Black Pastor Backs Bloomberg
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Mayor Bloomberg picked up an endorsement yesterday from the pastor of one of the city’s largest black churches.
The head of the Christian Cultural Center, the Reverend A.R. Bernard, who took a chance on Mr. Bloomberg in 2001 when the mayor was a political newcomer, threw his weight behind the CEO-turned-politician.
The announcement was made on the sidewalk outside the 20,000-member church after the 10:15 morning service at Brooklyn. It came as all of the mayoral hopefuls are courting support from African-American leaders.
Rev. Bernard has had a close relationship with the mayor since Mr. Bloomberg arrived at City Hall, and even read an invocation at the mayor’s inauguration four years ago.
He was also on the mayor’s guest list at Madison Square Garden on September 2, the night President Bush accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for re-election.
The Bernard endorsement is another sign of efforts by the GOP mayor to make inroads among minority voters, who have historically gone with Democratic candidates. In 2001, Mr. Bloomberg won 25% of the black vote. This time his campaign hopes to do better.
In a statement released to the press, Rev. Bernard said: “Mayor Bloomberg did not let us down, and we need to keep him right where he is, working for us.”
Earlier this year, the mayor won the endorsement of a former member of Congress, the Reverend Floyd Flake, who is pastor of Allen A.M.E. Church at Jamaica.
Another African-American who is among the city’s most influential pastors, the Reverend Calvin Butts III of the Abyssinian Baptist Church at Harlem, has said he would endorse Mr. Bloomberg if the borough president of Manhattan, C. Virginia Fields, who is black, loses the Democratic primary.
