Via Pareene and Gawker:

Tomorrow is Election Day! You will probably not vote, because there are no contested races for anything important in 90% of the nation. But if you are a New Yorker, we have one message: don’t vote for Michael Bloomberg.

You know those idiots who don’t know anything about politics but think it sounds smart to say “I am a social liberal and an economic conservative?” Bloomberg is the candidate for them, if they love a liberal nanny state and a conservative religious fervor for the eternal goodness of private enterprise.

For all the talk of Bloomberg the power-player who at least gets things done without worrying about the unions and special interests, he’s been unable to win any political battle with anyone he couldn’t literally buy off. Like Sheldon Silver, who (thankfully) killed the West Side Stadium and (annoyingly) ended all that “Congestion Pricing” talk. And those unions and special interests were just bought off, which worked fine back when the boom whose end Bloomberg never saw coming was in full swing.
Read rest of story…

* Bloomberg asked Lance Armstrong to ask Daily News reporter Celeste Katz if she will vote for him on Tuesday:

* A Marist Poll released today shows Bloomberg leading Thompson by 15 percentage points. An internal poll the Thompson campaign released last night showed Bloomberg leading by only 3 to 7 percentage points.

* Meredith Kolodner reports that a study by the Dept. of Education shows charter schools performing worse than public schools, and is doing a poor job of reaching out to special-education children and English language learners. Mayor Bloomberg has called for the state to lift its cap of 200 charter schools.

* Yoav Gonen reports in the Post that the National Center for Education Statistics, which compared state testing standards between 2005 and 2007, found that New York has set its benchmarks for student proficiency in math and reading well below of a gold-standard national test. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said states are setting the bar too low and are “lying to our children when we tell them they’re proficient but they’re not achieving at a level that will prepare them for success once they graduate.”

* Elizabeth Benjamin reports that SEIU 1199 is officially staying neutral in the mayor’s race, despite opposing Bloomberg’s term limits extension and voting in favor of giving Bill Thompson the WFP nod this summer. Another union staying neutral? The UFT — just when the teachers’ contract is set to end.

* David Chen: “A Mayor Thompson would be likely to focus on quality of life concerns, like water rates or parking tickets. Major decisions on schools, housing and other issues would probably be an exercise in consensus, with more participation by advocates and citizens.”

* Suzannah B. Troy is capturing some of the protests today, and interviews Brenda Stokely:

Rob Bennett for The New York Times

Via Nicholas Confessore and Michael Barabaro in The New York Times:

A few weeks ago, the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, the influential pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, came to a difficult decision, one he had wrestled with all summer.

He would not endorse William C. Thompson Jr., the city comptroller and a longtime friend and ally, for mayor, as he had promised Mr. Thompson last spring. Instead, he would endorse Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Mr. Thompson was furious at the betrayal. But what he did not know was that Mr. Bloomberg gave a $1 million donation to the church’s development corporation — roughly 10 percent of its annual budget — with the implicit promise of more to come.

“What could I say to a man who was mayor, and was supportive of a lot of programs that are important to me?” Mr. Butts said in an interview before he endorsed Mr. Bloomberg.

In his quest for a third term, Mr. Bloomberg has deprived Mr. Thompson of what many once regarded as his political birthright: the blessings of the city’s most powerful black ministers, who together preach to tens of thousands of congregants each week. And to win them over, he has deployed an unusual combination of city money, private philanthropy, political appointments and personal attention, creating a web of ties to black clergy members that is virtually unheard of for a white elected official in New York City.

Some prominent ministers have been appointed by Mr. Bloomberg to influential city boards and committees. Others have enjoyed the administration’s help in buying city property or winning zoning concessions for pet projects. A few of the largest institutions, including Abyssinian and the Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral in Jamaica, Queens, have taken in millions of dollars in contracts to provide city services during Mr. Bloomberg’s eight years in office.

Looming over it all is Mr. Bloomberg’s dazzling wealth, whether already bestowed — as in the case of Mr. Butts — or hoped for down the line.

“We have to come to his foundation sooner or later,” said the Rev. Timothy Birkett, pastor of the Church Alive Community Church in the Bronx, who is backing the mayor this year. “We hope that he will be receptive.”

