Reversing Course, Daily News Urges Bloomberg to Run Again

[New York Times]

September 22, 2008, 9:05 am
Reversing Course, Daily News Urges Bloomberg to Run Again
By Michael Barbaro

In a stark reversal of its longtime stand on the issue, the editorial board of The Daily News said that the city’s term limits law should be changed to allow Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to seek a third term.
“Run, Mike, run,” it wrote in an editorial published Monday morning.
The editorial board said that with the city’s finances in turmoil, Mr. Bloomberg — a former Wall Street trader — must be a candidate in the 2009 mayoral race. “New Yorkers deserve to select the person they feel is best qualified to pull the city through the crisis from among a full field of candidates,” the editorial said. “Bloomberg must be in the pack.”
Under current New York City election law, the mayor, comptroller, public advocate, borough presidents and members of the City Council are restricted to two consecutive four-year terms. Mr. Bloomberg is scheduled to leave office on Dec. 31, 2009.
The News did not say exactly how term limits should be changed — through legislation in the City Council or by a public referendum. That question has become central to the debate over revising the law, since New York City voters approved the existing rules twice, in 1993 and 1996. At this point, lawmakers and legal experts say, the most logical route is through the Council.
The News has strenuously opposed revising term limits through legislation in the past. In a 2006 editorial titled “Council Pushes the Limits,” the newspaper called a plan by members of the Council to tweak the law “shameless.”
“Just what part of ‘no’ doesn’t the City Council understand?” The News editorial said. “Repeatedly, it has urged the voters of New York to reject term limits, and repeatedly the voters have refused. But the Council keeps trying an end run around the public. Pitiful. Shameful. Shameless.”
In Monday’s editorial, The News said, “Term limits were a good government reform. They were aimed at opening a political system stacked in favor of incumbents — a City Council and borough presidents who hung on forever. But mayors were never part of a permanent government.”
The editorial said that voters are the best form of term limits for the mayor:
“Seventeen men have been elected to City Hall since the start of the 20th century. Only three — Fiorello La Guardia, Robert Wagner and Ed Koch — got as far as a third term. None made it to four. Why? Stiff competition produces natural term limits. ”
Mr. Bloomberg has discussed the possibility of a third term with the publishers of the city’s three major newspapers.
Over the last several months, he has held confidential conversations with Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the News Corporation, which owns The
New York Post; Mortimer B. Zuckerman, a friend from the business world and the owner of The Daily News; and Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The Times, to gauge whether they would endorse a bid to overturn term limits, according to people familiar with the talks.
Of the three newspapers, The News was considered most strenuously opposed to changing term limits.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/reversing-course-daily-news-urges-bloomberg-to-run-again/?hp

[Frugality in Cranbury]

If he is not able to remain Mayor of NY - It would be great to have Bloomberg as NJ Govenor. New Jersey Needs his financial experience.

[Guest]