Bloomberg Tries To Box In Governor Paterson On Kennedy

When I see Caroline Kennedy, I think Mike Bloomberg. In the contest for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat, Kennedy is to Bloomberg what the City Council was to the mayor in his term limits battle--a partner in the spoils, yes, but, ultimately, little more than a pawn in his power grab.

If David Paterson makes Kennedy a senator despite her stumbling performance, spare resume, and nose-diving poll numbers, credit should go to Bloomberg, an ally the unelected governor does not want to displease before his own probable race against Rudy Giuliani next year.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[glorialovelace]

Kudos to HP for being even-handed enough to post this piece from the V V.

[glorialovelace]

Kennedy's popularity continues to plummet in new polls:

Q Poll: Cuomo Up, Kennedy Down
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2009/01/q-poll-cuomo-up-kennedy-down.html

Poll Finds Support for Cuomo Over Kennedy as Senate Choice
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/poll-finds-support-for-cuomo-over-kennedy-as-senate-choice/?apage=1

Kennedy's support fading in New York
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/01/14/kennedys-support-fading-in-new-york/

[yesivoteddem]

The campaign that she and Bloomberg have conducted for this appointment is a campaign of prevarication. Its assumption is that David Paterson, who was first installed in the Senate two decades ago by a Harlem-based Democratic county committee when the incumbent died, and who rose to governor when another incumbent quit in disgrace, is too weak and uneasy about the challenge that awaits him in 2010 to do anything but knuckle under to their cabal. They believe Paterson will see Bloomberg and Kennedy's political marriage as a lucrative source of potential contributions for his own campaign, though Kennedy has given almost as little to New York Democrats as she has to its public school children, and Bloomberg has only bankrolled Republicans.

While they would never have mounted a Kennedy campaign in a normal election year, with a candidate so raw and uncertain, they clearly see Paterson's appointment process as tailor-made. It is, after all, precisely the kind of democracy Bloomberg likes best: a decision made by one man"or, in the case of term limits, by a small and vulnerable council"in the sort of moment when the power of titans always seems to prevail.

[yesivoteddem]

Though she wrote in A Patriot's Handbook that "the day I feel most proud to be an American is not the Fourth of July, but Election Day," she's missed half of the elections since 1988. She even failed to vote in 1994 for her in-law Mario Cuomo, when at least four other Kennedys campaigned for Cuomo in the race of his life.

She skipped the Democratic primary in 1989, when David Dinkins was the first black person nominated for mayor, and the general election in 2002, when Carl McCall was the first black person ever to appear on the statewide gubernatorial ballot as the candidate of a major party.

She didn't vote when Liz Krueger broke the three-decade hold the GOP had on the East Side state senate district in two 2002 elections (a February special and a November general) that propelled Paterson to become minority leader later that year.

Yet she expects the state's first black governor to put her in the Senate, ignoring the contradiction between her published declaration"written at the very same moment that she missed the 2002 election"that the "right to vote is perhaps the critical right in a democracy, an opportunity as well as an obligation."

[swo68]

Nice post. Very compelling.

[yesivoteddem]

The dissembling that misrepresents Kennedy's DOE service has been extended to every phase of her life.

She told the Times: "I've written seven books"two on the Constitution, two on American politics."

But she's penned only two (both with a co-author who is, unlike her, a legal scholar),

and edited five others that were collections of everything from her mother's favorite poems to other writers' essays about political courage.

She has repeatedly referred to herself as a lawyer in her recent appearances, though she's never practiced law and even let her registration with the Bar Association lapse for years.

[jsomerville5]

Thanks for all of these posts. I am in total agreement.

I want someone who's actually worked for a living and been elected to office.

Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand is light years ahead of Kennedy in terms of qualifications.

And yes, she's voted in every election.

[meko]

I think it would be more accurate to call her a "law school graduate." Many of the other candidates have practiced law. I think an Attorney General is better qualified to represent himself as a lawyer than someone who's never practiced.

[yesivoteddem]

Both Klein and Kennedy also tried to hype her role at the Fund for Public Schools, a nonprofit set up to receive private donations to the system that is chaired by Klein. Kennedy has stretched her less-than-two-year DOE "job" into six years in her recent media interviews, without mentioning that she's counting the four years since she left the department only because she's continued to serve as one of two vice chairs of the Fund. The other vice chair, Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman, made a $1.5 million grant to the Fund, but Lara Holliday, the Fund's director, told the Voice that Kennedy, personally worth at least $100 million, "has not contributed financially" at all to the city schools.