Those who support Mr. Bloomberg say that the mayor has earned their endorsements strictly on the merits of his record in office, especially on education and crime. But some critics say the outpouring of support owes more to the dependence of many black churches on a friendly ear at City Hall.

“Some of these endorsements that we see are indicative of a faith statement by some of our religious leaders,” said the Rev. Clinton M. Miller, a protégé of Mr. Butts and the pastor of Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn. “The statement is, who do I trust more, in terms of how I am going to get my projects done?” Mr. Miller said. “The choice is between a municipality and God.”

Aides to Mr. Bloomberg say that mutual respect, not financial ties, binds the mayor to the clergymen; they point out that some of the churches also received large contracts before Mr. Bloomberg took office.

Deputy Mayor Dennis M. Walcott said the relationship “really goes beyond contracts,” adding that it is based on “an ongoing line of communication we have with important individuals who have important constituencies, and we’re very proud of that.”

At moments of racial tension that might have swamped a different white mayor, Mr. Bloomberg has rarely faced the kind of personal criticism from prominent black ministers that wounded his predecessors, like Rudolph W. Giuliani, whom Mr. Butts once publicly branded a racist.

That contrast was on display last week when Mr. Bloomberg appeared at a campaign event with Mr. Giuliani, who suggested to a mostly white, Jewish audience in Brooklyn that “the wrong political leadership” could return New Yorkers to the days of “fear of going out at night and walking the streets.”

Several black elected officials immediately denounced the comments as race-baiting. But no prominent black pastors demanded that the mayor disavow the comments.

[See the rest of the story at The New York Times]

Via The New York Times:

Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark has been one of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s most vocal supporters this campaign season, stumping with him on at least four occasions, including a whirlwind tour of African-American churches in Queens on Sunday.

Perhaps Mr. Booker was trying to show some gratitude.

On April 17, Mr. Booker, a Democrat, crossed party and state lines by endorsing Mr. Bloomberg, an independent running as a Republican, in Harlem. About a month later, Mr. Bloomberg’s longtime accountant contributed $26,000 — the maximum allowable — to Mr. Booker’s re-election committee next year, according to campaign finance records.

Technically, the contribution to Mr. Booker’s 10-member slate, which includes 9 Municipal Council candidates, was made by Martin J. Geller, Mr. Bloomberg’s accountant. But Mr. Geller has long had a habit of contributing money to candidates or committees that the mayor supports, with $100,000 in 2007 to Senate Republicans in Albany being one notable example.

The contribution is only the second one that Mr. Geller has made anyone in New Jersey politics. In 2005, he gave $2,000 to the campaign efforts of the Assembly Republicans in Trenton. At that time, Mr. Bloomberg was still registered as a Republican.

When asked about whether there was a quid pro quo, Howard Wolfson, the Bloomberg campaign’s chief media strategist, said: “As Mayor Booker made clear this past Sunday, he and Mayor Bloomberg formed a friendship three years ago when he was first elected to office, and have worked together on a number of issues since, including gun violence and education reform. They form a mutual admiration society, and so it’s not surprising that the two mayors would be supporting one another.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Booker, Desiree Peterkin Bell, added that several members of Mr. Booker’s staff have worked in the Bloomberg administration.

“Since 2006, both men have publicly praised and respected each other’s leadership — they have and both will continue to be supportive of each other in the future,” she said in a statement.

Mr. Booker is hardly the only Democratic elected official who has not supported William C. Thompson Jr., Mr. Bloomberg’s Democratic opponent. But he has been one of Mr. Bloomberg’s most avid supporters, regardless of party affiliation, and has campaigned almost as much in New York recently for Mr. Bloomberg as he has in New Jersey on behalf of Gov. Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat.

Never was Mr. Booker more effusive, perhaps, than on Sunday when he traveled with Mr. Bloomberg to African-American churches in Queens, presumably to put some distance between some controversial remarks that former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani had made the week before about crime when he was campaigning with Mr. Bloomberg.

