USA
Bloomberg’s Bid – 27’20”
August 2001
Campaigner: “Say hello to Mike Bloomberg, he’s running for mayor of New York.”
V//O: For low income earners here, it’s a fleeting encounter with the five billion dollar man – a staggering net worth double that in Australian terms.
Bloomberg: “You know the job is to get known and then to have people know what you stand for.”
V/O: Most people – at 59 – would be content with having built a business empire that spans the globe.
Yet strange as it seems, Michael Bloomberg’s ambition now is the top job at City Hall.
[I/V] Graham Davis: Why would a multi-billionaire like you want to stand on a street corner, in the early morning in the Bronx and want to be mayor of this town, why?
Bloomberg: Because it’s the greatest city in the world and the opportunity to lead it and to make a difference and to do things that everyone says can’t be done is just too much to pass up.
Graham Davis: Having made your billions, what some of your critics are saying is…
Bloomberg: I have critics I can’t believe that ( you do have some) oh I’m shocked
Graham Davis: ha ha but some of them say…he wants this job rather like someone else would want a private jet or a new yacht, what would you say to that?
Bloomberg: Can I just remind you when you were up in the Bronx with me early in the morning, I’m hardly treating it frivolously, I’m working roughly all my waking hours, seven days a week, but that’s the cost of having the opportunity to change the world and I think if all of us just sit around and to take the easy road, society’s not going to be better off.
[New York pictures]
Bloomberg: I’m going to be mayor of the city of new york and I think one of the great things about this job is if you can fix the problem here the rest of the world will be able to follow.
MUSIC: New York NewYork
V/O: There are a million stories in this city, as the saying goes, and this is one of them, what at face value seems a rather mundane tussel for a job in local government except for one thing, it’s new york. It’s not the capital of anywhere for new york state is actually governed from a place up country called Albany. But New York city boasts the greatest claim of all - capital of the world.’’
Ed Koch, former New York Mayor: Well New York is special, different from any other city in the world….because of the diversity of our people, we have the sons and daughters of every country in the world and every state in the union, they all come here, and we get the best, we get the adventuresome, we get the ones who want to make it.
If you’ve been here for six months and you find you walk faster, you talk faster, you think faster, you’re a New Yorker (ha ha ha)
Ed Koch: Of all the people I knew as President Reagan was the best, the nicest I loved him. Never voted for him but I loved him (really) I loved him (as a guy) yeah a wonderful human being.
V/O: To understand why Michael Bloomberg wants the job of mayor, you need only visit someone who’s already been there, the legendary Ed Koch – who, as a Democrat, ruled City Hall for 12 years.
[I/V] Graham Davis: looking around your room it’s extraordinary, when you’re the mayor of New York you’re a celebrity cause you’re the mayor of the capital of the world
Koch: that’s true, that’s absolutely true….I said to people who know you didn’t have to pay me to take this job I’d have paid you ha ha but I loved it….you were given this opportunity and I happen to believe in God, you don’t have to if you don’t want to but I believe in God, what a great opportunity he gave me! And I’ll respond with every fibre in my body
Graham Davis: and it’s no wonder Bloomberg would want this job cause it’s a gas
Koch: I mean there’s nothing like it!
Koch: And then Mother Teresa came and I call this my Catholic wall here because not only was she wonderful but she also sent me a couple of notes so I always she to people if you’re nice to me I’ll let you touch the notes ( to bring you good luck) right ha ha (maybe you should bring Bloomberg around.
V/O: Mike Bloomberg needs all the luck he can get. He’s been a life-long Democrat but switched to the Republican Party for this contest in what he concedes was an act of blatant self interest.
Bloomberg: The Democrats had four candidates there already, I certainly would not have had the opportunity to run as a Democrat and since the Republicans asked me and I agreed with their fiscal conservatism in the city and they believe in good government and our current mayor is a republican who is pro-choice, which I am, is against the death penalty, which I am, is I favour of gay rights which I am, I didn’t have a moral or ethical or philosophical difference with the Republican party and it’s an opportunity to get to the public.
V/O: But the problem for Bloomberg is that New York is traditionally a Democrat town, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by five to one.
The current mayor – Rudy Guiliani – is a Republican but it’s an aberration…happening once every 30 years or so when a Democrat mayor stumbles badly...as in the case of Guiliani’s predecessor David Dinkins.
[I/V] Fred Segal, political commentator: The game under the Dinkins years was as follows, the police wouldn’t bother the criminals and the American Civil Liberties Union wouldn’t bother the police, everyone was happy except the people who live in New York.
GD: and what’s it like now?
