I voted for Freddy Ferrer, but it was easy knowing he doesn't have a chance in hell

Well, I voted for Freddy. It probably helped knowing that he won't finish close enough to qualify as having been "creamed." He's a decent enough guy, though not much of a candidate--and I wonder how effective a mayor he might have been. Which is not to say that I'm crazy in love with Mike Bloomberg, but there is at least some sense that Bloomberg has some vision of city governance and development, though the vision for development inevitably leans heavily toward the "corporatist."

Whereas Ferrer's candidacy seems more a matter--as a conservative think-tanker put it to New York Times metro columnist Clyde Haberman today--of "spending years waiting their turns." During the campaign I let myself be sucked into a telephone survey that I eventually figured out was on behalf of the Ferrer people, fishing for some usable issues, somehow, somewhere. There wasn't any sense of vision or conviction, just "where might Bloomberg be vulnerable and how can we exploit it?"

At the same time, this model of rich folks stepping into the political arena to Show Us the Way depresses me. It's too horrible to think that this year's abominable New Jersey gubernatorial race is the wave of the future. And I don't have a problem with Sen. Jon Corzine, the Democratic candidate. Am I crazy, or are Corzine and Bloomberg vastly more benevolent versions of these Richie Rich candidates than we have any reason to hope for, or are likely to get in the future. Aren't, say, Michael Huffington and Sen. Doctor Bill and Austria's gift to Kah-lee-fornia likelier models?

I guess I'm still in a funk from another metro column, which appeared in yesterday's paper. I suppose it still rankles partly because Joyce Purnick doesn't seem to know what a lousy mayor Rudy Giuliani was in some important ways, like his passion for dividing the city between his kind of people and the rest of us. (That man feeds on viciousness and hate, and everything about his administration reflected it.) But I suspect the piece bothers me mostly because, while I have severely limited optimism that these new out-of-the-box candidates are really such a source of exciting new ideas, for the most part I CAN'T pick the piece apart. Can anyone out there help?


The New York Times, November 7, 2005
Metro Matters
City Democrats Fell Asleep in Clubhouse

By JOYCE PURNICK

THE teeth-gnashing has begun among Democrats as they anticipate losing the fourth consecutive mayoral election to a Republican and fear that the city's entrenched party has lost its shine.

Where have they been?

The party of clubs, patronage and power hasn't been what it used to be for decades. The reasons range from the city's changing population to the legacy of the New Deal, which usurped the party's erstwhile roles of serving up jobs and aiding the poor.

But the main reason the old-line Democratic Party has lost its gloss is the changing role of money in politics. Candidates no longer climb the party ladder, trading loyalty and service for money and troops.

Today a potential candidate pulls together a mini-organization and raises money. The wealthy, like Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and New Jersey's political pugilists, Senator Jon S. Corzine and Douglas R. Forrester, tap their own assets. Others troll for contributions.

No clubhouse needed. And that did not start today.

"It was gone when I ran in 1965," recalled Herman Badillo, a former member of Congress who won a borough presidency as a Democrat by beating the organization headed by the Bronx's tough old-line party leader, Charles A. Buckley.

"When I was elected borough president, one of Buckley's captains said: 'I don't understand how you carried my district. You never even came to the district,' " Mr. Badillo recalled. "I said, 'Oh yes I did - I was on the television set.' The power of television eliminated the need for district leaders and captains."

The typical Democratic club was a center of influence. It arranged school transfers for teachers and students, expedited birth and death certificates, smoothed out civil service problems. No more.

The iconoclastic Mr. Badillo represents another change in the fortunes of the city's Democratic Party. A Puerto Rican, he changed from Democrat to Republican. Most Puerto Rican New Yorkers are still Democrats, and most will probably vote for Fernando Ferrer.

But today's Hispanic population is more diverse, more conservative, less likely to be automatically Democratic. The same for other voters, many of whom might find hollow Mr. Ferrer's assertion that he wanted tomorrow's vote to "remind New York that Democratic values in City Hall are the things that made this city great."

What values might those be? Tammany Hall corruption? Clubhouse cronyism? The past, of course, produced Democratic icons: Alfred E. Smith, Herbert H. Lehman, Senator Robert F. Wagner, Franklin D. Roosevelt. They gave Democrats a good name in urban America as they brought New Deal values and resources home.

But that was a long time ago. As the tax base shriveled and the city went into debt, the differences between Democrats and Republicans shrank. Even unions now endorse Republicans, and they cannot guarantee the votes of members anyway.

Indeed, unions have struggled (but have usually won out) under mayors of both parties, real estate barons have fared well under Democrats and Republicans, and it was Mr. Bloomberg who created a way for regular citizens to reach City Hall, 311.

FIORELLO H. LA GUARDIA, a fusion mayor, famously said there was no Republican or Democratic way to pick up the garbage. Today it's not only garbage, but also crime prevention, education, city security, housing, transit. They rarely have Republican or Democratic solutions.

When an approach succeeds - like the "broken windows" crime strategies of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's administration - it goes mainstream.

This campaign, like any, has its own character. Mr. Ferrer has not waged an effective race, and his chance of doing so was complicated by Mr. Bloomberg's overwhelming spending. Nor did it help that incumbents always have an edge, that Mr. Bloomberg is but a nominal, Rockefeller-like Republican, or that polls show that many New Yorkers think the city is in relatively good shape.

That suggests that the mayor might not have needed his millions to win, despite his Republican label. Many Democrats would not have tolerated seeing the mayor campaign with the president - or even with Mr. Giuliani, notably absent from the Bloomberg campaign trail.

But there is little doubt that the city is developing a pronounced nonpartisan streak. Charlie Buckley, late of the Bronx, wouldn't recognize the place. The problem for his party is that some of its leaders today think they do.

E-mail: purnick@nytimes.com