High-Profile Democrats Line Up To Congratulate Mayor on His Triumph
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Senators Clinton and Schumer were quick to endorse Fernando Ferrer when he won the Democratic mayoral nomination. Comptroller William Thompson Jr. and the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, joined Mr. Ferrer on stage at his “victory” party Tuesday night.
Yesterday, however, high-profile Democrats and Republicans alike lined up to congratulate Mayor Bloomberg on his re-election.
While some of the calls may have been made out of a sense of propriety, many of the officials who dialed City Hall throughout the day had praised the Republican mayor publicly even before the end of the mayoral race, when they were cheering for Mr. Ferrer.
After attending a hearing in Washington, Mr. Schumer said, “I think the vote in New York City was not a surprise. I think that Freddy Ferrer ran a strong campaign, but that Michael Bloomberg won, and I will work with Mayor Bloomberg as I have in the past.”
Mr. Bloomberg also spoke yesterday with the newly re-elected public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum; a Ferrer ally, Mayor Dinkins; as well as with Sean Combs and Joe Torre. On the Republican side, he fielded calls from the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, and the state Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno.
Mr. Bloomberg told reporters yesterday that despite his 20-point margin of victory over Mr. Ferrer, he would not change his mind about seeking statewide or national public office.
“The public honored me yesterday with the opportunity to run the city for the next four years,” he said. “I will work for the next four years for this city as mayor, and then go into the world of philanthropy for my next career, by which time there will not be one after that. That’ll take me a long time.”
He said he was going back to work yesterday – seeking help for New York at the city, state, and national levels and implementing the policies he proposed during his campaign.
“We need help from Congress, we need help from the White House, from Albany, and the governor’s mansion, we need help from everybody, and the City Council and the mayor’s office will continue to work together,” he said.
Although Mr. Bloomberg won by the largest margin recorded by a Republican mayoral candidate in recent history, he said he didn’t know if he would call his victory a “mandate.”
“It is, I suppose, more satisfying than a one-vote margin, but the law says a one-vote margin’s the only thing that matters, and what I’m going to do is go out there and work as hard as I can. The stories about whether you have a bigger margin than somebody else will go away in a day or two, and the hard reality of doing the work day in and day out to improve this city and continue to make it safe is what I’m going to focus on.”
The mayor said right away that he would set to work on accomplishing the more than 100 goals he set during his campaign. For the most part, those goals constitute building on the administration’s first-term record on education and crime reduction. They also include new initiatives such as consolidating power in emergency situations with the Police Department, taking a more prominent role in Lower Manhattan redevelopment, and using technology such as text messaging to direct New Yorkers during emergencies.
Mr. Bloomberg spent his first day as a newly re-elected mayor accepting congratulations, but he also got back to work. After coffee with a constituent and a senior staff meeting, the mayor kicked off Country Music Awards week. In the afternoon he met with his staff about economic development and legislative affairs.