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 ark
Green, the Democratic party nominee is very likely, Mike Bloomberg's
money not withstanding, to be the next mayor of New York. The city
dodged a bullet on October 11 when one time Nader's Raider Mark
Green defeated Bronx Borough President Freddy Ferrer in the runoff
for the Democratic party's mayoral nomination. At a time when the
economy is moving into a recession sure to be dramatically deepened
by the destruction of the World Trade Center, a Ferrer victory would
have sent the city careening downhill.
The problem
with Ferrer went well beyond the influence that Ferrer's key ally,
Al Sharpton, would have had on demoralizing both the police and
the city's middle classes. Ferrer was the candidate of both the
Bronx machine and the city's three largest public sector unions.
Ferrer's politics derive from the public sector nature of the Bronx
economy which has the highest rate of nonmilitary government employment
and the lowest rate of labor-force participation of any county in
the country. It's the only borough without a chamber of commerce.
In the first round of voting for the Democratic nomination on September
25 all of 1% of Ferrer's backers thought that rebuilding the financial
district should be the next mayor's top priority.
Fear of Freddy
drove the heroes of 9/11, the city's police and fire unions as well
as most of the city's private-sector unions into the Green camp.
The Ferrer campaign produced an unlikely mesalliance behind Green
who was endorsed by both The Village Voice and the New
York Post. Or as one Brooklynite, who has long loathed the left-liberal
Green explained, "the choice was between uncertainty and disaster,
I voted for uncertainty."
The winner,
Mark Green, who presents himself as a chastened liberal, backed
by former top-cop Bill Bratton, showed some statesmanship when he
supported a 90 days extension for the term of "America's Mayor"
the soon to be knighted "Sir Rudy Giuliani." It cost Green
four or five points in his race with Ferrer, but the extension as
provided for in the emergency provisions of the New York State constitution,
would have given the city a fighting chance to quickly bring in
the federal disaster aid essential for saving the city's struggling
small businesses. While Ferrer, the September 10th candidate insisted
that "the Towers have crumbled but our priorities have not,"
Green, the September 11 candidate, quickly saw that rebuilding Wall
Street, the engine of New York's economy, had to be the new mayor's
foremost concern.
It's not clear
which Mark Green will govern, the chastened or the liberal. On election
night Green's supporters spontaneously broke into the hoary 60s
chant, "THE PEOPLE (brief pause) UNITED (brief pause) WILL
NEVER BE DEFEATED." The chair of Green's victory party on election
night was Bertha Lewis, the leader of ACORN, a loony Left group
that fought successfully to prevent the Edison corporation from
taking over the city's five worst elementary schools.
The campaign
has left a lot of bad blood between the rival camps and the question
now is how Green handles the hostility. Ferrer's backers, having
played the race card to get their man into the finals, now accuse
Green of playing the race card to win. When Green ran an effective
ad describing Ferrer's non-response to 9/11 as "borderline
irresponsible," Hazel Dukes, former chair of the NAACP, responded
by decrying the "lynching" of Ferrer and said that she
thought she was in "Mississippi." At the same time Reverend
Al, who cost Ferrer big time, says that he's been "dissed"
by Green who claims no knowledge of telephone calls warning about
a Ferrer/Sharpton victory.
I admit to
no small pleasure in watch Green, who's done his share of liberal
race baiting over the years, on the receiving end. But what's important
is how Green responds. The city's 5 to 1 Democratic registration
all but assures his victory over Bloomberg, so Green has the chance
to distance himself from people like Sharpton who will make it all
but impossible to govern. But so far Green is blowing the opportunity.
Instead of standing tall, he's trying to propitiate Sharpton and
that gives Bloomberg a small opening to win in November.
Postscript:
Since this was written a dispute has broken out over the final-vote
tally. Double counting of some precincts by the Board of Elections
means that Green is still the winner but by a smaller margin of
about 21,000 votes. But the Board of Election's error has sent Ferrer's
supporters in general, and Sharpton in particular, into a rage.
They now want Green to come to them hat in hand for their general
election support. His response will set the tone for both the general
election and a likely Green administration.
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