The Power Broker

The Times’ David Carr goes local and explains how the city’s major editorial boards slid into the tank for the mayor:

Mr. Bloomberg said that he understood the situation and did not take the people’s verdict lightly. “But as newspaper editorialists and others have pointed out,” he said, “the current law denies voters the right to choose who to vote for — at a time when our economy is in turmoil and the Council is a democratically elected representative body.”

It is no coincidence that Mr. Bloomberg cited voices from the city’s opinion leaders. With a fiscal crisis at hand, the business leaders of New York has already held a private referendum and decided who the next mayor should be. So in spite of his rather breathtaking grab for another term, there will be no opprobrium forthcoming from the editorial pages of the city’s newspapers.

Before Mr. Bloomberg took this controversial step — remember when Rudolph W. Giuliani got clobbered for seeking three more months in office after Sept. 11? — he made the rounds and locked up the support of the editorial pages of The New York Post, The New York Times and The Daily News, three city newspapers not known for moving in lock step.

. . .

To set the stage, the mayor had spent the last month making plain his interest in staying put at City Hall. He did not post a Web site or drop items in various blogs, but instead called Howard J. Rubenstein, a master of the city’s power grid. Meetings were set up with the owners of the daily newspapers, as well as with potential opponents and the city’s corporate overlords.

It was a gambit that would not have been out of place in the 1970s — or the 1870s, for that matter. This being a Bloomberg administration, there were no smoke-filled rooms, but there was definitely the sense that issues of civic moment were being handled in private environs.

“The only thing that my clients have been talking about for the past few weeks is the fiscal dilemma that this city is facing,” said Mr. Rubenstein, the public relations mogul who helped broker a deal in 1975 involving Abraham D. Beame, then mayor of the city, and Governor Hugh L. Carey back when the feds told the city to more or less drop dead.

“I did step up because I want to see the city survive and prosper,” Mr. Rubenstein said, “and I think we all agree that he is the person who we would like to see leading us through this crisis.”

In mid-September, after a year of talking on and off, Mr. Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch, who owns The New York Post, met for dinner at an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side and sealed a deal. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times, had two breakfasts with the mayor, and although no specific commitments were made, an understanding was reached.

Mortimer B. Zuckerman, owner of The Daily News, said he had no trouble throwing his support behind Mr. Bloomberg. He said there had been no cabal, no conspiracy, just three newspaper publishers all arriving at the same conclusion at a critical juncture in the life of the city.

“Suggesting that the publishers can decide who the next mayor is is a little like being a 90-year-old named in a paternity suit,” Mr. Zuckerman said on the phone. “I only wish we had that kind of power. I think he has been a remarkable mayor, we face tremendous challenges as a city right now, and it’s clear that he is the person for the job.”