Will Bloomberg Run for Nyc Mayor Again
NEW YORK — Mike Bloomberg awoke early on that crisp and cloudless Tuesday and walked from his East Side mansion to his neighborhood polling place, where he saw his name on an election ballot for the first fourth dimension, as a Republican candidate for mayor.
It was Sept. 11, 2001, master 24-hour interval, and Bloomberg was in the thick of trying to reinvent himself as the face of America'southward largest metropolis, an aspiration many New Yorkers regarded as audacious, if not laughable, for a little-known billionaire CEO.
After voting, Bloomberg walked downtown to his campaign headquarters, where he drank coffee and scanned the newspapers at his desk, a cubicle amid rows of cubicles occupied by strategists and policy directorate.
Then someone told him that an airplane had slammed into the World Trade Eye.
On television, a newscaster wondered whether technical problems had disrupted communications betwixt air traffic control and the plane.
"Bulls---," Bloomberg said.
As a licensed airplane pilot, he knew that the morning's clear skies were perfect for flying and that information technology was unthinkable a plane would travel at such a low altitude. " 'Yous don't demand radar or air traffic command to tell you where the World Trade Centre is,' " Bill Cunningham, an adviser, recalled Bloomberg saying. "He knew something really bad was going on."
At nine:03 a.m., when the second airplane hit the South Tower, Bloomberg's fears were validated.
In that moment of confused panic, Bloomberg displayed the instincts that propelled his development from Wall Street trader to technology entrepreneur to founder of a multibillion-dollar media empire with offices effectually the world, his name over each entrance.
It was that same cocky-balls — some would say arrogance — that drove Bloomberg, then 59, with a crooked smile and no discernible trace of charisma, to surrender the cloistral life of a private citizen for the hothouse of New York politics.
Yet what Bloomberg did not know in that moment — what no one could have known — is that the deadliest foreign attack on American soil would fuel his unlikely rise as New York's mayor and become a foundation for his race for the White Business firm.
The Pursuit
A series on the 2022 presidential candidates.
As he stakes his presidential campaign on capturing a windfall of Super Tuesday delegates, Bloomberg invokes his stewardship of post-nine/11 New York to cast himself equally the competent, even-keeled antitoxin to President Trump'south turbulent reign.
"We began to write a comeback story," Bloomberg tells audiences, recalling that he took over a metropolis "in tatters" after winning an election that "almost no one" — non fifty-fifty his mother, he oftentimes notes — "thought I had a run a risk."
At the same time, Bloomberg, an engineer by training, is suspicious of analyses devoid of data and reluctant to attribute his political birth entirely to 9/11.
"I don't know how I got elected or why I got elected other than more than people voted for me," he said this calendar month in Detroit during a cursory interview between campaign stops. "Merely I don't know why they voted for me."
Bloomberg'due south 12 years at City Hall lifted him to newfound prominence and spanned the rebirth of Lower Manhattan, the ascent of the new World Trade Center and the opening of the 9/eleven Memorial.
Yet, in 2001, as he aspired to succeed Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani, he was largely unknown beyond Wall Street and the exclusive dinner parties and charity galas he frequented.
"Who is Bloomberg?" Ester Fuchs, and then a Barnard College political science professor, asked when his pollster suggested she come across with him.
By the morn of Sept. 11, polls showed Bloomberg would win the GOP primary. But his prospects in Nov remained dim in a urban center where Democrats outnumbered Republicans five to ane.
After the twin towers collapsed and Gov. George Pataki (R) postponed the primary, Bloomberg learned that the brother of a entrada staffer was missing and that iii of his company'south employees had been at a briefing on the 106th flooring of the North Tower.
"I'm SCARED," Peter Alderman, 25, a Bloomberg employee, wrote in a 9:07 a.m. email to his sister from Windows on the Earth, where he was trapped. "THERE IS A lot OF SMOKE."
Alderman'south parents were in France that day jubilant his male parent's 60th birthday when their phone rang.
"It's Mike Bloomberg," he said.
