And the gaffes should keep the press predators interested, at least for a while. It turns out that despite living in New York for more than 30 years, the new mayor still has a bit to learn about the city. When I talked with him on Christmas Day about the swearing-in, he thought the ball would be dropped on New Year’s Eve in Herald Square, the second time he made that mistake in as many days. The new mayor was off by eight blocks and a million miles of New York lore.
But despite this slip–and many rookie errors to come–Bloomberg is making the right moves so far as he introduces himself to a city still badly bruised by Sept. 11. This is critical, not just for New York but for the country. As the financial capital of the United States, New York’s health is essential to any national recovery.
Even with financial services dispersed (thanks in part to a computer terminal on the desk of traders everywhere developed by a guy named Bloomberg), the importance of New York, real and symbolic, remains unparalleled. And somehow, the city has seemed to get the mayor it needs in recent years. Rudy Giuliani’s background was perfect for reducing crime; Bloomberg’s is perfect for managing the city’s precarious finances and convincing businesses to stay in New York.
The key line in the inaugural address was when the new mayor talked about inflicting “short term pain” for “long term gain.” This clearly signaled that Bloomberg will be very tough in the upcoming trifecta of labor negotiations with the police, fire and teachers unions. He made it clear that the whole city will have to get by on less for a while, and that he will use his political capital and honeymoon to make tough choices.
SHARPENING THE KNIFE
Most strikingly, Bloomberg announced that he would cut the mayoral staff by 20 percent and that he expects members of the City Council and the commissioners of other agencies to do the same with their administrative staffs. This is a huge percentage in any organization, but especially in government. It will mean gargantuan battles in department after department, as city employees — facing a private sector job market where 100,000 jobs have been lost since September 11–struggle to save their jobs from a knife-wielding billionaire. These bureaucrats know every survival strategy in the book, including where to call reporters to bellyache.
But Bloomberg needs to close a $3 billion-plus budget deficit, and unlike Giuliani he has no incentive to kick the problem down the road. As he stated clearly in his address, raising taxes is not an option. That means holding the line on payroll (the biggest budget item by far) and organizing a team to lobby Washington.
Perhaps the most interesting part of Bloomberg’s speech was when he emphasized that President Bush, while deserving praise for visiting New York in its time of need, will be called to account for what Bloomberg described as the president’s “explicit” pledge to help New York. On September 14, Bush told the New York congressional delegation that $20 billion would be forthcoming; since then, Giuliani has not wanted to complain publicly that Bush was backing off his pledge. Bloomberg signaled, in a code unmistakable to politicians and the press, that he will go public in reminding Bush of his promise.
But the broader message was that Bloomberg will be a behind-the-scenes mayor, working with New York Gov. George Pataki (who has feuded with Giuliani in the past) and other key players to help the city. Bloomberg made a point of saying that New York politicians no longer have to luxury to fight with each other, and he’s right: They need all their strength to fight people like Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who compared Ground Zero to the site of a hurricane in Mississippi, with the implication that it won’t take anywhere near $20 billion to fix.
SETTING A TONE
How well do Bloomberg’s skills match that challenge? It’s hard to say.
His employees at Bloomberg L.P. say he is a master salesman, though customers tend to believe that his core product, the so-called “Bloomberg box,” essentially sells itself (with the help of a terrific customer service department). The role of political conciliator is something almost entirely new for him; it has no clear parallel in the business world. But so far, Bloomberg has done well at it, reaching out to constituencies in New York that hadn’t heard from the mayor in eight years. Of course, this is one area (and perhaps the only area) where he doesn’t have a hard act to follow.
But it may be that Bloomberg soon finds that confrontation is the only way to govern in a fractious place like New York City. In-your-face mayors (Giuliani and Ed Koch) have succeeded much better than conciliatory ones (David Dinkins and Abe Beame) in the last quarter century. Of course if conciliation fails, Bloomberg could likely switch styles quickly; he comes out of a highly confrontational Wall Street culture and has never been reluctant to speak his mind.
Giuliani’s greatest regret as mayor is that he couldn’t get control of the school system; he never convinced the New York State Assembly to take power away from the Board of Education and make the mayor accountable, as is now the case in Chicago and other cities. Bloomberg made a big point in his inaugural address of saying that he, too, will seek such control and accountability. It may be that Bloomberg’s softer, more low key approach will actually get this much-needed reform through, though he shouldn’t bet the Brooklyn Bridge on it.
ESCAPING RUDY’S SHADOW
In the meantime, I think Bloomberg’s biggest problem will not be where he tries to emulate Giuliani — like keeping the pressure on to reduce crime — but where he tries to show he’s different. In November, he told me that he simply wasn’t going to be “on call” as much as Giuliani, rushing to the scene of this or that, and that New Yorkers would just have to get used to his need for a private life, including trips to his vacation homes in Aspen and Bermuda.
They will get used to it — until something happens. The first time a cop gets shot while Bloomberg is schussing down a ski slope and the mayor doesn’t immediately fly back to New York …Well, you don’t have to be Jimmy Breslin to know what will happen next. The pounding he’d take for being an out-of-touch socialite would not just sting, it would make it much harder to enact the rest of his belt-tightening agenda.
Of course Bloomberg has a private plane (which he occasionally pilots himself); he can, if he’s not too stubborn, scoot back to New York in the same news cycle and limit any damage. He has vowed to avoid the silly posturing that turns off voters nowadays (never making a secret, for instance, that he prefers the Boston Red Sox to the Yankees), but visiting hospitalized city workers is not just symbolic; it’s part of the process of connecting with the city that will take some time.
PUSHING AHEAD
To help, Bloomberg has surrounded himself with a strong team that, barring a return to some of the gaffes of the campaign, should keep him out of trouble most of the time. His top appointments have been particularly good. Ray Kelly, the new police chief, held the same job at the end of the Dinkins Administration, where he initiated many of the crime reduction strategies later credited to Giuliani. Nicholas Scoppetta, the new fire chief, has no experience as a firefighter (neither did several of his predecessors) but he did a terrific job under Giuliani straightening out New York’s troubled child welfare department.
Bloomberg, totally lacking in political experience, reminds me a bit of Bush when he became governor of Texas in 1994, except that Bloomberg’s business success (and command of the details of budgets) is much greater than was Bush’s. Both men assembled strong teams, applied common sense to government and didn’t worry much about their short-term political fortunes.
None of this may help him much. Giuliani had the wind at his back for eight years; Bloomberg has it in his face. Even so, the new mayor confronted much steeper odds in his business, not just in getting it off the ground but in keeping it alive. Most of his competitors in the financial data business fell by the wayside amid the warp speed of technological change; Bloomberg adjusted repeatedly and profited handsomely.
His voice is reedy, his soundbites boring and his stage presence a pale shadow of his predecessor, but Mike Bloomberg — “Mayor Mike,” as he prefers — may be just the man to inflict the pain that everyone knows is coming. He’ll never be as beloved as Giuliani, he figures, so why even try?
