By Inga Sorensen

As Republican mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg savored victory and pondered his transition team this week, reeling Democrats struggled to make sense of how their candidate for mayor, Mark Green, lost in a city where Democrats dominate Republicans by a 5-1 ratio. Bloomberg's 50-47 percent triumph over Green marks the first time ever that New York City has had back-to-back Republican mayors.

Outcome shocks some politicos

"If there were any bookies in the city of New York who called this one, they were probably the big winners," assessed Christine Quinn, a lesbian City Council member who handily won her re-election bid Tuesday.

"No one thought what happened last night was going to happen," Quinn, a Manhattan Democrat, said the morning after the election. "I don't even think if you ask Mike Bloomberg under truth serum that he would have thought this was going to happen. It was certainly stunning."

And apparently stupefying to some Democrats.

"I think the question of why Mark lost the election is one that many of us within the Democratic Party, the LGBT community, in organized labor and other places are going to spend a great deal of time over the next few months figuring out and analyzing," she said, adding, "To tell you the truth, being so close to what happened last night, I don't really have any insights that are particularly illuminating."

Political observers say several factors may have contributed to Bloomberg's victory. For one, popular outgoing GOP Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who was restricted from running again due to term limits, endorsed Bloomberg. Bloomberg is also a billionaire businessperson who spent tens of millions of dollars more on the election effort than did Green, the city's public advocate. Some also speculate voters felt that a businessperson, rather than a longtime public servant, would be better equipped to address the city's growing economic woes, especially in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"And Mark Green failed to resonate with the voters," observed Kenneth Sherrill, a political science professor at Hunter College in New York City, who noted that some New Yorkers found Green to be smug and dismissive. "The more voters saw of Green, the less they liked him."

Race controversy shadowed Green

Bloomberg scored 47 percent of the Latino vote in Tuesday's election compared to Green's 49 percent, said Joe Lenski, executive vice president of Edison Media Research. That figure, he added, is amazing.

"Outside of Cuban communities in Florida, I can't give you an example of a race any place else in the country where a Republican split the Hispanic vote."

Lenski cited two reasons for Bloomberg's strong showing among Hispanic voters: anger over the runoff campaign between Green and Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, and the money Bloomberg poured into advertising in Spanish media. Bloomberg also picked up about one-quarter of the black vote in Tuesday's election.

Regarding the first point, some Latino and African-American voters had expressed dismay over what they viewed as the Green campaign’s tactic of turning negative — even racist — in the final days leading up to the Oct. 11 primary runoff.

Ferrer supporters blasted a Green television ad that aired in the days immediately preceding the runoff election that asked, "Can we afford to take a chance?" on a Mayor Ferrer. Green defended the ad, which some said had racial overtones. Additionally, critics cited posters and a prerecorded phone message that attacked Ferrer's political alliance with Rev. Al Sharpton, a black leader.

The Green campaign had denounced the tactics and said the campaign had nothing to do with them.

Meanwhile last week, the New York Daily News reported that some Green aides participated in an Oct. 4 meeting where Democratic officials discussed the possibility of exploiting Ferrer's relationship with Sharpton in an effort to draw more Jewish voters in the runoff election. The Green campaign denied that it promoted any such strategizing at that meeting, and no staffers were punished.

But after the story broke, Sharpton refused to endorse Green, and Ferrer, who had given a lukewarm endorsement at best, stopped campaigning for Green.

"I am extremely happy that New York voters agreed with me that Mark Green should not be mayor. Having Mark not become the next mayor sends an important message to the Democratic establishment that they can't use '50's-style race-tainting to get their candidate into office," said Doug Robinson, co-founder and treasurer of Out People of Color Political Action Club, a New York City-based progressive nonpartisan club geared toward gay people of color.

Robinson, 50, said since he first began voting more that three decades ago, he had always backed Democrats. This election, however, he voted for the Green Party mayoral candidate.