As the visitor's dominate, he felt information technology was his responsibility to tell the Aldermans what he knew nigh their son. A squad of his employees had been assigned to phone call hospitals around the urban center about Peter. His whereabouts remained unknown.
" 'We're searching for him,' " Elizabeth Alderman, Peter'due south mother, recalled Bloomberg maxim.
She struggled to remain hopeful. The billionaire was measured and thing-of-fact.
He promised to phone call back.
'Suck it up'
New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R), left, and Mike Bloomberg, then a mayoral candidate, march in the city'due south gay pride parade in 2001. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Rudy Giuliani wanted to audio encouraging as he listened to Bloomberg talk of his ambition to follow him equally mayor. They were sitting in the living room at Gracie Mansion, the mayor'south official residence, in the spring of 2001, a few months before Bloomberg entered the race.
"What do you want to make a alter for?" Giuliani asked.
Bloomberg said just 4 jobs piqued his involvement: U.N. secretary general, World Bank president, president of the United States and the seat opening at City Hall at the conclusion of Giuliani'due south term.
Bloomberg impressed the mayor with his cognition of city policies and his willingness to spend millions of his own fortune on the campaign. Just Giuliani told Bloomberg what he told any Republican running in his metropolis. " 'Republicans can't win in New York unless there'southward a disaster,' " Giuliani recalled warning. "Or, let's say, things are really bad."
Giuliani listed the crises that had swept Republicans Fiorello La Guardia and John Lindsay into office. In his own case, Giuliani cited two riots and a soaring murder rate that presaged his victory over Democratic incumbent David Dinkins.
" 'Yes, but times change,' " Bloomberg said, recalled Giuliani, who thought the businessman was "very sure of himself. I was more impressed than I thought I'd be. I came away thinking he'd exist a proficient mayor; too bad it's a Democratic city."
A Democrat until just before the mayor's race, Bloomberg became a Republican considering he couldn't win the Democratic nomination against 2 well-known city pols, Fernando Ferrer and Marker Light-green, the eventual nominee.
His party switch was emblematic of the pragmatism and ambition that had infused Bloomberg since his upbringing in Medford, Mass. — the son of a bookkeeper and a homemaker — where he collected enough merit badges to become an Hawkeye Scout at age 12.
"Suck it up and just get on with information technology!" was how his parents taught him to deal with adversity, Bloomberg told a biographer. "Don't permit bad things that happen to you stop you."
Bloomberg, left, and Salomon Brothers chief executive John Gutfreund in New York in 1975. (Edward Hausner/New York Times/Redux)
A portrait of Bloomberg in his visitor's computer-filled offices. (James Keyser/Life Images Collections/Getty Images)
LEFT: Bloomberg, left, and Salomon Brothers primary executive John Gutfreund in New York in 1975. (Edward Hausner/New York Times/Redux) RIGHT: A portrait of Bloomberg in his company's computer-filled offices. (James Keyser/Life Images Collections/Getty Images)
At Salomon Brothers, where he earned $9,000 a yr after graduating from Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Business School, his outset job was counting billions of dollars in securities within a sweltering vault known equally "the Cage." To keep cool, he stripped to his underwear and drank beer.
Salomon'due south culture was a blend of Brooks Brothers suits and loading-dock profanity. Bloomberg gained a reputation every bit a hard-driving dominate who on occasion would throw a phone if the conversation wasn't going his way. His underlings teased that his edge was unbefitting "someone born on Valentine's Twenty-four hours," said Richard Levy, a trader who worked for Bloomberg.
When Levy had to miss piece of work on a frenetic trading day because his grandfather died, Bloomberg asked whether he could delay the funeral, fifty-fifty though Jewish law requires burial inside 24 hours. "Michael, you should know improve," Levy recalled telling him. Bloomberg, who is Jewish, apologized.
After Salomon merged with another visitor in 1981, the firm dismissed Bloomberg, though non without a $10 million payout he used to create the now-famous reckoner terminal that carries his proper name. Over the next two decades, Bloomberg LP grew to 8,000 employees in more than 100 countries and annual earnings exceeding $2 billion.