Segal: We’re at a record level of population, near record level jobs, crime is at a 40 year low, welfare is at a 40 year low and what’s interesting is that police violence has declined even more rapidly than crime. Under David Dinkins we had 41 murders, not murders, killings of civilians by police, last year under Guiliani who’s so reviled by left-wingers, we had eleven…so by any standards, by any measurement things have gotten much much better in New York.
V/O: But now that’s happened and Rudy Guiliani can’t stand again because of term limits, the smart money isn’t on a Republican replacement like Bloomberg but on this man, Democrat front-runner Mark Green.
[I/V] Mark Green, Democrat frontrunner: I admire Michael Bloomberg, I think he’s smart, he’s a great philanthropist, the chance that he will or should be mayor of new york is equal to whether I should be or could be the next chairman of Microsoft ( really) it doesn’t work like that and he’ll find out
GD: so this is an unrealistic campaign on his part?
MG: sure.
Bloomberg: Everybody’s got a right to their opinion, he has not run city government nor has he run a company so to the best of my knowledge he’s never run anything.
Ed Koch: When he spoke to me about a year ago and said should I run I said you’ll lose and then I had another call from him six months later and I said you have a chance because the democrats are all so lacklustre, they’re not taking ( so you think) he’s got a chance, he’s still way behind but he’s got a chance….and he can only win in my judgment and I’ve told him this, if he comes up with solutions that are different by virtue of his business background and his brilliance as an entrepreneur.
V/O: But for other New York legends like the Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin, brilliant businessmen don’t necessarily make brilliant politicians.
Jimmy Breslin, New York Daily News: In Bensonhust in Brooklyn where you’re going to have to go to get votes because there’s an assembly district over there which votes heavier than anywhere else in the world, you gonna have to go there and get votes, you gonna tell them you got the financial news service Bloomberg, hey what is it? It’s a thing so what! Ha ha tell me about hospital reaction time by ambulance if my mother who’s 90 gets sick…my garbage didn’t get picked up yesterday what are you going to do about that!!!! That’s (shrugs)
V/O: What Bloomberg does have going for him – says Breslin – is the competition.
[I/V] GD: Of the four Democrats in this race, who do you think will win?)
Breslin: I don’t know, I hope nobody wins
GD: why’s that ha?
Breslin: ah come on these are half people and they’re pressing full egos on you and I can’t handle them, they’re a disgrace, absolute disgrace, nothing. Democrat Party, they wonder why Bush is the President cause they put up Al Gore as a candidate ( ha ha)
V/O: And then there’s that Australian-born New York legend – the incorrigible Steve Dunleavy of the New York Post – self acknowledged legend in his own lunchtime and avid Bloomberg fan.
[I/V] Steve Dunleavy, New York Post: If I was Bloomberg I’d just stay being a billionaire an loving it but if he really believes he can be mayor, I really wish he would become the mayor but I think his chances are minuscule… Id like a rich guy, I’d like a rich priest, a rich policemen and a rich politician so I wouldn’t be worried about where they’re getting their next buck
GD: that’s a recipe for incorruptibility is that what you’re suggesting
Dunleavy: I think it is a receipt for incorruptibility
GD: and he only wants a buck a year to do the job
Dunleavy: only a buck a year.
[I/V] GD: I noticed on that street corner the chasm between your lifestyle and the lifestyles of the people you were meeting there (sure) What do you think you’ve got in common with the poor of this city?
Bloomberg: well number one I came from family that didn’t have any money, I came to New York in 1966 with some debts and a dream and I don’t want to overplay the poor beginnings but I wasn’t wealthy….edit…I lived hand to mouth, there’s always someone who lived poorer than you but I’ve a good feel
GD: so you do have empathy with these people you do understand their aspirations?
Bloomberg: absolutely I think so.
[VISUAL: Bloomberg on campaign trail]
Bloomberg: I remember when I grew up in Boston and every Wednesday night the streets would be clear, Elliot Ness and the Untouchables and you’d just listen to it as you walked down the street…59, born in 42.
V/O:-Michael Bloomberg came from a modest Jewish background , the son of a bookkeeper who died of heart failure but whose mother watched proudly as he became an Eagle Scout – the ultimate American boyhood accolade - and got through college on a national defense loan.
He made a small fortune on Wall Street but in 1981, was retrenched from Salomon Brothers and turned his severance cheque for $10-million into a big fortune…the financial news empire that bears his name.
Fred Segal: He’s an enormously successful businessman who understood the market for business information when other people didn’t, he created the Bloomberg box, which is this dedicated box with the stockmarket news, it’s on every stock trader’s desk, all the shifts in stocks updated constantly…but he’s a man whose experience is limited to financial matters.