“My big-brother mayor,” Mr. Booker said in describing Mr. Bloomberg, during a rousing address at Rev. Floyd H. Flake’s Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral in Jamaica, Queens.

When told of the contribution, Anne Fenton, a spokeswoman for Mr. Thompson, said, “Today’s revelation that Mike Bloomberg has paid for the endorsement of Newark Mayor Cory Booker is scandalous. It proves Bloomberg is willing to do anything to win this election and calls into question many of the supporters who have stood beside him.”

There are no other records, at least so far, showing that other politicians who have endorsed Mr. Bloomberg have also received contributions in recent months. But campaign finance experts caution that a full accounting won’t be available until after the election.

Politics is a great test of character: What will a politician say or do to get to wherever s/he wants to go? Where is the bottom line? Is there one?

Nowhere is a politician’s character tested as visibly and severely than in an election campaign. The office holder generally has the time, space, and privacy to bob and weave, tack and trim; the campaign is a desperate, winner-take-all, loser-go-home affair.

My wife and I began as Hillary Clinton supporters. Four more years of Republican misrule would finish the country and neither of us thought Obama could win a general election. (Sometimes The People surprise and delight you.) A reporter asked Hillary “You said you’d take Senator Obama at his word that he’s not…a Muslim. You don’t believe that he’s…,”

“No. No, there is nothing to base that on. As far as I know.”

We looked at one another and decided almost simultaneously that as much as we respected her intelligence and determination, and as crucial as it was to get the Republicans out, for us at least, she had failed the test of character. We didn’t see a bottom line. On reflection, maybe we judged her too harshly. It was a bad moment in a brutal campaign.

But character counts and it counts a lot in politics. Smart is only the ante. Everybody – or almost everybody – is smart enough. If you’ve got character and judgment, you can hire smart. For too long, the country has needed smart leaders with character. We finally have a brilliant president with character. We will know soon enough whether “the American people deserve” him. (Whenever you hear a politician use that phrase, check your wallet.)

And that brings me to Michael Bloomberg and the New York Times. If political campaigns test the character of candidates, they do the same for newspapers, especially those whose owners and editors lay claim to journalistic respectability.

Three items that appeared in Saturday’s New York Times brought the character question into sharp focus, the first two as it applies to the paper itself, and the third for Bloomberg—although for me that question was settled long ago .

First, there was the front page piece on how much Bloomberg had spent to gain and hold office, second, was the Bloomberg editorial endorsement, and then there was Bob Herbert’s column on the recent Bloomberg race-baiting gambit.

The spending piece was headlined Mayor’s Political Quest is Costliest Ever in U.S.

It was the usual thing about how Bloomberg’s political spending contrasted with Thompson’s lack of it. Sandwiched between them and the color item on the vast amounts of Goodfellas Brick Oven Pizza the mayor buys to feed his campaign legions (and, hah, hah, how good a boost the pizza money is for the economy of Staten Island) was the obligatory statement from a well known attorney for the New York Public Interest Research Group on Bloomberg’s undermining of municipal democracy. I don’t know what he actually said to the reporter, but what got into print was only the campaign spending.

Well trodden territory, not worth the ink or the time to read it. But the story didn’t matter. It was all about the picture. There it was, the large, front-page photograph of “Just Mike,” the regular guy, standing alongside Colin Powell at the counter of a hot dog joint. The mayor was reaching across the counter, his gloved hand clutching a few dollars. Surrounded by reporters scribbling and cameramen clicking, according to the caption Bloomberg was “treating Colin Powell to a hot dog.” A giant front-page photo op. A good follow-up to front-page piece on Bloomberg The Golfer that the paper ran a couple of months ago.

Maybe before Bloomberg, when she was a bit younger, the old gray lady rolled over for a politician now and then, but if she was ever this obscene, I don’t remember it. What an embarrassment it must be for the real reporters who are still working there.

The sadness one feels watching Colin Powell, a once-trusted public figure, an American icon really, debase himself yet again in the service of yet another nasty and corrupt Republican politician is overshadowed by the contempt we feel for the leadership of a once great newspaper. They accelerate their race to the bottom, seemingly positioning the paper as a kind of New York Post with subtitles, like Murdoch and Zuckerman, and all the other banksters, leveraged buyout artists and real estate scamsters, eager for four more years of Bloomberg’s rule.

