Mayor-citizen

When he was elected mayor of New York last week, Michael Bloomberg could not have dreamed that he would be given the opportunity so soon to have a dress rehearsal of acting in a city that was shaken to its roots by the tragedy of 11/2002. The crash of a plane full of passengers, in the New York neighborhood of Queens, grounded the newly minted mayor and revealed to him the depth of the problems he will have to deal with when he takes over from Rudy Giuliani in January XNUMX, whose popularity among New Yorkers and beyond can already be measured with the one enjoyed by Hollywood stars in the USA. It was the way Giuliani dealt with the tragic events in New York that made him one of the most beloved mayors in the history of the Big Apple during his last months in office. That's why the new mayor faces not only great challenges, which are too big a burden even if the unfortunate events and disasters never happen again, but also Giuliani's success, which leaves a difficult task for his policy to an inexperienced successor. In Giuliani, Bloomberg had a great teacher, which will be useful to him in the future, but for his victory over the Democratic rival Mark Green, Giuliani's immediate support was even more important. Although he invested a huge personal fortune in the election campaign, as one Bloomberg campaign strategist said, "when Rudy taps Mike on the shoulder in front of the TV cameras, that's a real campaign." And indeed, the primary game was uncertain until the last moment, until Giuliani began to spare no expense in favoring Bloomberg. According to the estimates of many analysts, it ruled.

REPUBLICANS - THE SECOND PUT: And so it happened that for the first time in the history of New York, the Republicans won two consecutive mandates in the race for the position of the leader of the city where more than eight million people live. Admittedly, the big question is to what extent Bloomberg is a Republican. He is not only new to politics, but also a newly minted Republican. He left the Democratic Party and joined the Republicans just before the election campaign, and many who know him say he will not deviate from his Democratic convictions.

It is difficult to understand what a person needs to do this ungrateful job today, and it is even more difficult what attracted Bloomberg to run for office, if his biography is taken into account. And only for a salary of one single dollar a year (instead of $195.000, which is the annual salary of the mayor of New York). The confusion is even greater if it is known that he invested more than 50 million dollars of his own money in the election campaign.

Michael Bloomberg (59) is as well known to readers of newspapers as Wall Street journal i Financial Times on the one hand, and glamorous magazines such as Playboy or Vanity Fair, on the other hand, because we are talking about a multi-billionaire who already in the mid-sixties sensed where the money lay: in the world of (tele)communications. As soon as he graduated from the prestigious Harvard in the mid-sixties, he moved to New York and started working for a brokerage house for a salary of $9000 a year. He soon founded his own company and began developing businesses in the field of computers and telecommunications. Today, Bloomberg is the head of the company of the same name, which employs more than 8000 people and operates in 126 countries, and is on the magazine's list of the 400 richest Americans. Forbes Bloomberg ranks it a "solid" 61st. His personal fortune is estimated at around five billion dollars. Until recently, Bloomberg was mostly known to New Yorkers from the New York tabloids because, since his divorce (he has two daughters), he is often seen in the company of glamorous beauties and New York stars, who, like him, live on the upper east side of Manhattan (Upper East Side).

KAO SVI THE OTHERS: And yet, Bloomberg behaves in New York like everyone else (albeit wealthier New Yorkers). "When he stops by the bar, he orders and drinks coffee from a paper cup and flips through the newspaper like the other customers," says the bar owner from Bloomberg's neighborhood, who often sees him there. Since he announced that he would run the office from his apartment on East 56th Street, his neighbors weren't the least bit alarmed that their traffic would be blocked or their parking spaces taken away due to increased security measures.

The fact that he won more votes from minority New Yorkers, especially from New York's African-Americans and Latinos, proves that the move to the rival camp did not change Bloomberg's democratic beliefs. After the plane crash in Queens, together with Giuliani, he appeared at a press conference, and his first words of condolence were in Spanish, because most of the victims of the accident and the mourners are New Yorkers whose native language is Spanish.

It is difficult to judge how this successful businessman will cope with the difficult tasks ahead of him, and whether he will be able to outshine his predecessor, because it is still too early to judge how much New York has actually changed since 11/XNUMX. It is clear to everyone that it is no longer the same city, and the fear that future wars will be fought in big cities is too great even for the most experienced politician, let alone for a newcomer like Bloomberg. In addition, it is already known that New York enters the first year of Bloomberg's mayoralty with a deficit of about four billion dollars, which is a sum equal to Bloomberg's personal wealth. It will therefore be a difficult period for New York and its citizens, who fear that the recession will increase the crime rate and the number of homeless people, in other words that New York will return to the days before Giuliani, when it was one of the most unsafe cities in the world. Therefore, Bloomberg does not have the privilege of starting from scratch, let alone inheriting a tidy, safe and clean New York from Giuliani, as he probably hoped when he joined the pre-election campaign in June. Before him is slave labor.