Bloomberg has invited Hillary Clinton as next mayor signaling his support for Quinn is over
Oh, wow! The Times is out to get Quinn, at least as a candidate for mayor.
On January 10, The Times City Hall reporter, Michael Powell, secured a Bloomberg insider to talk off the record and he really offloaded.
“The cynical view is that the mayor used Quinn to get his agenda…to cut a transactional deal. She would play junior partner to the mayor (carrying his heavy water in 2008, she tossed aside term limits so he could run again) and keeping her City Council left wing element under control and in return he would endorse her for mayor.”
As Bloomberg’s last months in office tick down, the thought of someone totally alien to Bloomberg’s circle/style replacing him, would diminish his role in history as the man who had “the second toughest job in America.”
So, this may explain why he asked Hillary Clinton to take the job and the article reports that the Bloomberg loyalists are anxiously calling possible candidates, like Senator Charles Schumer and real estate billionaire and owner of the New York Daily News, Mort Zuckerman.
The Times reporter’s contempt for Bloomberg is illustrated by the following:
“The mayor harbors a rich man’s disdain for the difficult business of running and governing when you cannot airdrop cash to buy silence or complicity.” (This is my favorite indictment of cash fascism).
However, Powell does come to the aid of Quinn; well, sort of:
“Ms. Quinn’s work life is more complicated. Being City Council speaker has its charms, but the headaches are more evident; she balances the needs of 50 members, some quite bright, some remarkably dim and a couple notably inept. She woos labor unions and business leaders, and wrestles in a sometimes unsightly way with questions of politics and conscience.”
What about the other candidates, Bill de Blasio, William C. Thompson, and John C. Lui who face “the grinding humiliation that comes from dialing for adequate dollars to run a mayoral campaign.”
Powell reports that privately, Bloomberg sees these candidates as “Lilliputians who are likely to sell out to for union support and lucre.”
He drives in the final harpoon in quoting new Republican candidate Joseph J. Lhota who opined that Mr. Bloomberg “was an idiot.”
