|
|
||
|
|
| |
|
| ||
    |
  |
 |
 | |||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
|||
 |
||||
 | |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||||
| |||||||||
| ||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
| Green was hurt
by a defection of Democrats. |
“THIS HAS been a very tough, close race, but the good news is we
have won,” Bloomberg, 59, told a crowd of cheering supporters chanting,
“We want Mike.” “We suffered a terrible tragedy on Sept. 11, and we are just not going to let the terrorists beat us,” he added. “New York is alive and well and open for business. ... We are clearly going to have enormous problems, but I know we are up to the task.” Standing with popular Mayor Rudolph Giuliani by his side, Bloomberg promised to repay the voters by working “24 hours a day, seven days a week, anything it takes.” He also said he would put together a team that reflects “all of New York’s diversity.” “Nobody believed we could do it.... The easy part is done. Now comes the hard part. And I just want to say, with the help of (New York Gov.) George Pataki and Rudy Giuliani, we’re going to carry this city forward.... Thank you so much. I will not let you down.” With all precincts reporting in the nine-candidate race, Bloomberg had 719,819 votes, or 50 percent, while Green had 676,560 or 47 percent. A REMARKABLE FEAT The victory was an extraordinary feat. No Republican mayor has ever succeeded another in the history of the heavily Democratic city. In New York City, there are 2.4 million registered Democrats, compared with only 460,000 registered Republicans — a margin of more than 5 to 1. New York has elected only three Republican mayors since 1933: Giuliani, John Lindsay and Fiorello LaGuardia. Bloomberg, the owner of the financial information company that bears his name, had never run for public office before and spent $50 million from his own pocket on the race — more than any other candidate in city history. Shackled by campaign finance laws, Green spent just $12 million. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Now Bloomberg will have to do that — and more. He’ll need to bridge a multibillion-dollar budget gap in a city where an estimated 100,000 jobs have been lost due to the downturn in the economy since the attacks. And he will have to do that in the shadow of Giuliani, one of New York’s most popular mayors in recent history. “Whoever takes office Jan. 1 of next year has two problems: one is the Rudy legacy, but also facing a three-quarter-of-a-billion-dollar deficit in the city budget — an enormous problem,” pollster John Zogby said on MSNBC TV Tuesday night. “There’s a lot of people out of work, a lot of white-collar people out of work.... And so this is going to be a very difficult position.” DEFECTION OF DEMOCRATS Bloomberg's win was a triumph for Giuliani as well. Green’s overall lead began narrowing in the polls less than a week ago, when Giuliani endorsed Bloomberg and began appearing in his campaign commercials. Giuliani, prevented by term limits from running again, said Bloomberg was the man to guide New York through the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, a weighty endorsement from a man widely praised for his leadership following Sept. 11. Green, a veteran politician and the city’s public advocate, conceded the race in a phone call to Bloomberg shortly after midnight ET. “We gave it our all, we really did, but it wasn’t enough,” Green said in a speech to supporters. “I ask the city to support him,” Green added. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Democratic mayoral candidate
Mark Green with his daughter Jenya, left, son Jonah, second right, and
wife Deni Frand, right, during his concession speech in New
York. |
Green was hurt by a defection of Democrats, with a
third of them voting for Bloomberg, according to an exit poll conducted by
Edison Media Research for various television and newspaper outlets.
