NEW YORK
THE CURRENT election campaign down here has done wonders for those of our citizens who suffer from insomnia or hypertension. The mayoral joust features Mike Bloomberg, a party-jumping, term-limit flouting, nasal, self-made billionaire defending his post against Bill Thompson, a classic Democratic Party apparatchik, a former president of the late, largely despised Board of Education (since abolished by his opponent), and ex-controller, a post inherently inhospitable to close or meaningful examination.
The incumbent, for whom I will freely admit great admiration, has spent a sum roughly equal to the annual GDP of Luxembourg in his reelection campaign. One of his television spots, featuring a video clip of the challenger, has been aired so often that one would have trouble finding a voter who couldn’t quote the damning segment in his sleep. The challenger’s ads mostly consist of him saying, in effect, “Did not, did not, did not, nyah, nyah, nyah.’’
The only real interest in the mayoral election lies in the independent, e.g., quixotic, megalomaniac or delusional candidates. We have the ideologues. There’s the conservative entrant, a Baptist minister who has reached the startling conclusion that, on all levels, government is too big. Granted. Thanks, we’ll call you.
We have three candidates from left field: a revolutionary Marxist, whose campaign appears to consist of her bullhorn and the stickers plastered all over her father’s taxi, who thinks that New York City should be an “eviction-free zone’’; a young “green’’ architect who does stand-up comedy on the side (must I say it?); and a socialist worker, a sewing machine operator who has run for mayor in Phoenix and Houston, and sought US Senate seats in Georgia, Florida, Washington, and Rhode Island.
Beyond these stupefyingly serious people, however, we have true individuality. If they were Brits, they would be anti-vivisectionists or partisans of the apostrophe or some endangered species of tea rose. But, this being New York, we have the reverend of the Church of Life After Shopping, a performance artist who’s fighting the big box stores with the aid of the Life After Shopping Gospel Choir and the Not Buying It Band.
One step further along is a freelance writer and editor, the self-described “last of the small heavyweights’’ (Marquis of Queensberry or London Prize Ring Rules, he’ll let you choose, if the do-re-mi is right) and, according to the Paper of Record, designer of his own clothing line, “Joseph of Iowa.’’ His main plank looks to be revoking the ban on smoking in bars.
The undisputed best name belongs to The Rent Is Too Damn High Party whose founder and candidate, a retired letter carrier and “tenth-degree black belt,’’ indulges in carefully measured campaign rhetoric involving printing the mayor’s name on his toilet paper so he can . . . and so on.
Despite the plethora of opponents, the incumbent will stroll to an easy victory, and folks will continue to whine about his autocratic style. Actually, his disinclination to seek counsel is his most endearing quality. Last week, he mentioned that when he’s reelected, about a third of his department heads, top-level bureaucrats, can expect to lose their jobs. Not for bad performance, but because Hizzoner thinks it’s good management practice to fight complacency. He may be serious, but he’s not dull.
Three terms will probably do it for Mike, so I’d like to propose a candidate for 2013, a man with an independent, original, creative mind. He’s made enough money to be immune from corruption and intimidation. He has a long record as a maverick, and he’ll probably be out of work by then, so he’ll have plenty of time for campaigning. Unlike many of the candidates above, he’s an adopted son of Gotham who, like Bloomberg, has put in time in Massachusetts. He’s a natural. And talk about coming out of left field. Now if only he’ll consider taming those dreadlocks. “Manny for Mayor!’’ It has a nice ring to it.
Bill Mehlman is a New York-based writer. 
