There was his father on Jan. 2, 2002, swearing him in as comptroller and saying how much he was looking forward to administering a different oath in eight years. ("I'm glad he didn't say four years," Michael Bloomberg was heard saying amid the laughter.)
There was David Dinkins all but endorsing him at a Harlem lunch Sept. 18, there was the economic turmoil making him a prime interview subject, just as a mayoral campaign in which his fiscal credentials would be central was just starting to take shape. There was the hot dog vendor at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge in late September who called out a simple question: "Hey, you going to be the next mayor or what?" His response: "Working on it."
The moment was coming together. Bill Thompson was ready. The political world was ready. After most of a decade as the mayor-in-waiting and after passing on a 2005 run, he was finally set to come off the bench.
"As you get closer to the campaign, the prospects become more real," Thompson said that day, before walking out onto the bridge. "I don't know that four years ago or three years ago I couldn't see myself as mayor of New York. But we are getting closer."
Then there was Oct. 2, when the mayor, the man he wants to succeed, the man he had for so long been looking to run to succeed, reversed course. The second mayor to see term limits closing out his time in office became the second mayor to look for a way to beat back the law.
Thompson has responded by swinging hard. Not known for being the most forceful or vicious speaker-he tends to refer to himself as "you" in conversation (as in, "you have been serving as the comptroller," or "you look at the economic situation") and often proceeds through thoughts by asking long rhetorical questions and then answering them quickly with a "yes" or "no"-he has slammed Bloomberg's "attempt to suspend democracy," in every interview he has given, as a "self-serving" "backroom deal."
He stepped up the rhetoric about his own political future as well. While just days before he was still shrugging off official talk of running for mayor, Bloomberg forced his hand. "I am running for mayor," Thompson started repeating over and over again. "I am running for mayor."Until then, Thompson had been insisting that making just this kind of declarative statement about his intentions for next year would make doing his job as comptroller more difficult and restrict the kind of events he was able to do with his government staff. So this was news-expected news, relatively insignificant news in comparison to the larger earthquake still shaking the local political world, much less surprising news than his September wedding announced on Page Six or his never-announced move out of the family home in Bedford-Stuyvesant for a shared brownstone in Harlem.
But it was news nonetheless. Bill Thompson is done waiting... probably.
The last time Thompson was faced with the prospect of running against Bloomberg, in 2005, he took a pass. The prospect of running against an incumbent who was both popular and pouring so much money into his campaign that he could drive television advertising rates up for everyone else by so significantly reducing the supply of airtime, proved far less enticing than an essentially free ride to a second term as comptroller.
But speaking several days before Bloomberg's intentions to run again in 2009 became clear, he insisted that the root of the decision had not been these pragmatic concerns.
"It was always a question of 'How is Mike doing?'" Thompson said, arguing that there had been a significant value to the city in their collaboration, and that the attention Bloomberg gave to his advice made him feel comfortable opting out of the race.
"It was never whether or not I wanted to run for mayor," Thompson said. "I thought it was in the city's best interests that Mike Bloomberg succeeds. And if you go back to 2002, even the beginning of 2004, there were people who didn't think he did. I thought he was moving the city in the right direction."
He took a break from this opinion in the summer of 2005, endorsing former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, after reaching what he said was the determination that Ferrer "could do a different job, and in some ways a better job."
Nonetheless, Thompson carefully avoided criticizing Bloomberg, and quickly returned to backing the mayor once the votes had been counted. This could put Thompson in an awkward position if he does indeed face Bloomberg next November: even if he can brag about a high-performing diversified pension portfolio, he will have a hard enough time arguing that he can be a better fiscal manager than the billionaire ex-businessman. But claiming that Bloomberg after the first, more controversial and difficult term was fine, but Bloomberg after two terms is not will be a hard case to make. To do this, Thompson will have to simultaneously attack some parts of the Bloomberg record while taking credit for the parts he has collaborated on and supported.
Plus, there are those billions.
"Dollar-wise, you can't compete. But there are other components of elections than just dollars," Thompson said the day after the prospect of running against Bloomberg became clear, his SUV winding through midtown traffic back to the comptroller's office at the Municipal Building. "I think you"-he-"should be able to make a case to the voters of New York City."
On the seat next to him was a print-out of the Quinnipiac poll released that morning, showing that the mayor's approval rating stood at 75 percent, up slightly from other recent ratings. Though the same poll registered strong support for the idea of term limits, and 56 percent opposition to the idea of extending the allowed time in office to 12 years, this was down 9 percentage points from a poll on the same question done in July.
Facing Bloomberg in a potential match-up, Thompson scored a paltry 8 percent, compared with 13 percent in a field without the mayor. At the moment, New Yorkers are not, apparently, hungering for Thompson to be mayor, while 51 percent were eager to see Bloomberg continue on the job.