V/O: Bloomberg’s world headquarters on Park Avenue sets the standard for its other operations in more than a hundred countries, encompassing not just the Bloomberg Box but a global radio and television network.
In exchange for absolute devotion to the job and an obsession with accuracy…Bloomberg both pays and pampers his 7200 employees.
[I/V] GD: The thing that really strikes me as a humble scribe, journalist, is the luxury
Bloomberg: all journalists have reason to be humble ( ha ha)….They work very hard and they deserve it and they’re very honest and they’ve very competent.
V/O: It’s not just the fish-tanks but the endless supply of free snacks that’s the envy of the industry.
Steve Dunleavy, New York Post: I think his attitude is if they leave the building to go out to lunch there’s a very real chance one hour becomes an hour and a half and they may have a few gargles and who knows…
Bloomberg: …it’s just another way to make the environment more conducive to you wanting to be there, if you were an employee of the company and you want to come in early and stay late and you take great pride in what you do, then the company benefits and so do you.”
V/O: While there’s nothing new about this form of social contract, Bloomberg takes it a step further, arguing that the rich have an obligation not just to their workers but to use their fortunes for the common good.
[I/V] Bloomberg: Well I don’t know what I’m worth but I do give a lot of money away. I’m a big believer from a selfish point of view there’s nothing I can do with my money that can give me as much pleasure as curing a disease or educating kids or helping people enjoy our culture.
GD: Do you think other billionaires do enough in the community?
Bloomberg: Well I was a big critic of Bill Gates for a long time because he didn’t give away and lately I’ve become his biggest fan because in the last few years he has become the most generous human being in the history of the world even in current terms. I’m a big fan of Ted Turner who gave a billion dollars to the UN, I’m a big fan of George Soros, private philanthropy is a very American tradition and I think it’s one of the things that makes America hold it head up and sort of say we’re better than anyone else, I really believe that.
[VISUAL: July fourth parade]
V/O: -Along with the flag, Mom and apple pie, public service is also rated highly in America.
And as Bloomberg tells it, his tilt at the mayor’s job is largely altruistic – to apply the skills he acquired in business to serve the people of New York.
The city’s eight million people are scattered over five very different boroughs. Here on Staten Island, there’s a small town feel…in Brooklyn and Queens, large swathes of leafy suburbia…and then the Bronx and Manhattan…with its landmark skyline that conjures up New York in the mind’s eye of the whole world.
Michael Bloomberg is casting himself as CEO of the Big Apple and its 250,000 municipal employees.
Bloomberg: well running a quarter of a million people in the public world is different from running 7500 people in the private world but at least I have some experience. I deal with governments in 125 countries were we do business, roughly 100 where we have offices….there are people to lead, or people you’re trying to help…. that you have to listen to and dialogue and there are management issues and there’s being accountable.
VISUAL: Bloomberg talking to cops
[I/V] Graham Davis: His critics say his biggest problem is that he’s got no concept whatsoever of public administration, do you think that’s fair criticism?
Koch: NO I don’t think that’s fair criticism because when I ran they said what’s he ever managed, he’s been a congressman, he’s managed only 18 people against the 250-thousand who work for the city and I did it right! So a managerial ability is genetic you either have it or you don’t and he has it.
V/O: What Bloomberg would inherit should he win is the quantum leap in the general tenor of New York under the outgoing mayor Rudy Guiliani – an extraordinarily divisive figure who provokes loathing and admiration in equal measure.
Fred Segal: Rudy Guiliani is a miserable human being, you wouldn’t want him as a neighbour however ( ha ha)…what’s interesting is that in 1993, the political class of New York, left right and center said you can’t reduce crime, you can’t improve the city university in New York, you can’t reduce welfare, he did all three and he did it in part because he didn’t listen to the political class of the city.
V/O: By doubling the police force and getting tough in the courts, Guiliani reclaimed the streets for law-abiding New Yorkers…and rejuvenated areas like Brooklyn… so sedate now that resident Fred Segal can scarcely believe the transformation.
[I/V] Fred Segal: There was a general sense of panic in New York how to I get out of here… I live in a beautiful area, Victoria flatbush, large one two family homes, very integrated the mood here was get out, we had to organize a civilian patrol. I walked on these blocks three nights a week cause my wife had gotten mugged, my kids had bicycles stolen from under them, two blocks away there was an open air, 24 hour crack market, in between my house and the crack market there were police who were cooping sleeping in their cars..
GD: and what’s it like now?
Fred Segal: My neighbourhhods lovely…life is very pleasant here, the fear is after Guiliani, we’ll return to the previous conditions.
