Having paid scant attention – to my shame – to the race to become next mayor of the world’s best city, I enjoyed reading this concise and interesting state-of-the-race-on-eve-of-the-vote piece by Gary Silverman in the FT.
New York City (where else) is set to exit a period during which, by virtue of having successive mayors focused more on the inter/national than the local, the city’s politics have been out of kilter with the norm. Mayor Giuliani showed remarkable leadership during 9/11 and as a result became an established figure on the national stage, and his favoured successer Michael Bloomberg was naturally a ‘big picture mayor’:
Mr Bloomberg’s New York has felt less like his hometown than his laboratory. Whether he was weaning the overweight off sugary drinks or looking to stop the rise of the seas, he played to a bigger audience than the mere 8m souls traversing the sidewalks of the city.
This is, says Silverman, all set to cease:
The big story of the mayoral campaign (excluding the Anthony Weiner burlesque) has been the unexpected rise of Bill de Blasio, an underdog Democrat who has gone out of his way to paint himself as a crusader for the forgotten New York – the anti-Bloomberg, if you will.
What’s more surprising than the rise of a locally-focused candidate like Mr de Blasio is the fact that it’s taken so long:
The remarkable thing is that we have had wealthy white mayors for so long in a city that is so black and brown and poor. Descendants of European immigrants are a minority here. African-Americans and Hispanics make up more than half the population. Throw in Asians, and you are north of 60 per cent.
Putting aside the differences of the political systems and national geographies (which cause London to dominate the UK more than NYC does the US) and the temporary boost of the Olympics, would we say Boris Johnson is ‘naturally’ inclined to be a Giuliani/Bloomberg or a de Blasio?