Except for occasional missteps into nannying – a well-meaning effort to ban large sugary drinks, for instance — and questionable legal manoeuvring to secure a third term, there’s ample reason why the pragmatic, essentially apolitical mayor Michael Bloomberg will go down as New York’s great reformist.
The 108th mayor led New York through the months after 9/11, and oversaw faltering efforts to restore its wounded skyline; he led the battle to reduce the illegal firearms entering the city; recognised the economic imperative of keeping the financial services industry in the city after the banking crisis of 2008; supported the arts — often anonymously — when grants were being cut to restore the city’s $6bn budget deficit to surplus.
Perhaps the biggest endorsement of Bloomberg’s triple term is in the number of jobs for which his name has been floated since, domestically and internationally and across the political spectrum. With his company, Bloomberg LP, having a major presence in London, there were ludicrous rumours he might run for mayor of London; in the US he’s touted as a potential challenger for the 2016 Democratic nomination or as an independent. But there’s no indication that, at 73, he’s assembling the kind of data-crunching study he’d require to examine the possibility.
He looked at it in 2008 before concluding that, while his mayoralty might play well in New York and internationally, the likelihood of US voters returning a diminutive, Jewish New York billionaire to the White House were slim. Still, as evidence mounts that big money in politics does little but drive down voter interest (and turnout), Bloomberg could in theory sidestep campaign finance issues by dipping into his $20bn-plus data services fortune.
Bloomberg remains, in effect, a billionaire knight errant. He’s running Bloomberg LP with the former Economist editor John Micklethwait at his side, and Bloomberg Philanthropies with former sideman Dan Doctoroff. He’s established a for-hire consultancy group to help struggling urban administration worldwide, launched a war on coal, a war on tobacco, and looks set to direct his energy and fortune toward curbing climate change by making the world’s cities become more energy-efficient and livable.
While the former Salomon Brothers trader spends more time at his home in London, it seems unlikely he’ll abandon the Big Apple. “This is the city of dreamers,” he has said. “Time and again it’s the place where the greatest dream of all, the American dream, has been tested and has triumphed.”
