Bloomberg Spent $102 Million to Win 3rd Term

By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: November 27, 2009
To eke out an election victory over the city’s low-key comptroller, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg spent $102 million of his own fortune — or about $174 per vote — according to data released Friday, making his bid for a third term the most expensive campaign in the city’s history.
Mr. Bloomberg, the wealthiest man in New York City, shattered his own records: He poured $85 million into his campaign in 2005 (or $112 per vote) and $74 million into his first bid for office in 2001 ($99 per vote).
And the $102 million tab is likely to rise, because the mayor has not yet doled out postelection bonuses to campaign workers, which have routinely exceeded $100,000 a person in years past. That spending will not be reported until after his inauguration in January.
Mr. Bloomberg has now spent at least $261 million of his own money in the pursuit of public office, more than anyone else in the United States.
Government watchdog groups criticized the nine-digit price tag for his re-election, saying it undermined a widely admired campaign finance system that Mr. Bloomberg helped install in the city. Mr. Bloomberg did not participate in the system, which rewards candidates who raise small donations with large matching money from taxpayers.
The downside for the billionaire mayor: It caps spending at $6 million in the general election.
“He has done long-term damage to the system,” said Gene Russianoff staff attorney at the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Throughout the campaign, the mayor’s aides sought to project an air of inevitability, but data released on Friday revealed just how anxious they had become in the final weeks.
From Oct. 20 to Nov. 26, his campaign burned through $18.6 million, much of it on last-minute television and radio advertising.
As the mayor’s consultants and pollsters realized that a large bloc of undecided voters either favored Mr. Thompson or planned to stay home on Election Day, the campaign scrambled.
A few hours before the polls closed on Nov. 3, the campaign issued a flurry of recorded telephone calls to registered voters, in which Mr. Bloomberg requested that New Yorkers head to the polls and pull the lever for him.
At the start of the race, Mr. Bloomberg’s aides promised to run a political operation that mirrored the austere times. But that promise quickly evaporated.
The mayor’s campaign, which leased a 35,000-square-foot headquarters in Midtown Manhattan and paid a disc jockey $300 to perform as volunteers called voters, was widely expected to crush his Democratic opponent, William C. Thompson Jr., the city’s chief financial officer.
Mr. Thompson, who participated in the campaign finance system, was outspent by 14 to 1, and he struggled to attract experienced staff members and raise money.
His press releases misspelled his own name; his aides groused about their jobs on Facebook; and his media team was so short on cash that it resorted to running 15-second blink-and-you-miss-it TV commercials.
But Mr. Bloomberg’s unpopular drive to overturn the city’s term limits law, his lavish campaign and a sputtering economy soured thousands of New Yorkers on him, even though most admired his record in office.
On Election Day, their frustration erupted into public view: Mr. Bloomberg won by fewer than 5 percentage points, at a cost of about $20 million for each point.
Turnout was unusually low — 585,000 New Yorkers cast votes for him, compared with 753,089 in 2005 and 744,757 in 2001, records show.
“He didn’t seem to get very much for his money,” Mr. Russianoff said.
Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for the mayor’s campaign, said that a harsh political environment helped oust incumbents in Westchester County and New Jersey.
“The reason this anti-incumbent wave stopped at the Hudson’s edge,” Mr. Wolfson said, “is because the mayor ran an effective campaign based on eight years of success.
--nytimes