[yesivoteddem]

When the Times subsequently got an extended interview with Kennedy, the reporters asked about Klein's original claim that "she brought the Gates grant in," wondering: "Do you feel like maybe the people who are fans of yours have been trying to bolster you perhaps a little too much, and maybe giving you too much credit for the fundraising?" Her answer, which the Times published in a transcript but did not cite in its story, was: "I think it was important to Bill Gates that I was there" at the announcement (Vander Ark says he believes it was the first time they ever met). Kennedy still claimed that she should get "some of the credit" for the grant, contending that she only participated "right at the end" because "it coincided with the time I came into the department." In fact, the grant was made in September 2003, a year after she started and more than halfway through her brief tenure.

[meko]

How did all the other big cities get the Gates Grant? They didn't have Kennedys at their disposal. Maybe it's that the Gates have a commitment to education for the underserved?

The Gates Foundation is exceptionally rigorous in their donations. They look for a high return on investment, and take giving as seriously as Gates took Microsoft. I doubt they'd be swayed in their "investment model" by celebrity.

[yesivoteddem]

Because Kennedy's 22-month stint between 2002 and 2004 as chief executive of the newly created Office of Strategic Partnerships of the Department of Education is the only job she's ever held"a (very) part-time(3 to 6 hours a week) $1-a-year position"the chancellor is literally the only employer she can turn to for a recommendation letter.

His gushing has been so embarrassing that even Kennedy has tried to play it down. According to the Times, Klein "credited her with bringing in a $51 million gift from the Gates Foundation," the largest donation in school system history. But Tom Vander Ark, a nationally renowned educator who ran the Gates program and made the grant, told the Voice that "she didn't have anything to do with it." Asked what her role was in another $50 million in smaller grants that Gates gave the city between 2003 and 2005, Vander Ark, who is hardly a Klein enemy and praised him for his innovation, said: " 'None' would be an overstatement."

[yesivoteddem]

Only the audacity of billions can explain why a man who endorsed Bush for re-election, who declared with Laura Bush at his side at the dedication of a 9/11 downtown memorial that the Iraq War "started not very many blocks from here," whose only national Democratic endorsements in 2006 were Joe Lieberman and Rod Blagojevich, and who has broken records by donating $4.2 million to Republican committees since 2000, thinks he can fix the selection of a Democratic senator

[yesivoteddem]

With a Democratic high tide, nationally and in New York, Bloomberg is suddenly doing all he can to cement his ties to the party. But if that awkward arrangement is going to work, the mayor has to hope that his new friends, like Paterson and Kennedy, don't look too carefully at the last eight years.

Gone are the days when the mayor called the GOP, as he did at a Manhattan Republican event in March 2005, the party of "honesty, efficiency, compassion, and inclusiveness." Also inoperative is his 2003 declaration at a Lincoln Day dinner in Staten Island: "We are going to get George W. Bush re-elected as president. We are going to carry New York City and State. Everybody thinks I'm crazy, but I think we can do it." Dismissed as well are his comments when the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general found that the White House had doctored press releases about air-quality findings at Ground Zero, leading to lung damage for thousands of firefighters and others: "I know the president. I think he's a very honest guy. It would never occur to me not to trust him."

[jsomerville5]

Well, here's one New Yorker who ain't voting for Bloomberg's third term. Ditto for Paterson if he chooses the embarrassingly unqualified Kennedy.

[yesivoteddem]

the quid pro gimme - is that if Sweeney and Bloomie get her the job -

she backs him 100% to become the Dem nominee - undercutting our 2 semi declared candidates -

and giving him 4 more - illegal - years as mayor

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She's weaker against King than Cuomo:

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_NY_106.pdf

58Percentage of New Yorkers who prefer Andrew Cuomo over Caroline Kennedy
27: Percentage of New Yorkers who prefer Kennedy over Cuomo
44: Percentage of New Yorkers who view Kennedy less favorably since she started campaigning
23: Percentage of New Yorkers who view Kennedy more favorably