Hispanic voters, who typically favor Democratic candidates, split their vote between Green and Bloomberg, according to the exit poll. Green lost support among Hispanics after feuding with Fernando Ferrer, a Latino mayoral candidate and Bronx borough president who lost to Green in the Democratic primary runoff last month. Democrats’ concerns that African-American voters might abandon Green did not appear to materialize, though, according to the exit poll. Black turnout made up about a fourth of the electorate, and black voters supported Green by a 3-1 margin, the Edison poll showed. DEMOCRAT-TURNED-REPUBLICAN In the campaign’s final days, Green emphasized his experience in government, particularly his eight years as public advocate, an elective office in which he served as a government watchdog. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
“I’m running against a billionaire Republican who hasn’t had a day
in public life,” Green told Democrats at a rally. “I’m trying to win this
election. He’s trying to buy this election.” But it wasn’t enough. Bloomberg countered Green’s criticism by portraying himself as an independent who will be immune to special-interest blandishments. Although Bloomberg appeared on the ballot as a Republican, he is a former Democrat who has given large donations to Democratic candidates such as New York Sen. Charles Schumer, former President Clinton and last year’s Democratic presidential nominee, Al Gore. Bloomberg also holds positions that are in accord with those of many Democrats: He opposes the death penalty and supports abortion rights, legal protections for homosexuals and mandatory trigger locks on guns purchased in New York City.   San Francisco voters expected to pass
solar-power ballot measures
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NEW JERSEY BATTLE Across the Hudson River from New York, McGreevey won the New Jersey governor’s race to become the state’s 51st elected governor and the first Democrat since 1989. The Woodbridge mayor led Republican Bret Schundler by nearly 20 points with 40 percent of the precincts reporting. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Democrat Jim McGreevey waves
during his victory celebration in East Brunswick, N.J., after he was
elected governor of New Jersey. |
With 41 percent of the vote counted, McGreevey had 58
percent, or 528,927, votes. Schundler had 40 percent, or 365,182 votes.
Schundler, the former mayor of Jersey City, tried to lure voters with a combination of conservative social mores, education reforms and fiscal gambits, including his populist promise to end tolls on the Garden State Parkway. McGreevey, who lost to Republican Christine Todd Whitman in 1997 by less than one percentage point, spent the past four years positioning himself for the governorship. In his TV ads, McGreevey attacked Schundler for saying he would sign a bill allowing law-abiding people to carry concealed guns. He also charged that “Schundler would drain over $500 million from public schools for his private-school plan.” Schundler’s signature issues were cutting taxes and providing tax credits to help parents pull their children out of failing public schools and send them to private schools. McGreevey’s victory confirmed New Jersey’s Democratic leanings: Bill Clinton carried the state by a wide margin in 1996, Al Gore won it by more than half a million votes last November and the state has two Democratic senators. VIRGINIA BATTLE In Virginia, Warner was elected the state’s 69th governor Tuesday over Republican Mark Earley, winning the most expensive governor’s race in state history and breaking a Republican stranglehold on government in the conservative state. With 74 percent of precincts reporting, Warner had 700,580 votes, or 52 percent, and Earley had 634,846, or 47 percent. Libertarian William Redpath had 10,202 votes, or 1 percent. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Democrat Mark Warner gets a
thumbs-up from daughter Madison, 11, left, as daughter Eliza, 7, sits in
his lap as they watch election returns in Richmond, Va. |
Warner, 46, who built a fortune by investing early in
the cellular phone industry, capitalized on an embarrassing rift between
the Republican governor and the GOP-dominated Legislature over the state
budget. Some Republicans even publicly announced their support for Warner,
spurning the former Virginia attorney general. Voters turned out on a cloudless day in numbers about average for recent governor’s races — about 40 to 50 percent of the state’s registered voters. Both parties feared a low turnout because of voters distracted by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Both Warner and Earley offered voters conservative views: both support the death penalty, the abolition of parole, and gun owners’ rights under the Second Amendment. But there were striking differences between the two: Warner supports legal abortion, while Earley opposes all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest. As a state legislator, Earley was the author of a law requiring that the parents of women under age 18 be notified when they sought abortions. Gov. Jim Gilmore, chairman of the Republican National Committee, was barred from running again because of Virginia’s unique one-term limit. The contest to succeed him was the most expensive governor’s race in Virginia history. Warner put $4.7 million of his fortune into his bid to become Virginia’s first Democratic governor since Douglas Wilder was elected in 1989. He raised a total of $18.2 million, obliterating Gilmore’s record of $10.5 million in 1997. Earley raised $10.5 million, a third of it from the Republican National Committee. The Democrats have lost every statewide election in Virginia since 1994. The GOP won two governor’s races during the 1990s and now holds both Senate seats, seven of 11 House seats and majorities in both houses of the Legislature. With the victories by Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey, there will be 21 Democratic governors, 27 Republicans and two independents. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
| |
|||
|
|
 | |||||||||||||||
  | |||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
 | |||||||||||||||||
MSNBC Interactive
Bloomberg wins N.Y. mayor's race
