How much did Bloomberg really spend?

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Mike Bloomberg won last night, but barely–with 5% of the vote, which is absolutely less than the margin of victory $100 million is supposed to buy you. But it’s a victory nonetheless. Having won three elections, he’ll be mayor of New York City for twelve consecutive years. Mike Bloomberg has effectively bought the lease to Gracie Mansion. In total, how much has it cost him? What price does a vote fetch these days?

Let’s start with last night. Although official, final campaign disclosures aren’t yet available, it’s been widely reported that he spent $100 million of his own money. For his troubles, he received 557,000 votes. Hold those numbers in your head for a moment.

In 2005, he spent $78 million and received 753,000 votes; in 2001, the totals were $71 million and 744,00.

All told, this means that Bloomberg has spent $249 million to receive 2.54 million votes–meaning, over his political career, he’s spent about $121 per vote.

But I think even that underestimates the true scope of his political spending.  The Times reported in 2008 that, since 2002, Bloomberg has given out $175 million to groups throughout the city, through the auspices of the Carnegie Corporation. Technically, the donations are anonymous, but everyone knows Bloomberg is the one behind them. And he hasn’t been afraid to ask for the favor to be returned; in the midst of his drive to overturn term limits last year, leaders of several organizations that had benefited from Bloomberg’s largesse testified on his behalf before the New York City council. (Read about it here.) It’s also no coincidence that his donations to Carnegie have spiked during election seasons.  His donations aren’t a simple function of a charitable streak: they’re designed to further his political interests. It’s certainly possible that, without them, he would not have been elected last night.

So it would seem to include them in any final tally. Effectively, Bloomberg has spent $424 million on his political career–which breaks down to about $206 per vote.

That’s an enormous amount of money, and the best evidence of New York City’s emerging plutocracy that I’ve yet seen. To put this in a little perspective, Barack Obama spent about $10.50 per vote to win the White House.

The sad thing is that New York City has some decent public financing laws. Yet no one can compete when one person is willing to spend this amount of money. Of course, wealthy people–even obscenely wealthy people, like Bloomberg–should be allowed to run for office. But when they’re allowed to buy the office that they seek, they do real damage to our democracy–damage that may be difficult to undo.