Michael Bloomberg said he still supports nonpartisan elections but doesn’t want to “chase windmills again” and for the first time noted that “editorial support” is among the things he needs to win over New Yorkers on this issue.
“I’d be happy to do it again but I don’t see how you would get it done if you cannot attract the kind of attention and editorial support that in my heart of hearts believe it should have,” Bloomberg told reporters after giving a speech at New York University about helping non-profits during this fiscal crisis.
The mayor’s support of nonpartisan elections helped him win support from the New York City Independence Party, which endorsed him for re-election on Sunday. The Independence Party also endorsed him in 2001 and 2005.
Bloomberg spent millions of dollars supporting a public referendum to create nonpartisan elections, which voters overwhelmingly rejected in 2003.
“The bottom line is,” Bloomberg told reporters this afternoon, “the process we have right now, a very small percentage of the population selects our legislators and executives and a very tiny percentage of the population has any chance of ever getting elected and contributing to our democracy. That is not right. That is not good government.”
Bloomberg went on to say that “only in New York do we allow the same two parties to sit there and decide who can work at the polls, to decide who has the opportunity to hold elective office.”
“We’d be a lot better with nonpartisan elections, but I said to them [the Independence Party] yesterday that until I can find a ways to do it, we’re certainly – I’m not going to chase windmills again. But if I thought there was a ways to do it, would I? Absolutely. It would be great for the city.
