Meet the Bloomberg Republicans

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.

The New York Sun
NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

Contrary to the conventional wisdom of many New Yorkers, City Council elections do not end on primary day.


In most years, more than a dozen districts – representing more than a million New Yorkers – do not offer any general election day choice for their local City Council candidate, effectively disenfranchising all voters except registered Democrats.


This year, at least two Republican city council candidates deserve the voters’ serious consideration. Dr. Joel Zinberg and Patrick Murphy refused to listen to the critics who cynically say that the easiest way to reach the council is by running as a Democrat. Instead, they are pursuing public office as a matter of principle, mounting aggressive campaigns in contiguous seats on Manhattan’s Upper East Side that have the apparatchiks of the local Democratic establishment getting nervous.


A look at these two candidates and their complementary campaigns suggests the beginnings of a hopeful evolution in New York City politics, the development of a local Republican party that is unique and ideologically consistent – a place where fiscal conservative, socially moderate, urban reformers can come together under the banner of the party that gave birth to Fiorello La Guardia, Theodore Roosevelt, and Rudolph Giuliani.


But the ultimate success of this deepening of the two-party system in New York will depend largely upon an unlikely benefactor – the current occupant of City Hall, Mayor Bloomberg. He has the means and the reason to leave this legacy to New Yorkers in a second term by helping to build a citywide party that offers a fresh alternative to the stale local Democratic establishment. The candidacies of Dr. Zinberg and Mr. Murphy offer a glimpse into that possible future and a clear picture of why such a development would be in both the mayor’s and the city’s long-term best interests.


Mr. Bloomberg might be a self-conscious anomaly when it comes to his place within the national Republican Party, but both of these local candidates are proud to campaign alongside the mayor. Indeed they identify themselves as “Bloomberg Republicans.”


Like Mr. Bloomberg, Dr. Zinberg emphasizes his impressive professional career pre-politics as one of the prime reasons he can better represent the people of New York. His opponent, Jessica Lappin, served as chief of staff to the district’s incumbent council member, Gifford Miller. Mr. Miller, like Ms. Lappin, served as chief of staff to a local Democratic leader before first running for office. The Democrats in New York have become the party of the professional politician, offering candidates who’ve never worked outside of politics from the moment they left college.


In sharp contrast, Dr. Zinberg boasts a resume as accomplished as any resident of the Upper East Side: a graduate of both Columbia medical school and Yale Law School, he is a practicing surgeon and professor. His professional experience expresses itself in proposals such as an educated commitment to Medicaid reform. Dr. Zinberg expresses his commitment to the local Republican Party in refreshingly common sense terms. “The city has made tremendous progress under the Giuliani and Bloomberg Administrations. And for those of us, like myself, who are lifelong New Yorkers, remember what it was like beforehand. And that’s why you become a Republican in New York – you share those values. You’re fiscally conservative, you’re concerned about the economy, crime and security, but you’re moderate on social issues,” he says.


Patrick Murphy fits that description. He is running for the open seat vacated by popular incumbent Eva Moskowitz. Moskowitz was cut from a different cloth than many of her Democratic colleagues in the City Council, pushing accountability and education reform even at the expense of friendly relations with the teachers union. Mr. Murphy is quick to point out that before Ms. Moskowitz occupied the office, the district had been host to a long line of effective local Republican leaders, including Roy Goodman, John Ravitz, and Andrew Eristoff. “You need independent, alternative voices in the council,” Mr. Murphy says, “Competition is good. One party rule is not good anywhere. I think that helps explain why there’s so little respect for the City Council, because they spend so much time trying to figure out how to give themselves a pay raise, how to add an extra term without going back to the voters, and driving a Mack truck through the campaign finance laws by allowing huge loopholes for union money.”


Mr. Murphy’s race is considered eminently winnable for a capable Republican because the district is split 50-50 between Democrats and a coalition of Republicans and Independents. “75% of the district is ticket-splitters,” Mr. Murphy attests, “those are Bloomberg Democrats, open minded people who vote for the person not the party.”


In these two candidates we can see the beginnings of a compelling local identity for Republicans that has been absent in the recent past, and has kept them in impotent minority status.


The larger question for Michael Bloomberg, in both this election cycle and in the coming four years – should he be re-elected – is whether he will try to leave a larger political legacy in New York by using his endless supply of money to help build a local Republican party in his image, admittedly not right-wing conservative, but robust and viable, based around the principles of political reform, fiscal responsibility, and social inclusivity.


If Mayor Bloomberg will strongly support these candidates in addition to his own re-election, and if the local Republican Party can begin fielding credible candidates as a viable alternative to the Democratic assembly line, New York City civic life would be inestimably richer. It starts with competitive elections open to all in the fall.

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

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.


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