Bloomberg's presidential run met with a groan on New York's left

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched his candidacy for president with a video describing him as the person who “introduced a city back from the ashes” after Sept. 11, restored jobs and hope, and created a extra livable New York for its greater than eight million inhabitants.

New Yorkers, though, provided a more skeptical take a day after the billionaire former mayor formally kicked off his campaign for the Democratic nomination. Like Mayor Invoice de Blasio, who launched a failed presidential bid that turned an object of ridicule, Bloomberg should contend with the problem of operating for president after serving as New York mayor, a submit the place frequent and aggressive criticism comes with the territory.

Metropolis politicians, who largely line as much as Bloomberg’s left, principally panned his bid.

“The wealthy obtained richer right here, and the poor obtained poorer,” Public Advocate Jumaane Williams stated of Bloomberg’s three phrases in workplace. “The query isn't whether his policies have been profitable. Who have been they successful for?”

As a Metropolis Council member at the time, Williams clashed with Bloomberg over stop-and-frisk, the policing tactic that focused black and Latino men for hundreds of searches. Bloomberg fiercely resisted efforts to tamp down the apply, solely to finally apologize for it last week.

“Are you going to additionally apologize for the housing and schooling policies that harmed the same communities?” Williams asked. “There was a hubris there that acquired in the best way for means too lengthy. That hubris, I feel, is probably still there.”

So too is the divide between rich and poor — a condition many say the previous mayor exacerbated.

“I can’t consider he’s operating for president. The record of things that he did to transfer wealth to the richest New Yorkers and away from the poorest New Yorkers is so long,” stated housing advocate Cea Weaver. “He’s simply an entitled billionaire who thinks that provides him the credibility to run for president, and that’s ridiculous.”

She pointed to Bloomberg’s position in ending a lease subsidy program for the homeless, after which the homeless shelter inhabitants began to surge. “We now have an exploding homelessness drawback in our metropolis that we’re nonetheless dealing with, and that’s very much on Bloomberg,” she stated.

Still, Bloomberg’s toughest Democratic critics within the metropolis give him credit for public well being initiatives akin to his smoking ban and required calorie counts at restaurants, in addition to his robust stances in favor of gun control and combating local weather change.

His allies within the business group laud his work to diversify the town’s financial system and create jobs, as well as managerial acumen they are saying is sorely needed within the White House.

“Bloomberg was a long-term thinker, and made investments for the longer term, and that’s what America needs right now,” stated Kathy Wylde of the Partnership for New York City. “I’m enthusiastic that there’s a robust counterweight to the extremes.”

She stated Bloomberg had been unfairly blamed for inequality between the wealthy and poor in the metropolis, the difficulty that de Blasio seized on to win election as Bloomberg’s successor.

“He really laid the groundwork for 20 years of economic progress in all five boroughs,” Wylde stated.

Jennifer Pomeranz, an assistant professor at the School of International Public Well being at New York University, stated Bloomberg's strides on public well being and the surroundings have been cause for Democrats to a minimum of “hear him out.”

“Right now, we’re in a country the place the evidence appears to matter much less and fewer daily. And I might love to see somebody in office who needs to enact evidence-based public well being policies,” she stated.

Bloomberg has made a trademark of his reliance on evidence and knowledge, even hawking T-shirts with the slogan, “In God We Belief. Everyone Else, Convey Knowledge.”

“If individuals need a data-driven federal authorities with less concern about social influence,” he’s your man, stated State Sen. John Liu (D-Queens).

Liu, who was metropolis comptroller through the Bloomberg administration, stated a reliance on numbers might cloud the truth on the bottom. The chair of the Senate's NYC Schooling Committee, Liu pointed to fights over charter faculties shifting into public faculty buildings, where Bloomberg's City Corridor relied on stats about obtainable area that favored the so-called co-locations.

“You'll be able to minimize up knowledge each which approach, to make no matter argument you’re on the lookout for,” he stated.

Kumar Rao, an lawyer at Middle for Fashionable Democracy Action, stated Bloomberg’s blind spots on policing went beyond stop-and-frisk, to surveillance of Muslim communities and aggressive marijuana arrests.

“His beliefs, his positions, his policies are clearly outdated and disproven,” he stated. “None of that is the place the Democratic get together is, and I don’t assume it’s the place the country is either.”

Bloomberg spokesperson Stu Loeser stated when Bloomberg was mayor, New York was the one huge city in America that did not have an improve in the poverty fee.

“When he took over New York, it was extensively believed that New York City’s biggest days have been behind it, not ahead of it,” he stated.

He stated road homelessness decreased underneath Bloomberg, while crime fell at the similar time jail populations decreased. “That’s unprecedented, and we’re terribly pleased with this report,” he stated.

De Blasio ramped up criticism of his predecessor's presidential bid Monday.

“He left a real path of destruction here when it comes to human lives,” he stated in an look on Rev. Al Sharpton’s radio present. “I spent six years making an attempt to make things better he broke and rebuilt things he tore down.”

But Mitchell Moss, an NYU professor of urban coverage who suggested Bloomberg during his first campaign for mayor, stated there’s one huge difference between the two mayors with eyes for the White Home. “Invoice de Blasio had ambition, however no document. Bloomberg has a report.”

"We have now a number of ideologues," Moss stated of the present Democratic area. "We don’t have many people who are doers. That’s what Mike gives."

Joe Anuta contributed to this report.

Article initially revealed on POLITICO Magazine

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