Vol. 73/No. 23      June 15, 2009

In response to these attacks, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor, sewing-machine operator Dan Fein, puts forward a platform to unite working people to defend their class interests.

Two-term incumbent Michael Bloomberg is running for a third term, virtually unopposed by other capitalist candidates. Bloomberg is a billionaire who has been in the forefront nationally of the bosses’ attacks on jobs, cuts in social services, and curtailment of workers’ rights.

A vocal backer of the “war on terror,” he recently awarded certificates to more than 100 cops involved in the entrapment of four men in a “conspiracy” plot to bomb synagogues and shoot down military planes. In January he traveled to Israel to personally convey his support for Tel Aviv’s bloody war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

There are no Republicans challenging the mayor. City Comptroller William Thompson, a Democrat who is Black, is running against Bloomberg but has received only a handful of endorsements from his party. President Barack Obama has pointedly not endorsed, nor campaigned for, Thompson. Queens city councilman Anthony Avella, also seeking the Democratic nomination, has even fewer backers.

The 17th richest person in the world, Bloomberg was originally a Democrat, but ran as a Republican in his 2001 and 2005 races for mayor. Now he calls himself an “independent.”

He has already secured the ballot lines of the Republican Party and of the Independence Party.  
 
Obama: ‘Innovative elected officials’
The reluctance of the Democrats to run more than token campaigns against Bloomberg lies in the fact that they fundamentally agree with the mayor’s course of attack on the working class in New York.

Obama made a point of meeting recently with Bloomberg, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger—notorious for slashing jobs and health care in that state—and Pennsylvania governor Edward Rendell to solicit their ideas on solving the economic crisis. The president called them “three of the most innovative elected officials in the country.”

Bloomberg returned the praise in a column evaluating Obama’s first 100 days in office published in the May 25 Newsweek. He hailed the president’s willingness to “do the hard things first,” citing his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan and to tackle cuts in health care. During the 2008 presidential race, Bloomberg actively promoted Obama’s candidacy, without formally endorsing him.

With the backing of the New York Democrats, Bloomberg forced through an agreement June 2 with labor union officials to introduce copayments for medical care for the first time. About 100,000 city workers and retirees will now pay $100 for hospital admissions and $50 for emergency room visits.

Bloomberg and the Democrats recently raised subway and bus fares in New York City by more than 10 percent. Rail fares and bridge and tunnel tolls will also increase. They’re also seeking to raise the sales tax by 0.5 percent to 8.875 percent and reinstate the sales tax on any item of clothing above $110.

Hanging in the balance are threats to eliminate some 12,000 union municipal jobs at the same time funds are increased for private outside contractors. The proposed budget for education projects $400 million in cuts for the next school year.  
 
Blacks and Latinos
Bloomberg has aggressively reached out for political support from figures in the Black and Latino communities. Although Al Sharpton has formally endorsed Thompson, he made a point of inviting Bloomberg, not Thompson, to address the annual meeting of his National Action Network in April. “In all fairness, Al Sharpton has been an awful lot more of a calming influence on the city and helper to the city than most people give him credit for,” Bloomberg told the gathering.

Following Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, who is Puerto Rican, to the U.S. Supreme Court, Bloomberg strongly suggested at a May 26 news conference that the appointment was actually his idea.

Democratic figures Floyd Flake, a long-time U.S. Congressman who recently retired, and Assemblywoman Barbara Clark, leader of the state legislature’s Black, Puerto Rican, and Hispanic Caucus, announced their support for Bloomberg in early May. “Mike is someone who acts independently and governs in a nonpartisan manner,” said Flake.  
 
Socialist Workers candidate Fein
“I don’t claim to be ‘nonpartisan,’” Dan Fein said in an interview June 2. “The Socialist Workers campaign stands 100 percent on the side of the working class. We urge working people to unite in the fight for immediate demands that protect our interests as a class.”

These demands include guaranteed unemployment compensation for as long as a worker is jobless; a raise in the federal minimum wage to union scale; a massive, federally funded public works program to create jobs; and no cuts in medical benefits.

Fein said workers should also fight for immediate, unconditional legalization of all undocumented workers, a halt to farm and home foreclosures, and abolition of income taxes for workers.

A proletarian revolution that takes political power out of the hands of the capitalists is needed, Fein says, to begin to meet the crisis capitalism has created.

There is one other party that calls itself socialist in the race, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). Frances Villar, a City University of New York student, is the PSL candidate for mayor. She is running under the banner “Billionaires, your time is up.” She calls for “tax Wall Street and the big landlords,” “put the banks at the back of the line,” “no foreclosures or evictions in the city,” and “raise the salary for every public school teacher.”
 
 
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