"The people of color communities have traditionally been a solid Democratic core base of people," said Robinson, who is African-American. "But we are not happy with the Democratic Party if they take us for granted, and we will pull out if we feel a candidate is not someone of integrity and someone who wants to include us under their umbrella — and Mark Green did not do that. He was in tremendous denial about what happened during the runoff. Had he just owned up to some of that, I think some of us would have said, 'OK, let's move on.' But that didn't happen."

Gay City Council member Phil Reed, a Manhattan Democrat who was overwhelmingly re-elected Tuesday, said while his party tries to reach out to myriad constituencies, "sometimes we fail to have an honest dialogue with all of those constituent groups."

Said Reed, who is African-American: "A lot of it had to do with the personality of our candidate, who just did not want to acknowledge the concerns in a way that people felt was genuine. Maybe he was incapable of doing that. Maybe he thought he was being genuine. I think a lot of people in the communities of color feel like we have indeed made the party aware that you honestly can't win without us, so perhaps we will stop being taken for granted."

He added, "We are going to be running a campaign next year for governor. And there is a very qualified person who happens to be African-American. Nobody can challenge Carl McCall's qualifications to be the governor. If they can, I want to hear it. I defy anybody to tell me why we should not be behind that opportunity."

Robinson agrees, saying McCall is immensely qualified to become governor.

"Let's see what the Democratic Party does here," he said.

Additionally, Robinson noted, several City Council members who are people of color are vying to become speaker of the City Council, Reed among them.

Peter Vallone, a white male who has held the speaker's post for more than a decade, is leaving the City Council due to term limits.

"Were hoping that the next speaker will be a person of color," said Robinson. "There are qualified people of color to take these jobs, and I, like others, are going to hold people accountable."

Ripple effects?

The outcome of the New York City election may very well impact another high-profile political contest in the works: the 2002 gubernatorial election.

Hours after the election, Judith Hope, head of the state Democratic Party, urged either former federal Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo or state Comptroller Carl McCall to pull out of the race for next year's nomination for governor. Cuomo, the son of former governor Mario Cuomo, and McCall, the state's only African-American candidate to be elected to statewide office, are vying for the Democratic nomination.

Hope told reporters that Democrats must avoid a potentially divisive gubernatorial primary, given Bloomberg's upset win over Green.

"Clearly there are deadly serious warning signs for the Democratic Party next year," Hope said, according to the Associated Press. "We must avoid a divisive primary."

She added, "One of them has to get out, it's clear. Obviously, that's what it'll take."

The Democrats will be striving to unseat Gov. George Pataki, a moderate Republican whose approval ratings topped 75 percent after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. According to AP, Hope refused to discuss whether Cuomo or McCall should bow out of the race.

Said Quinn: "By definition the Democratic Party will always be somewhat fractured. We are a big-tent party that tries to expand the coalition on an ongoing basis. … There's always a lot of dialogue and maybe disagreements, but something needs to be done. Whenever you lose, something needs to be done. If you lose, something went wrong and you need to go back and fix it."

Gays overwhelmingly back Green

According to Lenski, Edison Media Research's exit polling found that 5 percent of voters in the Nov. 6 election identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Of those voters, 62 percent supported Green; 32 percent backed Bloomberg.

"Most of the community supported Mark, but I think mayor-elect Bloomberg is a reasonable man. He will have to recognize that Mark had a long, long record of working with the community, and I would think that he would not hold that against out community," said Quinn.

David Jackson of the New York City chapter of Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group, said Log Cabin endorsed Bloomberg because he was a good candidate who expressed solid support for gay rights.

"We think that he'll be a great friend to the community," said Jackson.

In an interview that appeared in the Blade this summer, Bloomberg said he supports a transgendered civil rights bill pending in the City Council, and backs a gay-supportive city-contracting bill with possible exemptions for religious entities. He has publicly denounced the Boy Scouts of America's ban on gay members.

