As most people who follow the various New York City mayoral diaries here on dKos, I'm planning on voting for Mike Bloomberg, the incumbent Republican mayor, for reelection tomorrow.
There's a lot of talk on dKos about never, ever, ever pulling a lever with an "R" on it. Personally, I don't believe in that kind of thinking -- I've voted Republican twice in the past. But in tomorrow's election it turns out that New York's labyrinthine election laws will present me with an alternative.
My reasons for my vote are dealt with elsewhere. In brief, I believe Bloomberg has governed largely as the liberal Democrat he was before switching to the Republican party to avoid a primary battle in 2001. I'm confirmed in my opinion by the huge amount of support that Bloomberg has racked up from labor unions, Democratic office holders, black leaders, the black community, and the surprising amount of support he has in the hispanic community. I've also noticed that of the many important Democrats working hard for Ferrer, none seem willing to criticize Bloomberg's record in office. Since I dislike the Democratic party machine, I have no qualms about voting for Bloomberg.
As you might expect, other dKossers have different opinions. Many people will never vote for a Republican, feel that the race's national implications overshadow the local ones, feel that Bloomberg is responsible for the high cost of buying or renting a place to live in the city, object to his role in bringing the Republican National Convention to New York, his high-dollar sponsorship of that convention, or his contributions to a variety of Republican PACs and candidates.
For my own part, I'm perfectly willing to vote for a Republican if I feel that all-in-all he'll be better than the Democrat. I've done it before -- I voted for Bloomberg over Mark Green in the 2001 mayoral race, and I voted for Lowell Weicker over Joe Lieberman in the 1988 Senatorial race in Connecticut. You can make up your own mind about my perscipacity or lack thereof, but those are votes I'm proud of.
As it turns out, however, I don't have to vote Republican this year. New York has an odd voting system with multiple parties and a candidate is permitted to appear on the ballot line of more than one party. Votes from all party lines are added together to determine the winner.
Bloomberg's opponent, Freddy Ferrer, is on the Democratic line. He was also up for the ballot line of the Working Families Party, which is largely a union-sponsored party. However, Bloomberg's strong union support meant that although Ferrer received better than 50% support in a vote of the Steering Committtee he didn't get the two-thirds vote necessary to gain the party ballot line.
Bloomberg is running on three lines. He's the Republican candidate of course. He's also running on the so-called Independence Party line (so called because it has nothing to do with independents). This is an odd party that arose out of the Perot movement, was later rented by upstate businessman Tom Golisano in his (miserably failed) attempt to become Governor, and then later coopted by the tag team of Lenora Fulani and Fred Newman.
Fulani is an anti-semetic crazy person (although oddly enough her positions are probably not that far from some of the "the traitorous Jews are electing Bloomberg" dKossers whose comments I seem to flush out) and Fred Newman is a whack job psychotherapist who supports sex between therapists and patients. Incidentally, although the Bloomberg administration has been stunningly patronage free, there has been a mini-scandal involving a Fred Newman controlled social services organization which I'm surprised hasn't received more attention from the "Bloomberg Ate My Family" crowd.
Between Republicans and Independence I'd frankly have to go with the Republicans. But I just found out today that there's a third option. Bloomberg is running on the revitalized Liberal Party line.
The Liberal Party started in the 1940s as a union-sponsored alternative to the communist linked Labor Party. It had its greatest success when John Lindsay, incumbent liberal Republican mayor of New York City, actually lost his party's primary nomination but went on to win the mayoralty on the Liberal line alone.
In recent years, the Liberal Party has gone substantially downhill, eventually being taken over by the Harding family, patrons of Rudy Giuliani. Now, at least one of the Harding sons is in jail for embezzeling funds from the city agency Giuliani put him in charge of and the Hardings are gone. In the last Gubernatorial election the Liberal Party essentially went out of busines when their candidate Andrew Cuomo withdrew before the election, costing the party their ballot line.
The party has now been reconstituted (although it's not clear to me how much housecleaning was done aside from the Harding family). The new Chairman is Henry Stern, the city's former Parks Commissioner under most of the previous mayors. And Bloomberg has managed to obtain their ballot line for the mayoral election.
So tomorrow I have the option to vote for an effective and liberal Republican mayor on the Liberal Party line. That's a choice I like.