scotch neat, don't smoke and hope to God I don't gain weight.

            More than my having a few single malts without ice, the Independence Party doesn't intend to fill the Liberal Party's shoes. Still, Independence did supplant it as the pivotal New York City minor party.

            In the 1993 mayoral election, which Giuliani won by 50,000 votes, the liberals polled 62,000 votes for the new mayor. Harding's son and Liberal Party officials were rewarded with key posts in the new administration

            The Independence Party, however, isn't interested in patronage and influence peddling. It's a party propelled by an independent movement that wants partisanship and patronage out of politics. That sentiment - which could be called the anti-partisan factor - was the single biggest element of the Bloomberg victory.

            New York politics being what they are, the causes of Bloomberg's win are in dispute. Some argue that Rudy Giuliani was the kingmaker. Others insist that Queens gave the margin of victory, as if Queens was a political category rather than a place where people live. But new factors were at work, too. According to exit polls, upwards of 16 percent of the electorate on Nov. 6 were independents; 60 percent of independents went for Bloomberg.

            There was some debate inside the Bloomberg campaign about the importance of the independent vote. In one strategy meeting, consultant David Garth asserted that Bloomberg needed the Independence Party for the "exit voter" - meaning the Democrat who wanted to vote for him but wouldn't vote Republican.

            Certainly, the Independence Party and its crucial Column C  played that role for black and white liberal voters, among others. But the Independence Party was also Mike Bloomberg's voice to the independent voter, which included not just Independence Party registrants - 50,000 in the city - but the nearly 70,000 voters who declined to register into any party, known generally as independents or "blanks." These voters are more than just people who "skew" one way or another between the two major parties. Independents don't like parties. They don't like partisanship. Bloomberg had to speak to them based on their concerns.

            With a new eye on that voter, the Bloomberg campaign created direct mail that emphasized his support for a switch to nonpartisan municipal elections (a commitment he reiterated on "Meet the Press" last Sunday). Independence Party volunteers called "blanks" through the summer and fall leading with Bloomberg's support for election reform and keying on the fact that he had sought out the Independence Party line to make a statement about his political beliefs. Independents began to form the core of his support. Democrats didn't break for him until the end. Even the Republicans, who knew Bloomberg joined the GOP simply to run, were "soft" until Giuliani and Gov. George Pataki endorsed him.

            For all the talk about Bloomberg being a Republican, he is no more a Republican than I am the Liberal Party's Ray Harding. Bloomberg's win was the product of a Democratic Party implosion and a Republican Party so weak that he could change his registration and take it over, combined with a surge of anti-partisanship by independent voters. Giuliani might have been a Republican who got the Liberal Party line. Mike Bloomberg is an Independent who got the Republican line.

            So, who is mayor-elect Mike Bloomberg? He is what the sign says: a leader, not a politician. He's also kind of a work in progress. As with the movement for political reform fostered by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and the victory of Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, the independents in New York City made him viable. The considerable numbers of independents and the spirit of anti-machine anti-partisanship that spread to so many rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans helped put him in office.