Then there is the endorsement. We won’t go over the old, tired ground. But there are one or two statements that deserve special attention.

“With little city money to spend,” Bloomberg we are told, “wants to focus more on helping working-class and middle-class residents with cheap banking or aid in fighting foreclosures or finding jobs and housing. He wants to give a lift to small businesses.”

Readers are urged to take a look at our report, Michael Bloomberg v. The People of New York City: The Spin v. The Facts.

There you’ll find out what Michael Bloomberg has done not only with his money but with our money as well, and what he has been doing to – not for – working-class and middle-class New Yorkers.

As for term limits, here is the editorial:

Mr. Thompson also argues that the mayor unfairly worked to get rid of term limits so that he could run this third time. We supported his efforts to do so because term limits unfairly limit voters’ choices. But the mayor has sent signals that once he is elected, he will set up a charter commission to try to restore the limits. That is a bad call.

The paper was always opposed to term limits, but here is what it said in June 2008.

As good a mayor as Mr. Bloomberg has been, we are wary of changing the rules just to suit the ambition of a particular politician — in this country or any other. Mr. Bloomberg, should he want to continue his public service, would make an excellent prospect for other important offices.

The editorial talked about education, affordable housing, the environment, and all the other good things Bloomberg has done for us or intends to do. Again, we urge you to take a look at Michael Bloomberg v. The People of New York City: The Spin v. The Facts.

The paper’s saving grace is its columnists, among whom Bob Herbert is one of the best. But here is an excerpt from his Saturday column. “It was truly disheartening, dismaying,” he wrote, “to have the mayor turn his back on all that last Sunday during an appearance with Mr. Giuliani before an Orthodox Jewish group in Borough Park, Brooklyn.”

The “all that” to which Herbert referred was that until this campaign, Bloomberg hadn’t played the race game. Of course he hadn’t–at least not the Guiliani race game.

Since taking office, Bloomberg has positioned himself as the non-Giuliani, a uniter, not a divider. He didn’t need an opinion poll to tell him that that this was the best, the only political posture. New Yorkers had had their Rizzo moment—eight years of police killings and broomstick sodomizing. They were tired of it. It was time for “healing.” And the bloodless Bloomberg made a good contrast to the over-the-top Giuliani and the out of uniform police thugs whom he had led in a City Hall race riot against David Dinkins.

But it’s election time and you gotta do what you gotta do, which means ratcheting thing up. So Bloomberg raised the specter of New York becoming another Detroit if the Orthodox Jews were to be so foolish as to fail to turn out for Bloomberg. And his bride for the day, who is readying himself for a Bloomberg-financed state campaign, said “you know exactly what I’m talking about.” Indeed we did — a black mugger lurking behind every shul. Don’t vote for Bloomberg, and you’ll get another David Dinkins, and the blacks will run riot, a shameful piece of race-baiting that’s right up there with Al Shanker’s mass distribution of a crude anti-Semitic pamphlet during the Ocean-Hill Brownsville era, or the Giuliani-led police riot against Dinkins, a man who throughout his career, say what you want about his management skills, showed great integrity and courage in his opposition to Farrakhan and other prominent anti-Semites.

It’s election time, and so it’s Giuliani time again, time for a little race-baiting. Bloomberg tries to keep a low profile on it, delivering the message only in receptive neighborhoods. But it doesn’t surprise anyone who has been on the wrong end of Bloomberg’s eight-year reign. It doesn’t surprise the hundreds of thousands of young black and Latino kids who are illegally stopped and frisked, the kids who have no criminal records and who are illegally arrested for trespassing in their own housing complexes because they aren’t carrying identification papers, it doesn’t surprise the kids and the teachers who are subjected to frequent abusive and unrestrained police behavior in the public schools, or the people who have been arrested for possessing small amounts of marijuana (New York City is now the marijuana arrest capital of the country encouraged by a mayor who has said he has smoked and enjoyed it “You bet I did.”) — all these things and more – occur out of sight of the middle class.

