Despite a shockingly slim election-night victory, Mayor Bloomberg insisted yesterday he “couldn’t be happier” and decided to share a very public cup of coffee with one of his fiercest critics, incoming Public Advocate Bill de Blasio.
“He’s showing that he’s reaching out,” one source said of the mayor.
Mayoral aides alerted the press to the sitdown at a diner on Nassau Street, a couple of blocks from City Hall. The conversation, however, was private.
VIDEO: THIRD TIME’S A CHARM FOR BLOOMBERG
De Blasio, who backed Democratic mayoral contender Bill Thompson, said afterward that the mayor’s 5-point winning margin was a signal that his third term had better be a lot different than his first two.
“The voters clearly sent a message yesterday that they want a more democratic process, a more transparent process, more checks and balances,” de Blasio said. “They wanted to restore balance. Something had gone wrong.”
Bloomberg also asked to meet with Comptroller-elect John Liu, who — like de Blasio — was an outspoken opponent of the term-limits extension pushed through by the mayor. Liu said he wants a “substantive meeting” and not just a photo op. No date was immediately set.
Bloomberg tried to put his game face on what turned out to be an unexpectedly thrilling finish to the mayor’s race, in which he outspent his opponent by at least 10 to 1.
“In terms of last night, I couldn’t be happier,” the mayor declared outside a Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, subway station.
He conceded that the term-limits controversy cost him some votes, but insisted the anti-incumbent mood of voters around the nation was a much greater factor.
“The public is frustrated by a bad economy and wars overseas that there seem no easy answer to, and they take it out at the ballot box,” he said later at City Hall.
In a rare moment of candor, Bloomberg admitted the thought crossed his mind that he might lose.
“When I worry, I start thinking, ‘What can I do about it?’ — not just sitting around. And by last night, there was not a lot we could do about it. I just sat back and it was nice to talk to the staff,” he recalled.
The unofficial results showed Thompson had 506,717 votes, only slightly better than the 503,219 that Bloomberg’s Democratic rival Fernando Ferrer got in 2005.
The mayor grabbed 557,059 votes — 196,030 fewer than four years ago.
That indicated that thousands of voters who were in the Bloomberg column in 2005 simply stayed home in 2009.