‘I know, I know — but’ - is the response I have been getting from all of my friends when I tell them that I am not voting for Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Some friends look away with a momentary guilty look.  Some hang their heads down and say ‘but I don’t like the other guy (Bill Thompson).’ Some just say ‘ well, he cannot be bought.’  To all of them, I say, as Rachel Maddow always says, ‘Bull Hockey.’

Here is why I am not voting for Mayor Mike.

1. I am still angry that Bloomberg brought the RNC to NYC in 2004 and even more angry at the illegal arrest and detention of over 1800 individuals by the authorities during the Republican Nation Convention. The 1800 arrests and detentions were a record for a political convention in the U.S. Many people were detained longer than 24 hours on relatively trivial charges. However, 90% of those charges were eventually dropped. I have ranted about these arrests before and also ranted about the fact that I can never GET arrested while demonstrating.  I definitely will have to try harder next time. There are a slew of details here.

2. I hated his trying to shove the West Side Stadium down our throats in 2005. Luckily, he lost that battle.

3. However, it is his overturning of term limits that put me over the top. Long story short, in the fall of 2008, Bloomberg successfully campaigned for an amendment to New York City’s term limits law, in order to allow him to run for a third term in 2009.  There was plenty of time for him to pay for (about $40 million) a special election so that the people, who had already voted twice on this issue, could decide if Bloomberg could run for another term.  He decided not to go that way – and essentially bought the City Council and overturned the law.  He thought we would forget.  Well, most have – or just do not care.  I have not. (For the record – I voted NO to term limits two times but that is beside the point. It was the LAW).

Clyde Haberman, says that Bloomberg Is Betting on Voters With an Elastic Approach to the Law. “The mayor used to believe fervently in a two-term limit — until it became inconvenient for him. His “complete and utter disregard for the democratic process,” Mr. Thompson said, “was a defining moment for all of us.” “Does the richest man in New York City get to live by one set of rules while the rest of us live by another?”

4.  Obscene amounts of his own money have been spent on his campaign. Bloomberg, the richest man in New York City, has spent $85 million on his current re-election campaign — a U.S. record for most personal money spent in a campaign for public office. The election is less than a week away and Bloomberg may wind up spending up to $140 million. This is plain wrong.  I do not care if it is his own money.  It is offensive.

5.  He can’t be bought, some say.  When a man has billions of dollars, he doesn’t need to be bought.  He can do all of the buying and that is just what has happened in the last eight years. New York Magazine, in a lengthy piece. details how and why Bloomberg has become as successful as he has, in this uncontrollable City. ‘A remarkable number of dominoes have fallen Bloomberg’s way. The city’s ethnic politics are at a transition point: Black activists trained in the civil-rights model are fading, and though the city’s Latino and Asian communities have rising population numbers, they have yet to coalesce around any leaders, though the primary victory of John Liu is perhaps a sign of things to come. The speaker of the City Council is usually a mayoral antagonist. But the current speaker, Christine Quinn, decided that the best way to be elected mayor herself was to ingratiate herself with Bloomberg. Then Quinn was further neutered by the council’s slush-fund scandal’.

6. He brought Rudy Giuliani in to campaign for him. Did he really need to do that?  There is no one who is more divisive than Rudy.  He still makes most of us shudder whenever his punim shows up on TV or in the press.  Rudy then did what he does best – he pulls the fear factor out of his ass and goes for broke. He invokes those code words and we all get nauseous.  Yesterday, the New York Times’ Michael Powell revisited the Dinkins years that Rudy was brewing and stewing about. The record gets straightened out and Dinkins gets some of the credit he deserves.

-  As Rudy Giuliani comes to town to campaign for Mayor Bloomberg, remember that Republicans stick together.

7.  And why oh why is it that Bloomberg cannot decide whether he is a Democrat, Republican or an Independent. Is that such a hard thing to do?

-  Did Mayor Bloomberg do a good job as Mayor for the past eight years?  Yes. He did some fine things – but you know what?  That is what we elect people to do – their job.  And when it is time to go — it is time to go.  As far as I am concerned, the best thing about Mayor Mike was his bringing The Gates Project to Central Park in 2005.

-  Will Mike Bloomberg win a third term? I would be crazy to bet against him.  The only thing Bill Thompson has going for him is the fact that many people will not go to the polls.  Only 7% of eligible voters turned out for the run-off two weeks ago.

-  Mayor Michael Bloomberg was bitten by groundhog, Staten Island Chuck during the Staten island Zoo’s annual Groundhog Day event.