Mayor Bloomberg’s historic landslide victory this past Tuesday marks a new era in New York politics. After voting for the Republican in four consecutive mayoral elections, this town with 5 to 1 Democrat registration advantage has said decisively that the person running matters far more than the party. Independent individuals who get results will be judged fairly, regardless of party label – but having $75 million on hand doesn’t hurt either.

The Democrats need to confront the fact that party allegiance no longer carries the weight it used to when it comes to the mayor’s office. In fact, the party machinery that still exists undismantled at every other layer of city government has become a near disqualifying agent for mayoral hopefuls, as voters rationally question whether a professional politician can have the political freedom necessary to be independent and act in the city’s overall best interests once in office.

But Republicans should calm down before they read too much into 16 years of control over City Hall. Not a single other Republican challenger won an election on Tuesday night.

For many races, including the citywide offices of public advocate and comptroller, the Republican Party failed to field a candidate at all, leaving opposition to the Conservative and Libertarian Parties. In the borough presidents’ races only token Republican candidates were fielded and the Democrats in Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens received more than 70% of the vote.

The Republicans did manage to recruit a few strong candidates to run for City Council, most notably Dr. Joel Zinberg and Patrick Murphy on the Upper East Side and Pat Russo in Bay Ridge. All of these districts have had a history of electing Republicans in the past, but the local Democratic inertia has proved hard to break, and all three of these Republican candidates lost.

Mayor Bloomberg’s 58.5% victory was especially impressive in its broad support across ethnic groups and income levels. He nearly doubled his support among African Americans to 46%, received the support of 48% of union households and 36% of Latino households against the first Latino mayoral candidate. Across the ideological spectrum, Mr. Bloomberg won the votes of 47% of self-identified liberals, 64% of moderates and 76% of conservatives, all according to the Pace University Exit Poll. Like Mayor Giuliani before him, Bloomberg won every borough in the city except the Bronx. Overall, he exceeded Mayor Giuliani’s 1997 re-election percentage, but the total turnout in this year’s race was more than 125,000 lower than it had been eight years before, giving Mr. Giuliani a numeric edge in actual voter support.

For his part, Fernando Ferrer earned the title of “worst Democratic candidate ever” for totaling 38% of the vote, falling even below Ruth Messinger’s 1997 dismal standard. He lost every income group to the mayor, except the self-identified “working class.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s ultimate election night victory, while historic, fell far short of polls just days before the election which predicted a 34% victory margin over Mr. Ferrer. What happened? Heightened expectations that the election was essentially over may have decreased turnout, causing many of Mayor Bloomberg’s African-American and Latino supporters to stay home. Undecided voters ultimately went with the challenger – as they often do – while many Democrats returned to their party with a simple pull of the lever.

But for an incumbent who eight months ago had been losing consistently to Fernando Ferrer in polls while failing to exceed 50% job approval rating, these results mark an extraordinary turnaround. This reversal of public perception can be traced directly to the unprecedented advertising blitz which began in May of this year, the same month that Mr. Bloomberg began to pull ahead from Mr. Ferrer.

Mr. Bloomberg’s record in office has always been worthy of broad support. The fact that it required a near-constant blanketing of the airwaves to foster that perception indicates how unique this election may have been – few other candidates could afford such an onslaught. But it also may be a harbinger to an era of permanent campaign where instead of press conferences and public service announcements, incumbents offer slickly produced updates to their record in office to reach people directly rather than through the filter of the press.

In a larger sense, the Democrats’ biggest problem in climbing back may be due to the fact that New York City has grown so much safer and more prosperous under the twin-two-term leadership of Mayor Giuliani and Mayor Bloomberg. Voters will rightly attribute much of this success to Republicans’ independence from traditional urban special interest groups.

But while Republicans can take comfort from the new open-mindedness of the New York City electorate, they should not feel any enduring false confidence. Some will try to misread this recent Republican record of success as a new opening for rock ribbed conservatives in the City of New York. That would be a mistake. New Yorkers want tough on crime and fiscally responsible policies but they like their Republicans essentially moderate and independent, not ideological warriors from the far right.

Moreover, like Mayor Giuliani before him, Mayor Bloomberg has no clear successor and the Republican Party cannot hope that another billionaire with civic instincts will stand up and self-fund a campaign to save the party from absolute absence of influence in the nation’s largest city.

That’s why Republicans now need to take seriously the job of rebuilding their party in the image of Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg. Sixteen years of Republican leadership in City Hall can shift the political culture of a city; but it cannot groom successors to their legacy without building a grassroots movement to carry forward reforms. Michael Bloomberg should consider digging into his pockets again, not just for his own benefit, but to build a viable alternative to the Democrats that would carry forward a true spirit of competition to our local politics.

Mayor Bloomberg richly deserved this reelection. New Yorkers agree across race, ethnic, and income lines that the city is moving in the right direction. That in itself is a tremendous barometer of the administration’s success four years after the dark fall of 2001. Mayor Bloomberg has shown through his policies and outreach that Republicans can have broad support at every level of our city. The voters have responded to the record of success rather than the rhetoric of the Democrats. Now is not a time for rest but further progress.