Jackson said that Green "did well by quickly identifying himself" as a friend of the gay community. But because of that, said Jackson, some gay New Yorkers might've automatically assumed that Bloomberg wasn't a friend, "which isn't so."

Several gay politicos say they're keeping an open mind when it comes to the new administration

"While Mike Bloomberg has been known for just a short period of time by our community, he would be considered pro-gay and progressive in any part of the country and most certainly among members of his own political party," said Joe Grabarz, deputy executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, a statewide gay rights group that endorsed Green. "The Pride Agenda’s political action committee met with Bloomberg several weeks ago and was impressed by his positions on issues important to the gay community. New York, like most major cities, was fortunate to have both Democratic and Republican candidates for mayor supporting equal rights for gay and lesbian people. Mike Bloomberg has repeatedly indicated his desire to work with our community to get things done and we expect this will happen."

Said Reed: "Unlike Giuliani, Bloomberg isn't coming in with any ideology; I don't think anybody knows where Bloomberg is. What I know is that I go into any relationship assuming the best and hoping for it."

Nearly a dozen gays elected statewide

Eleven openly gay or lesbian candidates were elected to local offices across New York, an all-time high in a single year, says ESPA.

They include three Manhattan Democratic incumbents re-elected to the New York City Council: Phil Reed, Christine Quinn, and Margarita Lopez, who like Reed and Quinn easily defeated her opponent.

Grabarz noted that with 38 of the 51 City Council members being new, the 13 incumbents are positioned to exercise an enormous amount of influence over who fills leadership positions in the new City Council.

"Having Margarita, Christine, and Phil in senior positions on the City Council bodes well for our community," he said.

The other gay victors are: GOP mayor Dan Stewart, who won his re-election bid as mayor of Plattsburgh; Democrat Tim Mains, who was re-elected to the Rochester City Council; Democrat Richard Conti, re-elected to the Albany Common Council; Republican Bill Schmidt, re-elected to the Peekskill City Council; Democrat Brian Cafferty, elected to the Town Board of Rosendale; Democrat John Shields, elected mayor of Nyack; Democrat Jonathan Cooper, re-elected to the Suffolk County Legislature; and Democrat Kathy Luz Herrera, elected to the Tompkins County Legislature.

Four openly gay candidates lost their bids for public office: Republican Philippe Gille, who was vying for a seat on the Westchester County Legislature; Democrat Greg Rabb, who lost his effort to secure a seat on the Jamestown City Council; Bottom Line Party candidate Linda Mussman lost her bid to become mayor of Hudson; and Democrat Dan Weiler was unsuccessful in his effort to gain a seat on the Chatham Town Board.

Still, ESPA officials said they're pleased by the outcome of Tuesday's election.

"Gay and lesbian office seekers ran strong and credible campaigns in cities and towns across the state and were rewarded for their efforts," said ESPA's Grabarz.

New Jersey gays pleased, too

New Jersey voters went to the polls Tuesday to pick a new governor. Democrat Jim McGreevey soundly defeated conservative Republican Bret Schundler.

"We look forward to working with Jim McGreevey," said Michael Blake of New Jersey Stonewall Democrats, a gay Democratic group.

In July, McGreevey responded to a New Jersey Stonewall Democrats candidate questionnaire where he signaled his opposition to any effort to repeal laws affording protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation or amplifying criminal penalties in instances of gay-related hate crimes. As governor, he said, he would support extending state-employee benefits to those in recognized domestic partnerships.

Rich Tafel, head of the national Log Cabin Republicans, said Schundler refused to meet with the group.

Log Cabin, which endorsed Bloomberg in neighboring New York, did not endorse in the New Jersey gubernatorial race.

Tafel hopes the success of moderate-to-liberal Republicans such as Bloomberg will lead to increasing numbers of tolerant GOP candidates.

"First and foremost, politicians want to get elected," Tafel assessed.