Ray Kelly handles that stuff, and the New York Times has given the mayor and Kelly a pass. The paper will have to report it, but they’ll call it a “blemish.” A softball mention now and then allows the paper’s editors to proclaim their virtue and issue the formulaic rejoinder at those journalism seminars: “How would you know about it unless we reported it?” The truth is that the New York Times readers don’t “know” in the sense of understanding as a meaningful political fact what Bloomberg has been up to. Just as they didn’t “know” about routine police brutality until the police raided the Columbia University campus in the 1960s and put the truncheons to the heads of their own kids.

So long as the paper continues to run front page features like the Colin Powell hot dog style story and attaches the “life-long Democrat” label to the mayor’s name to assuage the sensibilities of readers who need assurance that they are still progressives, Bloomberg will sail along. So long as the boomers and their offspring are told that Bloomberg isn’t really one of those nasty Republicans who fly around in private jets to their mansions all over the world, pushing deregulation and privatization, making billions and billions more, feasting off the Wall Street scams, paying for plenty of law and order and light on the civil liberties please, embracing and financing Bush, McCain, Pataki, Bruno and the Boyz, the readers will continue to think of him as a moderate, even liberal fellow, just “Mike” whose watching the cash register and wants to do good things for working-and middle-class folks.

Bloomberg’s election campaign race-baiting is a piece of and entirely consistent with a much larger and more important pattern of behavior. Isn’t it apparent to anyone who has watched how — and for whom — this mayor has governed, and how he has bribed and bullied his way into political power that Michael Bloomberg has no bottom line other than Michael Bloomberg? That someone as astute and principled as Bob Herbert seems to have fallen for the spin is what really dismays and disheartens me.

- Neil Fabricant

Via Elizabeth Benjamin and The Daily Politics

“In the end, however, what really matters is this image and the fact that Thompson can say he has the president’s support. The average voter will likely neither know nor care about Obama’s enthusiasm level where this race is concerned.

Thompson is likely to get considerable mileage from this photo. Look for it on palm cards, campaign mailers and perhaps coming soon to a TV screen near you.”

The Village Voice reported earlier today that the Staten Island Advance and the Observer (which it called a “snooty weekly”) endorsed Bloomberg for mayor. The Advance considered Thompson “too nice” and the Observer didn’t mention a single thing about considering the issue of Bloomberg overturning term limits in its endorsement.

Fortunately, Gay City News has evaluated Bloomberg’s campaign and has seen politics, not progress. The publication has decided to endorse Bill Thompson for mayor:

Bloomberg’s actions regarding gay marriage are at sharp odds with his words, a disjunction all too common in his LGBT record. Thompson is clearly the superior candidate on our issues.

See the endorsement at Gay City News.

“Our great city controller, our candidate for mayor, my friend Billy Thompson, is in the house.” — President Barack Obama, during a Democratic fundraiser last night at the Hammerstein Ballroom.

* Bloomberg shifts views again on getting a Gay Marriage vote.

* Adam Lisberg reports that Bloomberg sent out a purely negative mailer against Thompson. He points out a similar one was sent out against Bill de Blasio and Danny Dromm — and failed.

* Thompson says he’s against balancing the budget with layoffs.

* The Advocate revisits the gay debate question with Thompson — who takes back his answer and says that of course Obama can do more for gay rights.

* Crains has Thompson’s economic agenda laid out.

* Elizabeth Benjamin reports that Bloomberg feels fundamentally that he is a believer in term limits. But of course, reality shows otherwise.

* Gothamist asks why Bloomberg and Giuliani are becoming such good friends.

* El Diario-La Prensa, the City’s largest Spanish-language paper endorsed Thompson because Bloomberg spent most of the decade catering to the rich.