Making an argument about Bloomberg "breaking faith with the people of New York City," as Thompson referred to the push for a third term, would not seem to be enough, especially with an electorate that watched Bloomberg brush past the technicalities of the campaign finance system in 2001 and 2005 without much complaint.
Thompson expects the Council to pass Bloomberg's bill and let the mayor be a candidate for re-election next year. That will mean big trouble for him and the other candidates who had been counting on an open race. Thompson's '09 campaign was never a shoo-in-most people thought he lacked the fire in the belly and a clear message.
That was in a race without Bloomberg. In a race with Bloomberg, the rationale behind his candidacy gets even more muddled.
His opposition to the term limits change may have finally given him his voice, for in the themes of his populist attack on the mayor's proposed move, the faint strains of an attack on the mayor are beginning to take shape.
To start, he argues that the term limits reversal erodes a prime Bloomberg strength: the mayor's casting himself as the anti-politician who does what he must in the service of the city without paying attention to the usual political considerations.
When Bloomberg huffed that, "This is not the time for politics," in response to a question after announcing his term limit reversal, the reporters in the Blue Room were not the only ones laughing.
To Thompson, it was "100 percent a political decision." More than that, he said, the move begged the question of how much else belied the carefully tailored Bloomberg apolitical image."I haven't usually questioned Mike's motives. But there are some things that have occurred recently that you have to take half a step back and at least rethink things," he said. "The term limit move on his part, I think that looking at dollars that were given from the mayor's office in different ways to those who had supported him in the last election-that was obviously political. So I don't know that Mike is as non-political as he had been before."
That explains, Thompson charged, Bloomberg's comments that the problems which have engulfed Wall Street are more severe for the city than the aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Center.
"In an economic sense, it was relatively easy to pull together. ... The problem we have today is something very different. The problem we have today is a lack of conviction. It's a crisis of confidence," Bloomberg said at the press conference announcing his bid for a third term. "Today people are worried about their homes, about their jobs. They don't have a clear answer about how they can work their ways out of this. I think it's a much more difficult situation; it's going to take a lot longer."
Michael Bloomberg’s bid to scrap term limits and seek re-election has caused big
problems for Bill Thompson’s long-plotted mayoral campaign.
Thompson said the mayor is choosing to view things somewhat backward. People are certainly scared about their paychecks and mortgages today, Thompson said, but that hardly compares to the aftermath of seeing an icon of the city crumble before their eyes.
"I think that if you go back and look at the situation after Sept. 11, it wasn't a question of the financial structure," he said. "It was about the viability of the future of New York. I remember the questions: would businesses move out of New York City? Would the financial sector go elsewhere? Would people leave New York City? Would there be wholesale fear and people get out of New York City? I thought it was a much more trying time for the future."
In conversation and in public speeches, Thompson tends to show his exasperation and confusion on his face easily, rolling his eyes and screwing up his face when he hears something that does not make sense to him. That is the look he develops when he talks about Bloomberg's implication that only he can lead the city through tough times and buttress the shaken confidence people have in New York and the stock market.
"I think that is an opinion that is carried by a few. I don't think it's an opinion carried by the vast majority of New Yorkers," he said. "I don't think they think he's the only person who could do a good job."
Making his case against changing term limits, Thompson said that Bloomberg similarly seems to be overlooking most New Yorkers in deference to the city's elite leaders who have long been hungering for a third term.
This kind of attitude has been a hallmark of the Bloomberg administration, Thompson charged, critiquing the mayor's attention to the larger picture over individual concerns-whether in the massive rezonings he has overseen, the school reorganizations, the public health initiatives or any other major item on his agenda.
Though Bloomberg has without question improved the city, Thompson said, the rising tide which may have lifted them has not lifted certain parts of the city.
"Has everybody benefited? Definitely not," Thompson said. "The number of working poor is expanding, middle class people are being squeezed more and more everyday, so is everybody benefiting? I believe the city's a better city. Is everybody benefitting? Everybody hasn't."
Bloomberg supporters might have watched the Dow fortuitously rise as the news of his announcement leaked, but Thompson believes his record presents strong evidence that he has been making a difference in the finances of average New Yorkers, using his powers of audit and review to keep down water rates, insurance rates, mortgage foreclosure rates and transit fares, while at the same time keeping the public employees' pension funds robust.
That widespread advocacy on behalf of ordinary New Yorkers, he said, is the measure by which he believes he should be judged as comptroller, even if, as the city chief financial officer, he managed to miss the Council's maneuvering millions of dollars in taxpayer money in the slush fund scandal until the U.S. Attorney's office uncovered the situation.
"I could sit here and talk about how because of some of the work we've done, New York City has the highest bond rating in history-it isn't the one area, it's not bonds, it's not the pension funds, it's not contract registration, it's not legal settlements," Thompson said. "It is converting that office into an office that fights for New Yorkers all of the time, on a regular basis, and is involved in every aspect of New York."
