Third Term? What About A Second?

As a matter of fact, I was thinking this. Thanks for bringing it up:

As thankful as the city is for all Mayor Mike accomplished after 9/11, that was nearly a full term ago. Now, he’s decided he wants a third term, even though he still owes us a second.

Even his strongest allies have a hard time naming a memorable achievement from Bloomberg’s second term — beyond his sparking a national gun-control campaign. Instead, he was fixated for most of the last two years by an always-improbable, yet ballyhooed pursuit of the presidency, followed by a largely unnoticed, two-month-long audition for the consolation prize of vice president.

In one of the most sordid performances by a city executive in modern history, Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey appeared on NY1 in May to declare that “the person who picks Mayor Bloomberg as their vice-presidential candidate wins the election,” partly because Bloomberg would “help finance a campaign” with “between zero and a billion” dollars. This televised and indiscriminate bribe offer generated no takers and, more remarkably, drew not one word of fire from the city media.

Two weeks later, Bloomberg acknowledged that he’d asked a pollster to see what voters thought about extending term limits so he could run again.

Annotation: Wayne Barrett writes the best, most complete history of how this all happened. The op-ed co-optation, the charitable bribes, the “lack of time” to prepare a referendum, the City Council treachery, the misuse of the worldwide financial crisis to gin up a reason to run again and much, much more; bookmark this or clip it and put it in your scrapbook . . .