VISUAL: Night sequence Times Square music.
V/O: So Guiliani’s legacy is a safer city more comfortable with itself. Yet like the place itself, Rudy has had his own dark underbelly…castigating minorities and turning on even his strongest supporters.
It was Ed Koch’s endorsement that got Guiliani the job. But then came a major falling out when Guiliani politicised the judiciary.
[I/V] Ed Koch: well he’s been a good mayor but he’s terrible person and he’s mean… once you don’t agree with him you become his mortal enemy from his point of view, he then attacked my integrity, falsely, falsely
GD: how did you feel about being attacked by the guy you’d got over the line?
Ed Koch: well I said I’ll get you you prick.
V/O:-Rudy Guiliani’s wife doubtless feels the same for he’s caught in a love triangle that’s the talk of New York – the wife holded up in Gracie Mansion, the mayoral residence, refusing the leave while Guiliani steps out with his mistress.
It’s a real-life soap opera to rival Sex in the City but seems to play well here in stark contrast to more judgmental parts of America…something his would-be replacement may appreciate.
[I/V] Graham Davis: Much is made here of your single man about town status
Bloomberg: oh?
Graham Davis: indeed you once described your life as a wet dream
Bloomberg: I saw that in the paper, I’m not sure I said that…
Graham Davis: It does sound good
Bloomberg: suffice it to say I was very happily married to a wonderful women for 19 years, we have two children together, she is still one of my best friends. I’ve been divorced for seven or eight years and I lead an active social life would be a nice way to phrase it.”
Dunleavy: He has been seen with some very very beautiful ladies, whether he’s a ladies man I think is probably stretching credibility um although if you’re a billionaire you look very attractive.
Koch: well he has been accused of womanizing and when he’s responded to that he said well I’m single, he’s been married and has had children and I’m heterosexual and I’m having a good time and that may play! Ha ha.
Breslin: After Clinton and after Guilinai in trouble and has to leave the mayor’s house, home at Gracie Mansion because he’s having fights with his wife and things like that and Guilinai he’s on fifth avenue calling for things like a new morality in New York City and he’s walking with his girlfriends with his wife and two children are home, he’s a friggin adulterer in front of the Cardinal walking proudly, what after this Bloomberg’g gonna say I’m single, I’ve had a lot of girlfriends, good well now tell me what you’re gonna do about the garbage in Brooklyn!!!!!
V/O: After Guiliani, what many New Yorkers DO want is a change of tone – another Mr Meany perhaps but with a softer side.
[I/V] GD: Would you be as confrontational as he has been?
Bloomberg: Has Rudy been confrontational?
GD: he sure has
Bloomberg: I’m shocked I didn’t see any of that
GD: ha ha but would you be seeking more consensus?
Bloomerg: I’m not a believer in seeking consensus, I am a believer in consulting a lot of people, letting the know that I’m listening, that their input is in and then I’m a believer in the guy on top or the woman on top making a decision and everyone gets on board
GD: a conviction politician
Bloomberg: ah I hadn’t heard that term before but sure.
V/O: Now that New Yorkers feel more secure in their surroundings, Mike Boomberg wants to build on Guiliani’s legacy with big initiatives on housing and education.
He’s targeting the public school system, in particular, for a major shake-up, saying teachers, like the police, have to be made more accountable.
Bloomberg: You make the principals accountable and give them incentive merit may if they do a good job….but if you can’t you get rid of them and say we have got to have the schools working for the kids not the system.”
V/O: - Commendable as it may be, this isn’t the stuff of headlines…and Bloomberg shares the perennial frustration of politicians the world over in trying to highlight policy and good outcomes…when all people really want to know about is his love life.
[I/V] GD: I notice there’s actually a lady lurking in the background as we follow you around. Without being impertinent can I ask you is this a serious one?
Bloomberg: Well that’s depends on who’s going to see this television program how I answer that ha ha ha.
V/O: Wet dream or not, it seems a fabulous life and a fabulous story…the poor Jewish boy who comes to New York and makes good…builds a global media empire…earns a great fortune and then starts sharing his largesse through charitable works…culminating in the pursuit of public office.
(“we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal..”)
V/O: Despite the lofty sentiments, not all men here are created equal yet one thing is certain… with his billions, Michael Bloomberg isn’t in politics for the money.
Just turn on the schmaltz and look at his face…this guy really believes in the American dream.
Bloomberg: I’m going to run in the Republican primary and then hopefully I’m going to run in the general election but what I’m going to do is pay for the campaign myself so I’m not responsible to anyone else other than the voters….the buck is going to stop with me and I’m gonna do my best to deliver and I would appreciate your co-operation.