Bloomberg’s Legacy: Plutocracy and Populism

When the ball drops in Times Square tonight, bringing to an end Michael Bloomberg’s twelve years in City Hall, there will be a conspicuous absentee: Bloomberg himself. Rather than seeing out his third term in the company of the chilled hordes, the Mayor has chosen to spend the evening with family and friends; instead, the organizers of the annual shindig drafted Sonia Sotomayor, the Bronx-born Supreme Court justice, to do the ceremonial duties.

Some will see Bloomberg’s decision to skip out as a snub to the city that elected him three times but that is conspicuously failing to mourn his political passing. So be it. Most relationships end badly, and, back in the fall of 2001, when, with the embers at Ground Zero still warm, Rudy Giuliani prevailed upon the city to embrace a short, charisma-challenged Wall Street billionaire as his successor, there was little reason to believe this shotgun marriage would prove to be an exception. But, in fact, things went rather better than might have been expected—for Bloomberg and for New York.

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