Business Backers Rally
Around Bloomberg Bid

Midtown — New York's 4.3 million registered voters may not get to cast a vote on whether the term limits they approved in 1993 and affirmed in 1996 should be lifted to allow Mayor Michael Bloomberg to seek four more years in office. But one tiny group of citizens is getting heard: the business people who quietly encouraged the mayor to run again and are now loudly calling on the City Council to let him.

And these aren't small businesspeople. In an Open Letter published in daily newspapers last Thursday, 30 signatories representing the highest echelons of investment banking, corporate law, private equity, real estate, credit card, lobbying and other industries called on the Council to "extend term limits in order to give New Yorkers the opportunity for whomever they think can do the best job during these tough economic times, including our current mayor."

Their emergence comes amid continuing media coverage of how one well-heeled voter, cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder – who funded the 1993 campaign to enact term limits – feels about the mayor's proposal. Lauder supports only a one-time extension for the Bloomberg mayoralty, putting him at odds with Bloomberg's own proposal to change the law to extend term limits to 12 years for all offices going forward. In comments printed Monday in the New York Times, Lauder depicted the question of whether to extend term limits once or forever as a personal choice: “It took a lot of emotion even to extend term limits this once. … I was opposed to even extending it once. For the love of this city, I will do it once, but that is it.”

Had the mayor announced earlier in the year that he wanted to change the law, voters themselves – rather than Lauder or the Council – could have had a chance to decide the term limits question directly. But as the mayor explained last week, "it's just too late" now to get such a measure on the ballot. So—unless the Council opts to call a special election, which some members are advocating—the voters' choice on a third term will likely come next November when they actually vote for mayor. And although candidates from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to Comptroller William Thompson to U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner have all been running for the post, at this point it's unclear who else there will be to choose from. As the Post's David Seifman wrote last week, "Who's going to take on a guy who spent $85 million in his last municipal election?" By comparison, John McCain is running his nationwide general election campaign for president with the $84 million in public financing he's received since his party's convention. Bloomberg spent at least $73 million on his 2001 race.

For the mayor's business backers, the choice will be clear whoever runs. "Under Mayor Bloomberg and his partners in city government, we have enjoyed six years of economic growth. Our schools are improving and the neighborhoods of all five boroughs are flourishing," the Open Letter asserts. "Young people are flocking to our highly regarded universities, the city is bustling with tourists and we are renowned for innovation in public health, cleaning up the urban environment, helping people out of poverty and maintaining our status as the safest big city in America."

But the financial crisis has put all that at risk, the letter continues, threatening "massive job losses, business failures and budget deficits." Getting through the crisis quickly and intact, the missive warns, "depends on continuity of great leadership."