A rising star in business circles, Bloomberg in 1993 invited a New York magazine reporter to his office, apparently unconcerned well-nigh how his banter might come off. At i point, he commented on the attractiveness of an employee, saying, "She is the reason all the young programmers come in early on and stay late." At another, he tossed Cheez-Its into a trash can and joked, "I could play for the Knicks if I ever grew up to be seven foot one and black."
[Mike Bloomberg for years has battled women'due south allegations of profane, sexist comments]
Entering his 50s, Bloomberg divorced his wife, Susan, the mother of their two daughters, and became a available about town. His dates with stars such as Marisa Berenson and Diana Ross, viewed as historic period-appropriate, inspired the New York Postal service to tag him the "anti-bimbo billionaire." Bloomberg hosted parties with the likes of Harvey Weinstein, the now-disgraced Hollywood producer, and Tina Brown, the then-prominent magazine editor. In London, he threw a bash called "Vii Deadly Sins," featuring drag queens, massage tables and an oversize bed sheathed in purple satin.
"Money, ain't information technology gorgeous?" shouted performers waving cash.
'What is rent command?'
Bloomberg and Alfred Sommer, a prominent ophthalmologist he knew through their affiliation with Hopkins, were eating steaks i night when the businessman asked a surprising question.
"What do you think about me running for mayor?"
"Why would you want to exercise that?" Sommer replied. "Why would anyone want to practice that?"
By then, Bloomberg had palatial homes in Manhattan, London and Bermuda, and enough money that he could afford to donate tens of millions to various causes. He wanted a new challenge, and public service appealed to his inner Eagle Scout.
As he contemplated a unlike path, Bloomberg consulted a long list of political operatives, including Pecker Cunningham, a former adviser to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.).
"Y'all accept any thought what guys like me do to guys like you?" Cunningham recalled asking. He warned that Bloomberg'southward wealth would be a bull'south eye for opponents lampooning him equally an out-of-affect oligarch.
"That's what'south wrong with politics," Bloomberg snapped. He insisted that he was more than his money and that he had the credentials to govern.
Cunningham joined a growing cast of strategists effectually Bloomberg, a troupe including New York'due south preeminent political guru, David Garth, who had steered Lindsay, Democrat Ed Koch and Giuliani to mayoral victories.
Their new boss, they learned, had no patience for chitchat or navel-gazing. He could exist blunt, profane and bitter.
"How exercise yous alive with her?" Bloomberg said when coming together the husband of Ester Fuchs, by then a policy adviser, who was flabbergasted until she saw the billionaire's smirk.
He too had a lot to learn nearly New York politics.
When pollster Frank Luntz told him that winning would be hard, Bloomberg said, "The only reason I'm talking to y'all is for you to brand information technology less difficult."
"There were no pleasantries," Luntz said. "Mike is business: To him, I was a political hack, and he didn't want to fake it."
One adviser's consignment was to brand flashcards to quiz him on New York minutiae such every bit "How many miles is the transit arrangement?" "Who is the Metropolis Quango speaker?" and "What is rent control?"
Bloomberg knew that he needed Hispanic votes, which is why he hired a Spanish teacher, Juan Carlos Ayarza. At one point, Ayarza accompanied Bloomberg on a week-long business organization trip to Europe and Asia, tutoring him just when they were airborne in his jet.
"Here'due south your coin. Go tour," Bloomberg said when they landed, Ayarza recalled.
His political operatives had to teach him the nuts of campaigning.
"Always march in a parade before?" Ed Skyler, his press secretarial assistant, asked as they set off for the Israeli Twenty-four hours celebration.
"Mayhap the Male child Scouts," Bloomberg said, an answer that compelled his aide to remind him that, when encountering a tv set camera, "wave and grin like you're in a sold-out stadium."
On the campaign trail, Bloomberg was The Unnatural, dressed in polo shirts and tasseled loafers, his nasal voice an odd blend of Bahston and New Yawk.
