‘Disgrace’ now a supporter of Mayor Michael Bloomberg

When last we checked in with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Observer/PolitickerNY reporter Azi Paybarah, they were having this kind of exchange:

Bloomberg later looked at Azi and said “You’re a disgrace” when he thought he was off-mike. Whoops.

What a difference six months (and $35,000/hour in campaign spending) makes! Check out this social advertising irony as Facebook tells me that Azi is now a Bloomberg supporter!

Who can say whether Azi cast his ballot for Bloomberg? (I’m too polite to ask him) Like any good reporter (and Azi is a very good reporter), I’m sure he’s subscribed to the Mayor’s campaign’s Facebook group as he should be, to see what kind of things pop up there for use in his reporting.

But anyways, it just goes to show how much money the Mayor is spending to buy his way into re-election – even on my Facebook page, he wants to tell me that my friends are his supporters, even the one he called a disgrace. Nice job, Mayor Bloomberg’s social media team!

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You don’t need a leaked exit poll to tell you that anyone who marked anything other than the Republican or Independence tickets wasn’t going to do much good with their ballot today. You even have dicks like John Carney telling you that you shouldn’t have bothered going to the polls in the first place….our Ryan Sager helpfully provides a rebuttal.

But I have been wondering what Bloomberg Campaign HQ has been like for the past eight weeks when it became really clear that short of the Mayor being found naked in Sheep Meadow with a bottle of qualudes, a flute of champagne, and one of the Central Park petting zoo goats, he was going to win this thing.

Were they all just walking around the office all day giving each other high fives? Thinking “If I can kick up the margin of victory from 18% to 19%, I’ll get a higher bonus!” Because let’s face it, Mayor Bloomberg will spare no expense to win, and win big.

A lot of the talk about winning big comes down to what Bloomberg’s mandate is going to be like – see this ridiculous speech that actress Cherry Jones gave to Women for Bloomberg last week where she said that was what the mayor needed to be effective, to see that most of the city was behind him.

But as the congestion pricing cock-up showed, having the city’s voters behind you isn’t enough. Bloomberg failed on that score because he couldn’t get lawmakers in Albany to back up his plan. Political officials with agendas of their own and constituencies that can’t be bought out by the mayor’s slick campaign operation have an effect on how life goes on in the City of New York. They are on their own spectrum that Mayor Bloomberg can’t dominate. So if Bloomy really wants to improve this city, he may need to turn his sights far beyond the city to shape the things that are out of control. And I’m afraid that having this big ‘mandate’ is going to distract him from that necessity.

I’m from a city, Chicago, with a mayor-for-life. Sometimes it’s a good thing. Often, it’s a terrible thing. It’s worth looking to that example of the imperial mayor before we establish that institution here in New York. If our City Council creeps have are faced with a decision on whether or not Mayor Bloomberg just needs four more years, I hope they’ll think again about how much he’s really accomplished, whatever his mandate is.

Polls close at 9 PM. Be sure you cast your ballot.