term limits

For those not in NYC you may not realize it but Mike Bloomberg is running for a third term as NYC mayor today. He will win by 20 percentage points after having spent almost $250 million dollars in three campaigns for mayor which dwarfs anything his opponents have been able to put together. The bigger issue is that Bloomberg in one of his back-door deals with the New York City Council extended term limits from two terms to three which overturned the will of the people who voted to put term limits in place in 1993 and reconfirmed them via referendum three years later.


The funny thing about term limits is that you know this is generally not an issue people have really strong philosophical opinions about, people believe in term limits when they hate the incumbent and disagree with them when they love the incumbent .

I believe these referendums are really a referendum on the incumbent, see I am convinced If George W. Bush had been able to run for a third term a group of people would be spending all their time fighting for term limits it I’m sure the same people who would have supported term-limits in this case would have been against them for Abraham Lincoln had he been (a) alive for a third term and (b) term limits been an issue then.

I believe the referendum’s past by the NYC voters were votes against the incumbent (Rudy Guiliani) at that time from running again not a philosophical decision that a mayor should only be able to run the city for only eight years.

But what I am always annoyed though that term-limit decisions are so haphazard, certain positions like the criminal state senators up in Albany have no term-limits while NYC mayor can only run for two years. There is way more harm that Bruno did or Silver has done in the Statehouse by their vice-grips on the legislation there than any harm Bloomberg can ever do. This happens and is especially dangerous because the average voter has no idea what is happening in Albany and the backroom deals being brokered there while they probably have a decent sense of what the mayor of NY is doing. The office they know something about they have less say in than the office they know almost nothing about.

At the end of the day, Bloomberg bought off the city board to reverse the will of the people and then tried to buy the votes of NYC by bombarding us with his mailings.

I have many friends sitting this election out for this specific reason but I’ll vote for Bloomberg because although I hate the way he strong-armed his way onto the ballot when it comes to the choices presented I do believe he is the best choice for mayor this year.

The reason I wouldn’t vote for Bloomberg is because I'm annoyed and appalled at the amount of trees he killed with his god-damn mailings