On Tuesday, November 29, 2005, Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy and the Center for New York City Affairs held an invitation-only post-election roundtable on The New School campus to discuss the 2005 mayoral race. The event brought together top strategists and staff from each of the Democratic and Republican mayoral campaigns, as well as prominent journalists, civic leaders, academics, political observers and others to learn what took place behind the scenes during this year’s mayoral race.
ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin moderated the day’s roundtable discussions on the primary and general elections, as well as an informal lunch conversation about the role of the press during the mayoral race.
During the roundtable discussions, representatives spoke about the most challenging moments in each of their campaigns. Gifford Miller’s and C. Virginia Fields’ top campaign staffers described their own versions of “Flyergate.” Miller’s campaign staff said they had no knowledge of the City Council staff’s plan to mail $1.6 million worth of taxpayer-funded literature in early 2005, and if they had they would handled it differently. In the case of the Fields campaign, Joe Mercurio, a former consultant who was let go on the heels of the Fields flyer incident, sparred with Campaign Manager Chung Seto on their differing version of the facts.
The most salient moment discussed by the Weiner campaign was their candidate’s decision not to challenge Fernando Ferrer in a post-primary runoff. Much had been made of this in the press, and Weiner’s staffers offered insight into what the candidate had been thinking and saying – or, more specifically, not saying and with whom he had not been speaking. No, they assured us, there was no deal cut.
Top Ferrer Adviser Roberto Ramirez put it this way: “The last thing we wish to have in the campaign is affirmative action.” Aides said that Weiner did not speak to Ferrer or anybody else that night, and as proof they offered the fact that they had all spent the entire evening in the basement of a restaurant in which there was no cell phone reception. Mark Mellman of the Miller campaign concluded, “The single most brilliant act by a campaign was to turn...a landslide defeat into a moral victory.”
As winner of the primary and challenger to Bloomberg, Ferrer and his campaign were the focus of much of the day’s conversation. Chief Political Adviser and Democratic heavy hitter Roberto Ramirez spoke emotionally and at length about his candidate’s defeat. He railed against the national Democratic Party for not supporting Ferrer, especially as he was the party’s first Latino candidate for mayor of New York. He also spoke angrily on more than one occasion about what he saw as underlying bias in the press coverage of his candidate, even going so far as to tell a roomful of journalists during the lunch discussion that they had “dehumanize(d)” Ferrer and made him into a “caricature.”
The Diallo debacle was a major topic of the conversation as well, with Ferrer’s staffers admitting that the incident had been mishandled.
Of particular interest to those in the room was how the Bloomberg campaign viewed the West Side stadium issue. Bloomberg’s top staffers conceded that the defeat of the stadium plan came as a great relief to them, as the issue could have been the biggest thorn obstacle to the mayor’s reelection effort. Communications Director Bill Cunningham quipped that the campaign had “sent flowers to Shelly Silver,” the State Assembly Speaker who was responsible for killing the plan.
All commended the Bloomberg campaign for its impressive work, but several participants were quick to point out that it is extremely rare for an incumbent in his position (60 percent approval ratings, no major scandals, a strong city economy) to lose. The Ferrer representatives were also quick – and often – to point out the overwhelming disadvantage their candidate (who, they said, harbors an intense dislike of fundraising) had in competing with a billionaire mayor with no spending limit.
In fact, Bill Cunningham said that the campaign spent "about as much money as we spent last time," which would put the total at about $75 million – though Cunningham also said that adjusted for inflation “we might actually have spent less." The Ferrer campaign is expected to file its total spending at $8.5 million.
The day concluded with an informal discussion over lunch about the role of the press in the 2005 mayoral campaign. Speakers from the various campaigns sparred with reporters, columnists and editors from the major dailies as well as broadcast news organizations over whether or not the press based its coverage too heavily on the results of public polls, whether media decisionmakers were biased against the Ferrer candidacy, and whether the tabloids' focus on scandal, gaffes and process undermines serious consideration of more important issues.
Read the edited transcript |
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