Everyone Loves an Underdog, But Nobody Likes a Loser
There's a certain inconsistency to desire. In 2003, New Yorkers voted to continue holding partisan elections, with candidates running on party lines. This year, those same overwhelmingly Democratic voters are about to ignore their party's nominee and re-elect one of the biggest contributors to the Republican National Committee.
Non-partisan elections put all candidates into one mosh pit of a primary, with only the top two going on to the general election. If we'd had them in 2000, Bloomberg would now be synonymous with Lauder.
The non-partisan elections proposition lost by 40 percentage points, though, despite Bloomberg spending $7 million on a direct-mail campaign. (See, he can spend millions and lose.) Exit polls showed that even Republicans voted against nonpartisan elections. The New York Times, party leaders and good government groups all opposed it. The loss was widely taken as a rebuke to a wildly unpopular and out-of-touch mayor.
Two years later, polls show Bloomberg beating Ferrer among Democrats and running neck-and-neck in the Bronx. As the Observer's Ben Smith has pointed out, the mayor's rise in the polls coincides with the beginning of the present advertising blitz. (In the past three weeks, Bloomberg has been spending $34,000 an hour, according to the latest campaign finance documents.)
After decades in public life, Ferrer still vacillates between fire-breathing radical and outer-borough Catholic moderate, yet he seems equally miscast in both roles. When the Times and the Post both prefer the other guy, you're in bad shape. Even Hoy has endorsed Bloomberg.
And when Ferrer flipped, his supporters flopped. Ferrer, who had himself arrested in the aftermath of the Diallo shooting, earlier this year told a gathering of the Sergeants Benevolent Association that, "I don't believe [the shooting] was a crime." The remark, however reasonable, has haunted him since among black voters.
"It's been downhill" for Ferrer since, said political consultant and Democrat Hank Sheinkopf, who is not affiliated with either candidate. The perception of failure in politics is often self-validating, and the city's elected Democrats have been keeping their distance.
The newly installed chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic organization, Assemblyman Vito Lopez, endorsed Ferrer, but has gone out of his way to not so much as utter his name. Al Sharpton endorsed Ferrer on the anniversary of 9/11, ensuring it would carry minimal weight. He's since bashed his boy for opposing the Brooklyn arena. A straight-faced Bill Clinton endorsed Ferrer only after the sound system for the event was dismantled. A few days later, a noticeably happier Clinton was photographed shaking hands with the mayor.
Others are leaving more quietly. One aide to Spitzer, who came out early for Ferrer, said he doubted his man will appear in an ad with Freddy. "We're having discussions now," she said. "But do you think he has any money for more commercials?"
Bill and Hillary haven't done a commercial so far. Neither has any other prominent national Dem. It's all very Junior High-nobody likes a loser.
Ferrer has tried to bash Bloomberg as a card-carrying Republican wolf, "the largest donor to George W. Bush and the Republican Party last year."
And Bloomberg has also been active locally, donating $7 million to the Republican National Convention; $1.5 million to the state Republican Party (yes, there still is one); $250,000 to the committee Tom Delay used to launder money; and giving the maximum contribution to George Bush's reelection campaign.
The problem with this attack, said Sheinkopf, is that "it doesn't go to people's daily lives."
Ferrer has played up his underdog role. Ferrer asked the members of 1199, the political powerhouse health-care union, to be "my smooth stones." The smart money's still on Goliath.
The city's press corps-whose neutrality in the race is in serious doubt-did give Ferrer the underdog status he craved. But unlike inspiring long shots, Ferrer hasn't left the impression that he's got a chance of winning, let alone that he would be up to the challenges of running the city.
"We tend to vote towards our aspirations and not for our realities," said opinion page editor Evelyn Hernandez of El Diario, the city's largest Spanish-language daily, at a forum last week at the New School. "Everybody would prefer to be a rich billionaire, instead of a middle-class homeowner clinging by his fingernails to the middle class. In that sense, people would rather vote for a Bloomberg than a Ferrer."
There goes another inconsistency: people root for the underdog, but disdain a loser.
Immune as we are from the trends that have infected our more respected colleagues (sorry, Scratch-Match fans), the Internet is something we can't ignore. And so today we launch Fifth Estate. We first heard the name from a well-intentioned source in Queens who either couldn't count the number of government branches the media was charged with watching or was covertly asking for the media itself to be checked.
Click the Fifth Estate link at NYPress.com for your fix of mayoral ads that never seem to air, web sites that melt hours off the work day and the best in rumors, background and news. Here's a teaser:
Councilman Larry Seabrook got $66,500 from the Campaign Finance Board by saying Bloomberg supported his opponent. Seabrook then paid his brother/treasurer/consultant and endorsed Bloomberg. Anybody investigating? More on Fifth Estate.