Campaign 2009

Eighty-million dollars or more can win a mayoral race, apparently, but it can't beat the spread.

If miraculously elected, will Thompson really "fix the economy" simply because some dude on 149th Street asked him too? Of course not. But at least he can't say he wasn't told.

Given Thompson's financial disadvantage, losing by a respectable margin to Bloomberg can be spun as a moral victory, so in a sense Thompson can't lose. But his people think they can win.

He says he will deliver us a city "safer, stronger, greener and healthier -- and better than ever." Who can argue with that? As for the details, polls indicate he'll have four years to nail those down.

Maybe you want what Bloomberg's got: the NYPD guards, the keys to Gracie Mansion, the $1-a-year salary. Are you cut out for it? Take this quiz and find out.

BIll Thompson won the Dem nomination, but the real story was elsewhere. In City Council contests, voters delivered the broadest upset to incumbents in recent New York political history.

The mayor has praised Colin Powell as a man of ability, integrity and independence. It's been said before, and it will be said again, regardless of what Powell's record actually suggests.

While Bloomberg has spoken to the better angels of our nature, that doesn't necessarily mean that he has lived up to all his admirably high-minded promises.

When you add all that's been proposed, planned and built under this administration, it's hard to think of another figure since Moses who has presided over as significant an effort to reshape the physical city as Bloomberg has.

The pressure on low-income families has only increased over the past eight years. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the median contract rent in New York increased from $706 in 2002 to $950 in 2008, an increase of 12 percent after inflation is figured in.

The Bloomberg camp can't blame anyone but itself for politicizing the dropout rate, since graduation statistics have figured prominently in all the Bloomberg ads and mailers to which voters have been subjected so far this year.