Submitted by Gwen, Jul 24, 2007 00:52

I'm glad Rev. Sharpton is coming around to speak out in support of a potential Bloomberg candidacy as an option for the Black community, but what most interested me was the important history of Bloomberg's becoming an independent, which was completely left out of this article.

Bloomberg ran on the Independence Party line in both 2001 and 2005. His independent runs There were two remarkable features of Bloomberg's re-election victory in 2005. First, his Independence Party total went up by 26% as compared with the vote total from 2001. (The mayoral vote totals on other party lines declined between 1% and 25%.) Second, he polled 47% of the black vote in a rare turnaround of the traditionally pro-Democratic Party voting pattern among African Americans. The strong endorsement of Bloomberg by Lenora Fulani, an influential and popular figure in the black community, and campaigning by the Coalition of Outsiders were key to this realignment.

For more on The Bloomberg Story, read:

http://www.independentvoting.org/Bloomberg.html

Also, read "The Black and independent Alliance" at

http://www.independentvoting.org/activistcenter/Black-Indpend_Alliance.pdf

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