WE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION
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WE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION
In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
WE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION
In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
WE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION
In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
WE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION
In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
NEW YORKThe real story of the election that made Republican billionaire
Michael Bloomberg the next mayor of this city is the self-destruction of Mark
Green. Exit polls showed that 55 percent of the victors voters were against
Democrat Green rather than for Bloomberg. Why?
Green drained enthusiasm for his candidacy among traditional Democratic constituencies
by running away from his liberal reputation. This process began in Greens
second term as the citys public advocate, when he attached himself like
a mollusk to Bill and Hillary Clinton, defending their sleazy hypocrisies before
any microphone the adept publicity hog could find.
And when the first lady (who godmothered the serpent Dick Morris cynical
triangulations) ran for senator, Green was her most visible surrogate when she
was kept hidden from the press by her handlers. Having justified the Clintons
destruction of the Rooseveltian liberal heritage hed long embraced, Green
should have surprised no one when he morphed into an electoral Pander Bear.
But he did.
Green shunted aside his campaign manager, Richard Schradera former director
of New York Citizen Action who is widely respected by progressives herein
favor of counsel from his older brother Steve Green, a wealthy real estate magnate
(and a Republican). As chief fundraiser, Steve introduced Mark to the citys
business community, to which Mark sucked up throughout the year.
To win the runoff for the Democratic nomination against Fernando Freddy
Ferrer, he echoed the same racially divisive rhetoric he had criticized during
the primaries, when it was used by the most conservative candidate in the race,
Peter Vallone.
Already embittered at Green for running a flagrantly code-worded TV ad designed
to raise white fear of Ferrer, Hispanics were furious when, a week before the
election, the Daily News broke a story placing top Green campaign aides
in a pre-runoff meeting at which racially inflammatory literature painting Ferrer
as Al Sharptons puppet was planned to be used. Sharpton threatened to
call for an election boycott unless Green investigated and fired those responsible,
and Ferrer (who had formally endorsed Green and made a few token campaign stops
with him) pointedly absented himself from both a $1,500-minimum fundraiser co-chaired
by the Clintons on the Friday before the vote and a public unity
rally that weekend featuring not only Bill and Hill, but Senators Chuck Schumer
and Ted Kennedy as well.
In Ferrers home borough of the Bronx, Democratic boss Roberto Ramirez
closed the partys county headquarters for the campaigns final three
days, and his troops sat on their hands. Bloomberg wound up with 50 percent
of the Hispanic vote11 points better than Giuliani ever didand 22
percent of the black vote (two points better than Rudys showing four years
ago).
Although labor leaders formally switched their unions endorsements to
the newly centrist Green after the runoff, their half-hearted effortsafter
months of anybody-but-Green maneuveringswerent all that convincing;
Bloomberg ended up with 38 percent of the union vote. And just when one thought
Green could sink no lower, in his only major policy pronouncement of the final
campaign, he came out in favor of legalizing casino gambling in the Big Apple.
While popular, this most regressive form of taxation on the poor is a notion
only a Pander Bear could embrace.
When a deliberately delayed endorsement of Bloomberg by Giulianimade
into a brilliant pass-the-torch TV spot that had Giuliani bidding farewell to
the citydrove Bloomberg into a statistical dead heat with Green in the
last week, the Democrat played into the say-anything image that his campaign
performance had earned him by unleashing a last-minute barrage of near-hysterical
attack ads against Bloomberg. These backfired with New Yorkers longing for civility
in the post-September 11 gloom and fear. Bloombergs most heavily aired
negative ad featured a tape recording of Greens own words when he claimed
that he would have been better than Giuliani in handling the city
after the World Trade Center atrocity, and addingwith effective understatementjust
a single question: Really?
This spot reminded everyone of the arrogance Green displayed throughout the
campaign. One anecdote tells it all: During the primary, Green was handshaking
at the Educational Alliance, a venerable Lower East Side institution founded
a century ago by Jewish Socialists (now serving mostly seniors known as Edgies)
and a must campaign stop for any Democrat. A grandmotherly Edgie came up and
asked Green, So, darling, what are you running for? Greens
withering reply: Read the newspapers. He lost the normally Democratic
Jewish vote (19 percent of the total turnout) to Bloomberg by two points.
Green alienated so many of his core constituents by betraying his past and by
smug, self-important, cynical posturing that he has no one to blame for his
defeat but himself. Greens character flaws cost him 30 percent of the
voters who had supported him in the runoff, and permitted Bloomberg to purchase
an election that no one thought he could win. And for all would-be opportunist
Democrats, here endeth the lesson.
WE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION
In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.