Want to Work for Mike Bloomberg? What's Your Batting Average?

Want to Work for Mike Bloomberg? What's Your Batting Average?
Softball, campaign promises, and the miserable minority-contracting record of the Bloomberg administration
by Wayne Barrett
June 10th, 2008 12:00 AM

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's most remarkable political achievement was winning half of the black vote and a third of the Hispanic vote in 2005 as a white Republican running against Fernando Ferrer, the first Latino ever nominated by a major party for any citywide office.

Nothing like it had ever happened before in a town where race and party are as linked as Bloomberg and bucks, and the mayor spent millions chasing what the media kept calling "minorities"—though, for the first time in that election, whites were less than half of the city electorate. As Congressman Charlie Rangel put it the day after the election, Bloomberg "breaks all the rules" and "appears to be able to appeal to people regardless of their color."

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