Hooray for Mayor Bloomberg. He single-handedly saved the
Yankees from certain defeat against the Red Sox by helping to
land pitcher Al Leiter (at least that's the impression I had
looking at the local front pages). Of course, skeptics will say
that while Mr. Bloomberg may have made a few phone calls, the
Yankees, with their depleted pitching staff, had already bid for
Mr. Leiter's services. Nevertheless, this is an election year and
campaign staffers are on overtime digging up good news on all the
candidates running for mayor.
Billionaire Bloomberg has already spent millions on his
re-election bid, and his rising poll numbers seem to indicate
that it's money well spent. Polls, however, can be deceiving. The
chatter I hear from former Bloomberg supporters who will not be
voting for him in the GOP primary come September should boost the
spirits of rival Thomas Ognibene.
Four of the five borough Republican county leaders have endorsed
Mayor Bloomberg, with Queens the lone holdout. But some Staten
Island Republicans have no intention of following their county
leadership, and I am one of them.
A member of a fraternal organization on Staten Island told me the
group has been harassed by the police department, that in the
past year it has been fined $1,500 for a variety of minor
offenses, such as a fruit fly being found in a liqueur bottle.
While Mr. Bloomberg may have collected $1,500, I fear he has lost
hundreds of votes. Many residents of the south shore, which is
not a high crime area, feel that they've been swamped by police
officers looking not for criminals but for average citizens
committing parking violations. Catching a criminal does not bring
the city money, but parking summonses do.
A senior citizen friend from Bayside, Queens, Dorothy Wachsstock,
is even more vehement about the mayor. She writes, "As a
registered Republican, I never would have voted for Mayor
Bloomberg without the endorsement of Mayor Giuliani. We all knew
that he was really a Democrat and took the easy way to run for
election without having to participate in a Democrat primary.
Within a short time of his election, Mayor Bloomberg decided to
become the father of all and put many people out of business with
his smoking ban.
"Small family restaurants lost the business of the fathers
at the bars, who used to have a drink and a cigarette while the
family sat at the tables till the orders came. Even restaurants
that had special places for smokers are quite empty. Thus, prices
rose for the middle class who could not afford Tavern on the
Green or such expensive places.
"It may not have affected the wealthy who dined in
Manhattan, but it hurt the outer middle-class boroughs. Yet, when
the mayor was at a party of elites and they were smoking cigars,
he turned his back and told reporters that he didn't see it. Ask
the bar owner who received a ticket for an empty ashtray how he
feels about Mayor Bloomberg."
Renee Diaz of St. George said the mayor was more concerned with
his legacy, spending a fortune hyping the West Side stadium and
the Olympics, than caring about the little guys' needs. She said
she thought Mr. Bloomberg was a businessman who knew the danger
of high taxes, and yet he's raised taxes instead of cutting
wasteful spending.
I agree, and one of my biggest complaints about Mr. Bloomberg is
that he did not fight against the subway fare increase even
though a judge ruled that the MTA had cooked the books. Nor did
he heed the pleas of Brooklyn residents who warned that closing
the firehouses in Williamsburg would endanger their lives. A
mayor should be more concerned with the issues that matter to the
little guy, not the acquisition of more tourist attractions.
Mr. Bloomberg has apparently also ticked off all of us in the
anti-abortion movement, and many of us are registered
Republicans. If Mr. Bloomberg plans to run again as a Republican,
he may face a legitimate challenge from the only true
conservative running, Mr. Ognibene.
He may not have Mr. Bloomberg's millions, but he's a native New
Yorker. Despite the Leiter/Yankee hype, Bloomberg is from a
suburb of ... Boston.