Via The Brooklyn Paper, a Rupert Murdoch-owned publication that endorsed Mayor Bloomberg:

Our endorsement of Mayor Bloomberg for a third term (“Our pick: Mike Bloomberg for mayor,” online, Sept. 30) and a subsequent article about Borough President Markowitz’s endorsement of the Republican mayor over Democratic rival Bill Thompson (“Marty — a loyal Dem — backs Bloomy for mayor!” online, Oct. 1) created a firestorm of comments on our Web site and our voicemail system. Here are the choicest of the choice words:

I just read your endorsement of Mayor Bloomberg. I have to tell you that I will never read your paper again. I’m a Baby Boomer and I was brought up to believe that my vote counted. What a disgrace that you would endorse somebody that threw my vote down the toilet. Just down the toilet — and that’s how he got in.

Shame shame shame on your paper. What happened to democracy in this country? How could a paper like yours back somebody like him?

If that’s your values, there are plenty of Baby Boomers who are not happy who will stop reading your paper. And rightfully so.

Shame on you and your paper.

No name given

What a bunch of brown-nosing clap trap. Way to go, Rupert!

I especially liked this line: “To his ill-informed critics, the mayor is a tool of developers who want to pillage our communities.”

What about ill-informed editorialists?

Of course he’s a politician! He pays to play, instead of getting paid to play. Same difference.

By the way, how’s that Ground Zero thing coming along under this Superman’s steady hand?

Sam, Downtown

This line said it all for me: “When faced with the obstacle of New York City’s two-term limit, he spent a considerable sum of money to overturn the inconvenient law. For many voters, that disqualifies Bloomberg from further service.”

Count me as one of them. Bloomberg has done what I would call an excellent job as mayor. That said, he only got the job because of term limits, and to spend his personal fortune to overturn the law that not only brought him his first and only public office, but has served New Yorkers well in many other instances, is pure cynicism and evidence of faltering competence.

Your editorial stated that “in a head-to-head race against Comptroller Bill Thompson, there is no question who will serve the city better.” Well, that statement is demonstrably false. There is a very real question, and that is due to nothing else than Bloomberg’s strong performance as mayor.

Using your logic, you would have to make the same statement about [Rudy] Giuliani if he were running against Bloomberg. Now, there is no question in any New Yorker’s mind that Bloomberg has been far superior to rude Rudy, but the only reason we know that is that he got the chance to show us. Bill Thompson has not had that chance, but judging by the way political newcomers have outperformed their predecessors, I’d say its a very strong possibility that he would be a much better mayor than Bloomberg.

And even if he isn’t, we’d be better off with a new mayor every eight years than letting billionaires buy the office over and over again or voting in divisive narcissists like Giuliani simply because we recognize their name.

Big V, Park Slope

This endorsement says it all, most eloquently. Mayor Bloomberg is the kind of public servant that inspires confidence in our city, state and nation. We all need people like Mayor Bloomberg to lead us!

John, former Dutchess County

This endorsement says it all. New York has forgotten what it used to stand for at the core: justice and freedom above the convenience of authority.

The new people in this city don’t know it, and the old people born here don’t show it.

It is truly a sad day when we find ourselves deciding our fate by the lesser of two evils.

Charles

Not only will I never vote for Bloomberg, now I will never vote for Markowitz again. Shame on him.

Ellyn, Gerritsen Beach

“Party Hearty” Marty Markowitz is a sell-out to all of Brooklyn. Who else could be more Brooklyn than Bill Thompson: born and raised in Brooklyn, a former deputy Brooklyn borough president.

Shame on you, Marty!

This is a very sad day for all Brooklynites.

Joe, Brighton Beach

I’m very disappointed in the Brooklyn Paper. I started reading your paper a few years ago when your coverage of Atlantic Yards was fresh and incisive. With this endorsement, I can only guess that corporate pressure from above has caused you to jettison all pretense at journalistic integrity. Sad.

R, Fort Greene

Brooklyn Paper, you know your print edition makes excellent filler for a hamster cage.

Having said that, your “endorsement” means nothing to me.

In the voting booth, not only will I not vote for cheesecake man, I won’t vote for King Bloomberg either.

Al Gore endorsed Bloomberg on the environment? Well, sorry, Al, but your political credentials went to zero during the 2000 election when you backed down for “the good of the nation.”

Al, perhaps you need to ask those who live near the Gowanus Canal about Bloomy’s record on the environment.

Fourth Estate, DUMBO