Mayor Bloomberg is running on the Republican ballot line, but that doesn’t mean he has the unshakable support of Republican New Yorkers — nor is he getting it from the middle class.

Via Urban Elephants:

Yesterday’s NY Post ran the first Main Stream Media reporting of “independent” Mayor, Michael Bloomberg’s, anti-Republican policies and tactics. There were two stories. The first is here where Bloomberg’s disdain for Middle-Class concerns is causing a rift in Staten Island…

But some Republican leaders say the mayor had better be concerned because there’s a surprising backlash brewing among his middle-class base.

“People feel they’re getting nickel-and-dimed to death,” said one veteran Republican official. “They’re upset about higher property taxes, higher water bills, traffic tickets. They might just stay home [on Election Day].”

The mayor’s abandonment of the Republican Party during his flirtation with a presidential run didn’t go unnoticed.

…I would add that those feelings are not contained to Staten Island, but are felt in every Middle-Class neighborhood in the Five Boroughs. We’ve made this point recently on UE.

The next NY Post story is here and it is the first reporting of Bloomberg’s use of his own personal funds to undermine the Queens GOP, more than likely because its Chairman, Phil Ragusa, decided to make a principled fight against the tax-and-spend Liberal during the Republican nominating process for the office of Mayor…

Mayor Bloomberg’s free-flowing campaign money is creating dissent among Republicans in Queens.

Supporters of veteran Queens County GOP chair Phil Ragusa are angered that Bloomberg campaign workers gathered signatures for his perennial challenger, Queens GOP fixture Bart Haggerty, while signing up backers for the mayor earlier this summer.

Ragusa was the lone GOP holdout when Bloomberg asked county leaders to let him run on the party’s ballot line.

…we’ve also been talking about this issue on UE. I’m glad the real story is starting to come out - that Michael Bloomberg’s funds are being used to try to undermine the Queens GOP. Although his campaign people have both publicly and privately denied that this occurred, the facts are in the petitions. Every petition that was carried by the existing leadership’s challengers was carried by a Bloomberg worker and was coordinated by Bart Haggarty, a highly paid staffer for Bloomberg’s re-election team - who’s office is located right in the heart of Queens County and who is PERSONALLY running against Ragusa’s existing Queens organization.

Middle-Class voters who are frustrated with the excessive level of our City’s taxation, fines and fees are the swing vote in this year’s election and have been the difference in both of Bloomberg’s victorious electoral efforts. But starting with when the billionaire politician broke from his pledge NOT to raise taxes in 2002, the Mayor has kept up the tax and spend momentum and has continually frustrated the average New Yorker. The same class of voter is also upset about the Mayor’s overturing of their will to see two-term term limits in place, but with the economy the way it is, these voter’s main concerns involve their pocket-books. The massive increase in the sales tax, recently passed by the Council and Mayor, appears to be the “straw that broke the camel’s back.”

These voters are often registered Republicans and, combined with Bloomberg’s personal spending vendetta against Phil Ragusa and the Queens GOP, they are more than likely just going to stay home in November.

Many of these Middle-Class moderates now realize that a Bloomberg third term will not be materially different in policy than a first term by his likely Democratic opponent, Bill Thompson. Honestly, it’s my personal view that no Democrat could have ever gotten away with the types of massive tax and spending increases as this Mayor has - both because he’s disingenuously positioned himself as a moderate and because his resources have kept the media silent on his long list of shortcomings when it comes to executive management. Mayor Bloomberg has done MORE WITH MORE over the last 8 years, instead of the “do more with less” promise he made in 2001.

Middle-Class and Republican voters, both of whom are the main tax contributors for the billionaire’s reckless spending policies, are fed-up and I’m confident that the Bloomberg camp already knows this fact all too well from internal polling. That is why one shouldn’t be surprised to see the two-term incumbent doubling his 2001 campaign spending this year and why the Mayor has attempted to change the course of the conversation away from property and sales taxes to items like the MTA.

Bloomberg is facing an uphill battle for re-election because he has disappointed both the Political Center and Right of NYC. If the Comptroller can gain some momentum after Primary Day on Tuesday, Bloomberg could be looking at his first electoral loss as a politician…