I try to cover every federal and gubernatorial race in the country but I have generally drawn the line at covering local and state-level politics (with the exception of New York’s state Senate). Over the next year, however, we will be sure to cover New York City’s mayoral election.
It remains to be seen whether Democrats can muster a credible challenge and if Mayor Mike Bloomberg will be able to just buy his way out of trouble, but New York politics are entertaining even when they are not competitive - especially when Bloomberg’s billions are involved.
The fall of 2008 provided a dramatic prelude to the 2009 race: Bloomberg managed to convince the City Council to amend the city’s term limit law (twice approved by voters in referendums) in order to allow city officials to run for a third term. The move attracted public opposition and provoked acrimonious public hearings but it nonetheless passed, making Bloomberg eligible to run in 2009.
Bloomberg’s opponents were hoping to change that in court, and they filed a lawsuit arguing that the city council could not reverse a law that was passed directly by voters in a referendum. The lawsuit argued that the results of a referendum could only be rescinded through another referendum.
Yesterday, a judge tossed out this suit in a clear legal victory for Bloomberg and his allies. “To hold that overturning a law enacted by referendum infringed on First Amendment rights would effectively bar repeal, amendment, or revision of all laws initiated by the people,” he wrote.
This ruling clears the way for a Bloomberg re-election race. The mayor starts off favored but it looks likely that at least one credible challenger will emerge. Among the most plausible Democratic candidates are Rep. Anthony Weiner and City Comptroller William Thompson. Interestingly, Thompson was a plaintiff in this lawsuit over the term limit law.
The mayor’s opponents could still file an appeal, and such a move would at least keep the issue in the news. After all, Bloomberg wants the issue of term limits to fade away so that voters move on by the November vote, and his critics undoubtedly want to stroke public anger for as long as possible for Bloomberg’s popularity (and re-election prospects) to decline.
(Interestingly, the argument over whether elected officials can take it upon themselves to repeal a referendum is one we are already hearing in the fight over California’s Proposition 8 - and Prop 8’s defenders are likely to offer similar arguments in the months and years to come. However, opponents would argue that this a very different situation since Prop 8 is a discriminatory bill that takes away rights and should thus be treated differently than other types of initiatives.
In the New York case, what I am most offended by is not a referendum’s repeal by the Council but the fact that the bill was nakedly opportunistic. If Bloomberg and Council President Christine Quinn truly believe that a limit of two terms is atrocious, they should have indeed abolished that provision. But they should have applied that reform only to future election years, not to the current cycle during which they themselves stand to gain.
The fact that Bloomberg’s power grab resembles the one then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was hoping to pull off in 2001 only confirms that this is holding on to power is something all second term mayors dream of. (In 2001, Giuliani hoped to use September 11th to justify running for a third term; Michael Bloomberg exploited the economic crisis for that same end.) The main difference is that September 11th happened just two months before the mayoral election rather than thirteenth months before like the economic crisis.)
Bloomberg’s move to hold onto power is very obvious and hypocritcal, which is a major reason why he will not walk over the opposition in 2009 like he easily did in 2005. It is interesting to see how Bloomberg’s poll numbers are, as he is indeed very popular, but if this controversy goes all the way to the 2009 election, then Bloomberg may actually have some troubles, althrough his personal fortune means he will be competive no matter what.
Bloomberg deserves re-election because he has been a good mayor and is independent. Term limits are stupid - the best term limit is an election. Why remove people who are good? We lost Clinton and gained Bush, all because Clinton was term limited.
I’m sympathetic to the view that a law approved directly by the people should be repealed in the same way. But term limits are different because you don’t need a term limits law to have term limits. If enough people really believe that officials should only serve two terms, then they can vote out (in a primary or in the general) all officials who have served two terms. If they’re not willing to do so, then I think it doesn’t say much about real support for term limits in practice as opposed to in theory.
If the supposed problem is that incumbents have too much of an electoral advantage, then the solution is public campaign financing, not throwing everyone–both good and bad–out regardless of the jobs they’ve done. We already have a passive electorate; term limits only allow people to pay even less attention than they do now.