This attention to the great mass of New Yorkers has defined his response to the economic crisis. Though he always discusses how much the decline of Wall Street will affect city revenues and the jobs lost at each of the defunct banks and companies, he has been alone among the citywide officials in consistently making a point about how many ancillary jobs are connected to Wall Street.
"When you talk about a crisis on Wall Street, everybody seems to think about investment bankers and the analysts and those either making hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars a year," Thompson said, rejecting that way of thinking. "It's about the persons making $30,000 and $35,000 who work in a kitchen, or food services, or who's cleaning the office, who's working in security, who's a secretary or works in the back office-all those jobs are attached. Those are New Yorkers, those are our neighbors who are losing their jobs."
Asked whether he thinks Bloomberg sees the problems these people face, Thompson said, "I honestly don't know."
By Oct. 4, when Thompson arrived at the midtown Sheraton to address the National Action Network convention, he was starting to audition this argument into a reason for running against Bloomberg.
Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn/Queens), who also spoke to the group that afternoon, framed his argument about changing term limits as an extension of his campaign as the outsider who can shake up City Hall and shake out the insider deals.
"He's decided that he and a group of people who at the other end of City Hall depend upon having another four years for their paychecks, for their continued power," the congressman said, "have decided amongst themselves that the present law that had been put in place by the citizens of New York simply wasn't good enough and they were going to do away with it."
Thompson stuck to the populist prism. Bloomberg attributed his change of heart on term limits to economic problems that developed in September, but, Thompson said, "we have been struggling in New York City for at least a couple years."
Thompson continued to whip them up. Long before Bloomberg decided he needed to change the law so he could continue in office, Thompson reminded them, the subprime mortgage crisis was ravaging poorer communities, hitting the outer boroughs and minority neighborhoods particularly hard.
"Everybody acts like the financial crisis started three weeks ago on a Monday morning when Lehman Brothers closed and AIG almost went down the tubes. That's not when the financial crisis started. It started in our neighborhoods," he said. "What we have seen in our people who have been laid off from jobs, who are having problems with mortgages, water rates that continue to go up, our fuel, our rents."
People in the crowd yelled out their approval. The argument against term limits was the same kind of dismissal of average New Yorkers they all knew too well, he said. Just as the elite of the city had for so long ignored the real problems of so many, the mayor and 51 Council members were ready to ignore the two referendums which passed and preserved term limits.
But not him.
Thompson wanted them to know he heard them, had been hearing them as they got forced out of their neighborhoods, had been hearing them as they questioned whether focusing on reorganizations and test scores really meant anything about schools being improved. And he wanted them to know he had been and would be their voice.
There are ways this could come together. Thompson would have a base in the African-American community to call on, and has cultivated support among other minority communities, in addition to his strength among white and Jewish voters. The forgotten outer boroughs, overlooked New Yorker campaign has proven effective, though rarely successful, in past mayoral elections. Running against an incumbent who presided over a drop in the economy following a year when both presidential candidates adopted the mantra of change-after insulating himself against Weiner in the primary by being the sober fiscal manager with just enough knowledge of city government-Thompson might just have found the voice his candidacy has until now lacked.
The months ahead will be a search for Bloomberg vulnerabilities, dissecting the results of every poll, analyzing job reports and economic trends to see if anyone will be willing to listen.
Either way, after how he has rejected the term limits extension, Thompson would likely be hard-pressed to quietly slide back into a race for comptroller next year with a straight face, and if he does, could face the prospect of a tough primary unless all of the expected 2009 contenders fall back into place and bide their time for another four years. But he seems hesitant to fully pull the trigger. He has not formally switched his account at the Campaign Finance Board from Undetermined, will not lobby Council members on term limits and has not joined any of them at press conferences blasting the change, as Weiner has. Nor will he join a lawsuit to stop the change to the limits if the change is made legislatively. And when pressed to state unequivocally that he is running for mayor, no matter what the Council and mayor do on term limits, he artfully defers.
In October 2008, after so many years of plotting a run for mayor in 2009, he never could have expected to be in this bind. He is only 56, but if he reverses course and runs for another term as comptroller next year with his eyes on a 2013 run at Gracie Mansion, or even if he ends up being the Democratic sacrificial lamb against Bloomberg, his moment may have been taken from him before it ever arrived.
For now, though, he is holding firm.
In the middle of his speech at the National Action Network convention, someone in the room inadvertently leaned against the control panel, and the lights dimmed and went out.
Thompson took advantage of the metaphor.
"They'll do anything to stop us," he said, as staff scrambled to get things working again.
Thompson laughed.
"Tell you what," he said, the room still dark, "I will continue to talk."
