Bloomberg wins NYC election

Michael Bloomberg, a member of the Johns Hopkins Class of 1964, former Chairman of the Board of Trustees and founder of media company Bloomberg L.P. was elected the 108th mayor of the City of New York on Tuesday.

Bloomberg, 59, narrowly defeated Public Advocate and Democratic candidate Mark Green with 719,819 votes to Green's 676,560 with all precincts counted, according to http://ww.CNN.com.

Although Bloomberg was a registered Democrat, he switched to the Republican party shortly before he declared his candidacy last year. Political analysts say that he switched parties to avoid the race for the Democratic party nomination, which is traditionally more hotly contested than the Republican ballot line since Democrats outnumber Republicans five to one in New York City. In the Republican primary, Bloomberg handily defeated former congressman Herman Badillo.

Over the course of the election cycle, Bloomberg spent approximately $50 million of his own money to run television, radio, print, mail and outdoor advertisements, which was about nine times as much money as was spent by the Green campaign.

Although Bloomberg trailed Green in the polls for much of the race, the contest tightened in October. Political analysis attribute this to two factors: the endorsement of Bloomberg by current mayor Rudolph Giuliani and an intra-party squabble between Green and the supporters of Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, another democratic candidate.

Although Bloomberg ran on a moderate platform of prudent fiscal conservatism and increased accountability for public schools, the focus of the campaign changed greatly after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 killed approximately 5,000 people, leveled millions of square feet of office space, damaged three subway stations, a Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) terminal and shut down the stock market for four business days. In the wake of the attack, it has been estimated that the city faces a budget deficit of more than 10 percent of its total budget. Reconstruction costs are estimated to run in the tens of billions of dollars.

In light of the City's new needs following Sept. 11, Bloomberg issued a policy paper outlining his plan to rebuild New York City. The plan includes rebuilding the damaged infrastructure, cutting the municipal budget and managing the federal and state relief funds being spent on New York City.

At Johns Hopkins, Bloomberg was president of the Inter-Fraternity Council and of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. After graduating with a degree in Electrical Engineering, Bloomberg received his MBA from Harvard and in 1966, he went to work for Salomon Brothers, a Wall Street firm.

In 1982, Bloomberg founded Bloomberg L.P. At first his eponymous company leases terminals, commonly known as "Bloombergs," which provide real-time data, news, analysis and other services to securities traders and others the financial services industry. Currently, Bloomberg L.P. leases approximately 160,000 of these terminals and operates a cable television network and an all-news radio station in New York City.

Since his graduation, Bloomberg has been an active alumnus, donating over $100 million to fund the construction of the Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Charlotte Bloomberg Chair in Art History and for the Bloomberg Scholarship. In 1996, Bloomberg was elected chairman of the Board of Trustees. In May of 2002, Bloomberg will be replaced by Raymond A. Mason.

In recognition of Bloomberg's victory in the mayoral election, the University put up a sign facing N. Charles St. that read "Congratulations Mayor Mike Bloomberg Class of 1964.