"A friend of mine but bought the Jets," he said cheerfully later on meeting a kid wearing a Baltimore Ravens T-shirt, an substitution captured by a documentary filmmaker. Another voter, grilling hot dogs, is shown request Bloomberg for a loan of "one-half-a-mill" to renovate his business firm.
"I know Michael's got it," the man says every bit Bloomberg chuckles and moves on.
As he announced his candidacy at a Queens senior center, Bloomberg boasted that his visitor'south "customers call back we walk on water — and we practise. I tin can practise that for the city."
"Not Even Close to Being Set up," a Daily News headline declared the next twenty-four hour period.
As summer passed, Bloomberg poured millions into Television set ads and climbed in polls that one time showed him losing by more than 2 to 1. George Arzt, Koch's one-time adviser, had doubted that working-grade voters would embrace a billionaire. But Arzt found himself commencement to think otherwise equally he left a Mets game one nighttime and saw dozens of Bloomberg volunteers handing out "Mike for Mayor" bubble gum.
"Wow, I never saw this in a entrada," he thought.
On the eve of the master, Bloomberg fended off attacks over off-color wisecracks he had purportedly made a decade before, all of them collected by a old employee in a booklet chosen the "Portable Bloomberg." "Make the customer think he'due south getting laid when he'southward getting f---ed," read the first entry.
At their final debate, Herman Badillo, his Republican primary opponent, cited the booklet as show that Bloomberg was unfit to be mayor.
Two days afterward, later the outset plane struck the Earth Merchandise Centre, voters were no longer paying attention.
Bloomberg speaks to the news media in Brooklyn on Sept. 26, 2001, one day after winning the GOP chief. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
At his headquarters, Bloomberg learned about the three company employees who had been on the 106th floor. When he reached Peter Alderman'southward parents in French republic, he bodacious them that he would send his plane to fly them back to New York.
"I want you to stay calm," he said. "Nosotros'll call yous back as soon as we know annihilation."
The following day, he phoned once again.
"No one survived above the 91st floor," Bloomberg told the Aldermans. "I wish I could tell you amend news."
Elizabeth Alderman felt her knees buckle. She began to cry and dropped to the floor.
His airplane pilot would be in touch, Bloomberg promised. A few days later, a limousine was waiting when the Aldermans landed in New York.
The next morning, their doorbell rang. Bloomberg was on their front end pace, lone.
He had come to say how distressing he was nigh their son.
'A different city'
Twenty-4 hours subsequently the attack, Bloomberg and his directorate convened at entrada headquarters. Exterior, the midtown streets were arid as the metropolis and the land awakened to fears of new threats and an uncertain hereafter.
"What do we do at present?" Bloomberg asked his team.
His campaign commercials would halt, and he would make no firsthand public appearances. Simply larger questions remained: How would they respond to the catastrophe once the entrada resumed?
Before Sept. 11, Bloomberg struggled to sell voters on the merits of a political outsider with a business groundwork. But Lower Manhattan was at present defined by a huge crater, and voters feared that corporations would abscond and the city's economy would tank. Bloomberg'south directorate saw an opportunity. Their candidate'south executive background was now an asset.
"It became pretty clear once the shock of the event passed that the qualifications for the job had changed," Skyler said. "Mike'southward experience became a lot more relevant."
A day subsequently winning the rescheduled Republican primary, a gaggle of tv set crews followed Bloomberg to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, which overlooks the E River and has panoramic views of Manhattan'due south skyline.
"What we have going forward hither is a dissimilar city," he said after pausing to gaze across the water where the twin towers had stood. "And the mayor's job is unlike than it was earlier."
While Bloomberg still trailed by xvi points in the polls, the gap narrowed as Greenish, his opponent, made missteps and the Democrats were consumed by racially charged infighting.
