Bloomberg Announces Third Term Bid For Mayor Of New York
NEW YORK — Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Thursday that he's pushing for changes that would allow him to seek a third term leading the nation's largest city, saying he wants to handle unfinished business including the "unprecedented challenges" brought on by the recent financial crisis.
"The question for me has become much less about the theoretical and much more about the practical," the one-time proponent of term limits said at a news conference at City Hall. "And so to put it in very practical terms, handling this financial crisis while strengthening the essential services such as education and public safety is a challenge I want to take on for the people of New York."
Bloomberg, confirming reports about his plan earlier this week, said he will ask the City Council to change New York's term limits law so he can run next year for another four years in office.
If the council agrees, "I plan to ask New Yorkers to look at my record of independent leadership and then decide if I've earned another term. As always, it will be up to the people to decide, not me," he said.
The current law limits the mayor to two terms. Council Speaker Christine Quinn said a bill to alter the term limits law for city officeholders would be introduced Tuesday. The measure would change the limit from two consecutive terms, or eight years, to a maximum of three terms, or 12 years.
The billionaire founder of financial information company Bloomberg LP was elected two months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, then cruised to a landslide re-election in 2005 after spending tens of millions of his own fortune.
Bloomberg, 66, is almost certain to face a legal challenge. Several lawyers and good government groups said they are considering action to block any changes without the approval of voters, who have twice voted to support the cap.
Bloomberg, who vetoed proposed changes to the term limits law in 2002, had a change of heart amid the nation's worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The turmoil has dealt a serious blow to the city's economy, which relies heavily on Wall Street profits for its tax base.
"As you know, today our nation, and our city, face unprecedented challenges," the mayor said. "As a businessman with expertise on Wall Street and finance and as a mayor who has balanced budgets and delivered services, I tell you that the enormity of the challenges should not be underestimated."
The battle over term limits will shift next week to the council. Two-thirds of its members are scheduled to be forced out of office next year by the current limit, although some expressed dismay that they will be asked to vote to extend their own careers against the will of voters who have twice rejected the idea.
Quinn, who said as recently as December that she did not want to change the law, told reporters she wouldn't decide how to vote until early next week.
A Marist College poll released Thursday showed that New York City voters are about evenly split on whether the current two-term limit should be changed to let Bloomberg run again. Forty-six percent said yes, 44 percent said no and 10 percent were unsure.
A group of influential business leaders and power brokers, including Goldman Sachs Group CEO Lloyd Blankfein, JPMorgan Chase Chairman James Dimon and Henry Kissinger, took out ads in city newspapers urging the council to amend the law to allow for more than two four-year terms.
Bloomberg said the reasons for his decision go beyond the financial crisis.
"I've asked myself, do we have more work to do in transforming the schools, greening the environment, building infrastructure and records amount of affordable housing, public health, investing in long term economic growth,' and the list goes on, and the answer is yes, we have more to do, a lot more to do," he said.
City Comptroller William C. Thompson, who is running for mayor, called the proposal "an attempt to suspend democracy."
Thompson, a Democrat, said he would continue his campaign even if it meant facing Bloomberg in the general election. Quinn, a potential mayoral candidate, said that if Bloomberg ran she would seek re-election to the council instead.
U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Queens Democrat also running for mayor, called for a special election to let voters decide and called the mayor's move "wrong."
Legal challenges beckoned.
"Lawyers all around the city are going over this with a fine-toothed comb," said Gene Russianoff, a senior attorney for the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Veterans of similar battles, however, say Bloomberg's opponents may find little solace in the courts.
State and federal judges in New York have a history that would seem to affirm the council's authority to extend or repeal term limits without going back to the voters. A lower-level appeals court backed New York City's council when it made minor alterations to the term limits law in 2002.
"A law is a law, and it doesn't matter if it was passed by the City Council, or by referendum. They have the same weight," said Robert Joffe, an attorney who helped represent the council during that legal battle.
The Marist College poll of 413 registered voters was conducted Wednesday by telephone, and the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 5 percentage points.
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Associated Press writers Frank Eltman and Karen Matthews contributed to this report.
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DAVID B. CARUSO | October 2, 2008 05:39 PM EST |
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