Should it matter to national Democrats that the mayor of New York is not only Republican but is also expected to win re-election by a comfortable margin? If you pose the question to Steven Rattner and Maureen White, the answer you'll get is a resounding “no.” It's hardly the response you'd expect, given that few New York power couples are more committed to the Democratic Party than Rattner and White. Last year, Rattner, an investment banker, was a top fund-raiser for John Kerry, and White, the finance chair of the Democratic National Committee, helped engineer the biggest fund-raising drive in the party's history.
Yet Rattner is chairing Democrats for Bloomberg, a group that includes other big Dems like Roger Altman, Harvey Weinstein, and fundraiser Alan Patricof. And White, who's influential in New York fund-raising circles, recently went so far as to suggest that Dem donors shouldn't give to Michael Bloomberg's opponent, Democrat Fernando Ferrer. “If you support the mayor,” she said recently, “then presumably you are not going to be giving to other candidates.”
I'm told by a top Democratic moneyman that Rattner and White are catching a bit of heat behind the scenes for their disloyalty. But the truth is, neither they nor any other Dem stalwarts backing Bloomberg will pay any lasting price beyond perhaps a gentle ribbing or two. (Imagine if Republican National Committee finance chair Dwight Schar publicly backed Ferrer; he'd be out faster than you could say “Karl Rove.”) And this is a symptom of a larger truth: The Democratic Party establishment doesn't much care that it isn't in charge of America's most populous and visible city. How the Dems lost control of New York City -- and their continued indifference to it -- explains a lot about how the national Democratic Party has fallen on such hard times. But it suggests even more ominous things about its future -- which is why Dems across the country should watch this race very closely indeed.
If, as pundits unanimously predict, Bloomberg wins re-election and finishes his second term, New York City, incredibly, will have been in GOP hands for 16 years. To some extent, the root causes of the Democratic Party's travails here mirror the reasons for its national troubles. The once-formidable Democratic machine in New York (like other urban machines) has, thanks to an eroding manufacturing base and various demographic shifts, steadily lost power for more than a generation, a problem that corresponds to the national party's struggle to deal with the decline of organized labor. Meanwhile, in New York the party's deepening fissures along ethnic and interest-group lines has weakened Democratic unity, another problem mirrored nationally at times.
New York Dems were also too slow to recognize that fear of crime would eventually trump party loyalty in local elections -- just as national Dems have never effectively fended off the GOP's assaults on their national-security credentials. That last failing gave rise to Rudy Giuliani, who prevailed over Democrat David Dinkins in 1993 by stoking the fears of outer-borough blue-collar whites worried about violence and urban disorder, just as the national GOP has consolidated power by playing on the anxieties and cultural resentments of blue-collar whites across the country. The election in 2001 of Bloomberg -- a little-known billionaire, onetime liberal Democrat, and political neophyte -- wouldn't have been possible without the backing of Giuliani, who'd been freshly deified by the media after September 11. His support alone was enough to convince New Yorkers that the Democratic Party wasn't up to the cardinal task of keeping people safe, in this case from terrorism.
To be sure, Bloomberg has largely steered clear of Giuliani's -- and the national GOP's -- race- and fear-based appeals to culturally conservative whites. Indeed, many Bloomberg backers argue, correctly, that he's gone out of his way to offset Giuliani in that regard, adding that he's made inroads among some Democratic voters simply by governing as a Democrat, and a highly effective one at that. He's made extensive overtures to minorities, has taken the racial sting out of police-community relations, and has refrained from using his pulpit for bullying, as Giuliani so often did, particularly in ways designed to exacerbate racial tensions. Bloomberg's also broken with the national party on several fronts, taking the gun industry to court and opposing George W. Bush's Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts (though raising questions about Bush's intentions for the high court would have been a heck of a lot more meaningful before Bush won re-election).
Given that track record, why should Dems care if Bloomberg wins a second term? Partly because Bloomberg, for all his leftward feints, has at times been quite the loyal GOP partisan. He has defended the Iraq War, a hugely symbolic gesture coming from the mayor of the city attacked on September 11. He's raised millions of dollars for the national GOP. During last year's GOP convention in New York he presided over the highly questionable arrests of more than 1,500 protesters, in effect placing the GOP's desire for a peaceful convention above his own constituents' right to peaceful protest. Those gestures alone make one wonder just where Bloomberg's political sympathies really lie. If he's really a liberal Dem in GOP garb, as many of his supporters insist, why does he so often lend help and cover to those who should be his ideological enemies? The most charitable answer is that Bloomberg hopes to persuade the national GOP to look kindly on New York when handing out homeland security money. Opinions differ on whether that's worked, but one thing is clear: Bloomberg has foresaken the New York Mayor's traditional role as someone who raises his voice to communicate the wants, needs and aspirations of his constituents to the national audience and the ruling party in D.C. It's a void that New Yorkers need filled more than ever, given the enormous ideological gap between this city's residents and the national GOP, as well as the Republicans' ongoing exploitation of Sept. 11.
There's another reason Dems should care if Bloomberg wins re-election: The success of Republicans like Bloomberg in Democratic strongholds is extraordinarily helpful to Karl Rove's strategy for building an enduring Republican majority. That strategy rests on offsetting the party leadership's endless pampering of the right wing base with hollow gestures designed to keep moderates from getting scared away by the party's hardcore conservatism. Hence Rove's much-ballyhooed outreach to blacks, which isn't really about winning over African Americans but is actually about signaling to white moderates that the party is tolerant and inclusive. To the extent that mild-mannered liberal Republicans like Bloomberg put a gentle face on today's GOP -- particularly in New York, the supposed capitol of liberalism -- they're helping Rove achieve his objectives.
That's hardly Bloomberg's fault, of course. And what if you believe that Bloomberg, in many ways a successful mayor, would simply do a far better job than Ferrer? Shouldn't that trump such abstractions about GOP long-term machinations? Perhaps. But here it's worth considering another facet of the GOP's strategy. Republicans, out of step with most Americans on the issues, have, on one front after another, successfully tried another tack. They've portrayed Democrats (with a bit of help from the Democrats themselves, admittedly) as unfit to carry out the fundamentals of governing: managing the country's national-security affairs abroad and keeping Americans safe at home. For New Yorkers to elect a GOP mayor sends a powerful message to the rest of the country: Even the ultimate liberals -- that is, New Yorkers who are in sync with the Dems on just about everything -- don't trust them to run their own city.
Finally, if the Dems continue to desert Ferrer, it will help Rove achieve another key strategic goal: winning Latinos to the GOP, a minority-outreach effort that he actually takes seriously. A victory for Ferrer, New York's first Hispanic nominee -- coming right after Antonio Villaraigosa's election as the mayor of Los Angeles -- would mean that Latinos had won city halls in major cities on both coasts. That would be deeply meaningful for Hispanics nationwide, reaffirming Democrats as the party truly interested in elevating them and making it tougher for them to bolt. National Dems seem blind to the potent symbolism that such a bicoastal victory would carry. But you can bet Rove isn't blind to it. After all, if national Democrats won't support New York's first Latino nominee, why should Latinos support Democrats?
New York's mayoral election poses a dilemma for liberal Dems. New Yorkers may well decide that Bloomberg is superior to Ferrer, and vote accordingly. The question is, at what cost to the long-term health of the national Democratic Party?
Greg Sargent, a contributing editor for New York magazine, writes a biweekly column for the online edition of The American Prospect.