Bloomberg, the 24-hour interval after his ballot every bit mayor, meets with Fernando Ferrer, the Bronx borough president, at the Courtroom Deli. (James Leynse/Corbis/Getty Images)
Yet Bloomberg's greatest reward was the endorsement he received from Giuliani, whose post-9/11 performance inspired continuing ovations wherever he went. "Mike volition build on what nosotros've accomplished," Giuliani said in an ad that aired ceaselessly in the entrada'due south final hours.
On the ballot's eve, as he circled the urban center to rally voters, Bloomberg received a late-nighttime call from Harvey Weinstein, who somehow thought it essential to let him know that he had abased Green and was supporting him.
" 'Call the newspapers and tell them!' " Weinstein urged, Bloomberg recalled. "And I said, 'Harvey, it's 11 or 12 o'clock, f--- you! The newspapers are on the streets already. I'k not going to telephone call them.' "
On Election Day, Bloomberg told his female parent that he might lose only the results would exist shut plenty that she wouldn't exist embarrassed. Past midnight, his entrada managing director, Kevin Sheekey, put away the concession speech he had drafted. Afterwards spending a record $seventy meg of his own money, Bloomberg had won by 35,000 votes — or less than 3 percent.
"New York is alive and well and open for concern!" the mayor-elect told supporters.
Merely the metropolis remained in a suspended state of anguish. Equally the offset anniversary of the attack approached, Bloomberg's staff assembled a listing of survivors of the 400 firefighters and police force officers who were killed.
He would phone call each one.
Sometimes, the person on the other end was equanimous and the call began and ended easily. Sometimes, the person was crying and Bloomberg could hear children playing in the groundwork.
After a few minutes, the new mayor hung upwardly and went on to the side by side phone call.
President Barack Obama, former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, first lady Michelle Obama, Diana Taylor, former secretarial assistant of state Hillary Clinton and former president Nib Clinton bout the 9/eleven Memorial and Museum in 2014. (Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images)
'Accept care of your kids'
On the 10th anniversary of the attacks, as bagpipers played and New York paused to reflect, Bloomberg presided over the opening of the ix/eleven Memorial, a milestone that drew President Barack Obama and more than 10,000 relatives of the expressionless.
Soaring over the ceremony was the rising symbol of New York'south recovery — 82 of the 104 stories that would become the new Earth Merchandise Center.
"Nosotros can never united nations-see what happened hither," Bloomberg told the oversupply assembled alongside 2 memorial pools tracing the footprints of the fallen towers. Etched in statuary parapets were the near 3,000 names of the dead, including that of Peter Alderman.
Over the years, Bloomberg had prodded the urban center to move past its commonage grief. Giuliani had envisioned Ground Zero as a sixteen-acre memorial. Bloomberg wanted a smaller memorial and pushed for new offices and schools. He warned of turning downtown into a "cemetery."
When he spoke to relatives of the dead however in the throes of grief, Bloomberg felt the urge to say, "Suck information technology upwards," as his parents had taught him.
"I idea to myself, 'It's tragic, only yous've got to take care of your kids,' " he said. "You don't want to be crying. You want to be talking about the future — 'What can I do to help your kids?' 'What tin I do to help you?' — rather than look dorsum. Looking back isn't going to help."
On the tenth ceremony, Bloomberg told a reporter that he did not want to be "remembered in terms of 9/11. I want the public to remember someone was in that location — not even knowing who they were. That they built the right matter. That they did the right thing."
Three years later on, the nine/xi Memorial Museum opened, a subterranean time capsule of that morning, the horror memorialized in photos of terrified bystanders and recordings of concluding voice mails from those inside the towers.
On a wall were flashing images of fliers that families taped to lampposts for the missing. "Call Mom," one pleaded. On the lesser floor were the twisted remains of the firetruck used by the men of Ladder Visitor 3, a dozen of whom died.
On another wall, behind drinking glass, was a campaign flier with the date in white letters — Tuesday, Sept. 11 — reminding voters to support a Republican on that solar day's ballot.
"Mike Bloomberg," the leaflet reads. "Don't turn the clock back."
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/24/bloomberg-september-11th-new-york-mayor/
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